Joey Badass Went to Therapy After ‘Two Distant Strangers’

Joey Badass revealed he had to go to therapy after starring in the Oscar-winning short film Two Distant Strangers.

“I’m not gon’ lie, I had to do therapy after I shot Two Distant Strangers because it was a lot of internalization,” the rapper told XXL recently. “I remember the first scene in the movie, when I’m coming out of the girl’s apartment and police see me and they slam me on the floor. I remember shooting that in real time and it was people driving by, they would stop, and they would roll down their window and they’d be like, ‘Yo, is this real? Or is this for a movie? What’s going on? You good?’ It’s traumatic for these innocent bystanders as well.”

Badass also talked about not getting paid for his work in the film, which he said was originally conceived as a feature.

“To tell the truth, I didn’t even get paid for that,” he said. “It was a short film. It was a project. An experiment. We did the short film because originally, we were supposed to do a full-length feature film, a full movie. But once I got involved, it activated a lot of people. Once they saw my execution, everybody wanted to be a part of the production team now and that obviously helped it get pushed up in the Recording Academy and we won the Oscar.”