Tony Cox moved from playing an elf in Bad Santa to playing an elf in Eminem’s “Just Lose It” music video.
In an interview with The Art Of Dialogue, Tony Cox remembers his enthusiasm when he was booked to shoot an Eminem video, and how Em tried to make it more memorable by inviting Tony to choose a memento from his warehouse:
I got requested to do a music video with Eminem, which I was glad about. I didn’t know Eminem, but he was a big fan. When I came on the set, he wanted like 12 pictures of me for his boys. He was just so nice. It was a scene where he wanted to pick me up. I don’t usually let people pick me up, only sometimes. But he didn’t ask. He had one of his guys ask if it would be okay. I said, “Are you sure you can pick me up? I was kind of heavy”. And he said, “Yeah, I’ve got you”. So, you know, he grabbed me from behind. He was holding my hands like that. I was surprised. He was walking around – with me.
He told me he really liked Bad Santa. I didn’t know he was such a fan. And after that shot, I was going to New York. His secretary came up and said, “Look, he wants you to go and pick out anything you want”. I didn’t get the chance to go – the movie I was doing, we were shooting. I really wanted to go and get some of his wardrobe.
This story once again shows the great distance between Marshall as a decent human being and the brash persona of his alter ego, Eminem. In the music video, Slim Shady goes from one cultural figure to another, brutally offending each one. Privately, through his team, Marshall asks Tony for permission to lift him, apparently knowing that little people might not welcome it.
At the end of the day, practically everyone who worked with Marshall notes how kind and attentive he is to the people who surround him. Tony Cox was not an exception.