George Foreman’s wife, Mary Joan, played a big part in his boxing comeback in the 1980s and 1990s. That’s why Jasmine Mathews knew that she had to bring her A-game in the film Big George Foreman to tell Mary Joan’s story right. PopCulture.com spoke exclusively to Mathews who talked about her experience playing the wife of the boxing legend.ย
“It was a tall task, I won’t lie,” Mathews exclusively told PopCulture. “Because I really wanted to honor the integrity of who Mary Joan was to Mr. Foreman and just her as a human being. She wasn’t just his wife, she was a spiritual guide to him. She was a disciplinarian when she needed to be. She was a nurturer. So I really took the time to try and understand what her inner conflicts were with him going back to the boxing world. Her family was one of the most important things to her, and the thought of losing it all, potentially, with him going back to boxing was frightening.”
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Mathews continued: “So really understanding that inner conflict, really grasping the accent of Mary Joan because she is from Mon Repos St. Lucia, and not having her at my side to kind of guide me because she is a very private person, which I totally understand, really had to use my own imagination as well as some of the facts that I got, was able to pull off of the internet to really hone in on this character and understand her to be a complex human being. It was cool.”
When Mary Joan enters Foreman’s life, he was moved on from boxing and looking to help other people. But realizing he needed money to provide for his family and his youth center, Foreman decided to return to the ring despite being 38 years old and not competing in the ring for 10 years. Mary Joan doesn’t want her husband to turn into the old Foreman but does support his decision.
“The thing about Mary Joan is I kind of saw her as two things, sort of like the Mother Mary figure, very nurturing, very matronly, but also she has this fierce Joan of Arc side,” Mathews explained. “So I like dabbling back and forth between those two. I also had a really great time just bringing in the love and playfulness of the Foreman family. She and George Foreman have a very cute sort of innocent and childlike relationship, and that was a great time to be able to do that with Khris Davis.”
And speaking of Davis who played Foreman, Mathews showed her castmate a ton of love. “Khris, I will say this is a superstar,” Matthews said. “I’ve never worked with someone so dedicated to the story itself, and he brought such intensity and such a play to everything and such nuanced work. It was truly an honor. I felt like I was just watching the master at work and really playing off of him. He gives a lot, he cared, and he was a great leader of this ship for us. And I did admittedly go sneak in and see some of the boxing scenes that they were filming.” Big George Foreman is out in theatres now.ย
