At the 2023 South By Southwest (SXSW) festival, RZA was in attendance for the premiere of Problemista, which he stars in with Tilda Swinton. Swinton plays the eccentric art critic who drags the immigrant toy designer Alejandro, played by writer and director Julio Torres, around to archive and catalog her late husband’s artwork, played by RZA.
While on stage, RZA discussed what it was like working with Mario Van Peebles on his Hulu show WuTang.
“I reached out to him, I said, ‘well I got this episode that I think nobody could direct with you,’” he began. “And he had the time to do it and it’s something. The beautiful thing about it – you guys ever check out this episode it’s episode three of the new season, it’s called ‘Dirty Dancing’- we take the cast back to the 70s, to tell the story of OB’s album and to have someone like Mario Van Peebles, who him and his father are pioneers of what was called the black exploitation field, and to have him actually be the guy to direct this episode and to, you know bring in the Soul Train energy and bringing energy that was actually from his father’s legacy, I think it was an incredible blessing for us as showrunners. It was super cool and Mario was such a smart, well versed in culture and art, and this guy is sharp and we learned so much from them.”
RZA also laid down some advice when it comes to marriage and respecting women.
“You’re fighting yourself and you’re fighting your own other half and my wife has been such a blessing to me and a joy to me,” he revealed. “I would say in our community we had an old slogan, ‘oh you got a woman, you know, keep her in check and don’t give her no money.’ Get out of here, that’s all ’70 pimps s—-, right. Your woman, your wife is your partner, it takes knowledge and wisdom to bring forth understanding.”
