Machine Gun Kelly says he walked away from an audition for the 1930s-set vampire thriller Sinners after discovering the script required him to utter a racial slur. During a July 31 appearance on The Pat McAfee Show he explained he had been lined up to read for Bert, a role later given to Canadian rocker Peter Dreimanis.
“I just wouldn’t do it,” the musician-actor said, a stance that drew cheers from the show’s panel and rippled across social platforms within minutes.
Clips circulated by celebrity news outlets were viewed thousands of times within the first hour. Released by Warner Bros. in April, the Ryan Coogler-directed picture follows twin brothers who open a blues nightclub in 1932 Mississippi and face a clan of vampires.
Fronted by Michael B. Jordan in dual roles, Sinners has collected about $365 million worldwide, the highest tally for an original title since theaters resumed full schedules. Opening-night audiences awarded the film a rare A grade from CinemaScore, helping ticket sales stay strong through early summer.
The finished cut does not include the language Baker flagged, according to widely circulated reviews and publicly available screenplay excerpts. The 35-year-old, who now acts under his birth name Colson Baker, told viewers he hopes to secure screen roles “while I still look young”.
His credits include Bird Box, The Dirt and last year’s thriller One Way. Marketing commentators quoted after the broadcast argued that declining a part on ethical grounds can strengthen an artist’s standing with Gen Z audiences that prize personal integrity.
Online commenters, meanwhile, sparred over the question of period storytelling omitting hateful language without sanitizing history, with some praising Baker’s line in the sand and others pointing to Leonardo DiCaprio’s performance in Django Unchained. Variety corroborated Baker’s account the next morning and noted that the part he rejected was a Klansman who becomes a vampire
