Anthony Mackie slams Spike Lee’s gentrification rant: ‘Spike Lee don’t live in Brooklyn’

• Share on Facebook
• Share on Twitter
• Share via Email
• Copy Link

  Link Copied

Anthony Mackie currently stars alongside Oscar-winner Forest Whitaker and Sanaa Lathan in the psychological thriller Repentance, now playing in theaters nationwide.

Early on in Mackie’s career he appeared in two Spike Lee Joints; the independent comedy She Hate Me (2004), and the TV movie Sucker Free City.

Today Mackie weighed in on Lee’s controversial remarks about gentrification in Brooklyn.

Tuesday during a Q&A at Brooklyn’s Pratt Institute, Lee laid into an audience member who suggested there were benefits of gentrification.

“Let me just kill you right now.  Because there was some bullsh*t article in the New York Times saying ‘the good of gentrification’…I don’t believe that. You can’t discover this! We been here. You just can’t come and bogart,” the director said in an expletive-filled rant.

Mackie who currently resides in Brooklyn and owns two restaurants there, disagrees with the Oscar-nominated director.

“Spike Lee don’t live in Brooklyn,” Mackie said in an interview with theGrio’s Chris Witherspoon. “Why did he leave Brooklyn?”

“I live in Brooklyn. My address is in Brooklyn. I have two restaurants in Brooklyn. I don’t have a problem with gentrification. The people [who] want to live in Brooklyn, move to Brooklyn.”

Lee currently lives in Manhattan’s Upper East Side, and according to USA Today, listed his town house for $32 million.

“Some people might say when Spike moved to Manhattan, that was a type of reverse gentrification. As your tax brackets changes, I guess your zip code changes.”

Stay tuned for part 2 of Anthony Mackie’s interview where he discusses his film ‘Repentance’ and his dream of performing in a Broadway musical.

Follow Chris Witherspoon on Twitter for more Entertainment news at @WitherspoonC