Mark Wahlberg hits Channel 4 screens tonight at 9pm in Infinite, but long before he was a renowned Hollywood star, he was a rapper. He performed in the group Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch and even earned himself a platinum-selling album. But this meant he was pitted against one of the greatest rappers of all time: Eminem.
Eminem opened up about the sly disdain between the two musicians. He explained that it all came to a head in 1999 on the TV show Total Request Live.
Speaking with Anthony Bozza in the book Whatever You Say I Am: The Life and Times of Eminem, Marshall Mathers explained he was told by MTV that he was going to be on the show with Wahlberg. They added: “He’d appreciate it if we don’t call him [his rapper name] Marky Mark.”
Eminem recalled Wahlberg arriving and saying: “What, is there supposed to be some f****ng tension in here or something?”
The rapper continued: “I pretended like I don’t hear him and s**t. Then we’re on air and […] I’m like: ‘We’ll just stand around here like one big fun bunch!’ So I threw a stab at him. He didn’t want me to say Mark-y. Probably didn’t want me to say funk-y neither.”
Wahlberg was asked about the feud, but he insisted: “It wasn’t a disagreement. I think we both had a specific opinion about each other, certainly.”
He added: “As a rapper, I was just kinda out-there and loud and crazy and all this stuff, and it was a very serious movie and this very serious part.”
The actor also revealed the movie’s director seemed to take his side in the disagreement.
“[Scott Kalvert,] the director of the film, he had made all my music videos [and] he felt like I was more than capable to play the part, but no one had seen me act in a film, so I had to really kinda just go out there and prove myself.”
These days, Wahlberg puts a lot of effort into becoming close friends with his co-stars.
He recently appeared in Uncharted alongside Spider-Man star Tom Holland. During their time acting together, Wahlberg sent the young British actor a lovely gift – but he took it the wrong way.
“Mark Wahlberg was kind enough to give me a massage gun after I left his house in LA,” Holland recalled. “And he drove me back to my hotel. I was confused as to what kind of massage gun this was, having never seen one before, and I thought it was the type of self-pleasure.”
He added that he thought Wahlberg was driving him back to his hotel for “reasons other than just being a gentleman”. He joked: “I didn’t know you. It’s Hollywood, baby. Who knows what’s gonna happen?”
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