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“That 10-year-old, 11-year-old Scott inside me was screaming like a schoolgirl,” Kid Cudi tells theGrio exclusively.
Kid Cudi, the rapper-actor who is credited under his legal name Scott Mescudi, tells theGrio in an exclusive interview that booking the role of Agent Mason in the Paramount+ series “Knuckles” is “a dream come true.”
“Knuckles” follows Knuckles the Echidna (Idris Elba), a character from the “Sonic the Hedgehog” series, who is tasked with training deputy sheriff Wade Whipple (Adam Pally) in the art of the Echidna warrior. Along the way, Knuckles must fight off The Buyer, who wants his power, and Agent Mason, who works for the super-villain.
“That 10-year-old, 11-year-old Scott inside me was screaming like a schoolgirl,” Cudi says. “I think every once in a while, when you’re in this business, you have these moments where you kind of like, ‘Wow, this is really an extraordinary experience.’ I’m a part of something mega.”
“It was a dream come true to be involved in any way,” adds the 40-year-old. “Even when I did the song for ‘Sonic [The Hedgehog] 2,’ it was still such a big deal to me, even doing the music video. That whole experience was so huge. Doing ‘Knuckles ’— words can’t really express how that whole thing was for me. It was crazy.”
“Knuckles” was the first time in Cudi’s career where he was expected to act alongside computer-generated imagery. The experience took “some getting used to,” according to Cudi, who says that many of his scenes involved fighting and interacting with the animated Knuckles.
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“As I got into the rhythm — we did a lot of training before we actually shot [the series], when we choreographed all the fight scenes and all that,” he explained. “But there was a learning curve with that for sure. I’ve just done some action [in the movies ‘Silent Night’ and ‘Crater’] but never to this magnitude. Wire work, too, was a thing that I was doing on this that I’ve never done before.”
“Knuckles” is all about that Echidna warrior spirit, and it’s a feeling Cudi can relate to. When asked if there’s anything he applies that same tenacity to, the rapper-actor lists touring as one of the major warrior activities in his life.
“I’m going on a tour this summer, right?” Cudi says. “It’s about 45 dates in total, but the first block is about 31 dates. Every time on tour, around show 21, you start to feel it. It’s really those last 10 shows that are really like, you gotta fight through it. I mean, you enjoy it. But then you realize at that point that this is a job.”
“I’m doing two-and-a-half-hour shows every other night, some nights back to back. It takes a lot of my body and a lot of my voice. When I’m on tour, and I’m in the trenches, that’s when I’m really like, ‘Yo, I gotta power through this. I gotta be a warrior.’”
Shortly after this interview, Cudi broke his foot while performing at the Coachella 2024 music festival in Indio, California, causing him to cancel his “Insano: Engage the Rage” world tour.
“Knuckles” is available to stream now on Paramount+.
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