Quentin Tarantino has unchained the truth about Kanye West taking credit for coming up with the concept of “Django Unchained.”
Tarantino, who won an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay for the film in 2012, cleared the air on Ye’s claim while appearing on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” on Saturday.
Toward the end of their 20-minute interview, Kimmel excitedly asked Tarantino about the claims West made during his “Piers Morgan Uncensored” interview.
“Well, there’s not truth that Kanye West came up with the idea of ‘Django,’ Tarantino said, “And then he told it to me and I go, ‘Hey wow, that’s a really great idea. Let me take Kanye’s idea and make ‘Django Unchained’ out of it.’ That didn’t happen.”
The director assured Kimmel and his audience that he had the idea for Django well before he even met West.
Tarantino says he met West while he was looking to do a feature film for his 2004 album “The College Dropout” and claims the meeting was an excuse to meet one another.
“He did have an idea for a video and I do think it was for the ‘Gold Digger,’” Tarantino said, saying that he thought West’s idea for the music video was “very funny.”
The filmmaker said he wished West had followed through with making the music video as they discussed, saying it sounded “really cool.”
On Oct. 19, during his heated interview with Piers Morgan, the rapper stated that Tarantino and Foxx took his idea and used it for Tarantino’s film after pitching it as a music video for his 2005 song “Gold Digger,” which featured Foxx.
West claims he pitched a slavery-themed story for his video, which never came to be, while in a meeting with the famed director and Foxx.
“Tarantino can write a movie about slavery, where actually, him and Jamie, they got the idea from me, because the idea for ‘Django’ I pitched to Jamie Foxx and Quentin Tarantino as the video for ‘Gold Digger.’ And then Tarantino turned it into a film,” West told Morgan during their interview.
In the past weeks, West has found himself deeply entrenched in controversy over a number of antisemitic remarks made by the Grammy-winning rapper.
West was recently dropped as a sponsor by the footwear giant Adidas.