The Untold Truth Of Devil In A Blue Dress

Washington was a natural fit for Easy Rawlins: Charming, intelligent, someone the audience can trust to guide them through what is often a dark and brutal film. But to play Easy’s trigger-happy childhood friend Raymond “Mouse” Alexander, Franklin turned to an actor who was less of a known quantity: His “Punk” star Don Cheadle.

Cheadle had been kicking around Hollywood for nearly a decade at this point, and would have perhaps been most recognizable (if at all) from the short-lived “Golden Girls” spin-off “The Golden Palace.” Mouse is a wildcard, well-dressed with a bowler hat cocked to the side and at least two pistols on him at all times. Cheadle and Mouse enter the film around the halfway point like a bolt of lightning, bringing a livewire energy and smiling menace to every scene, and for his efforts Cheadle was nominated for a Screen Actors Guild Award and won the Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award for Best Supporting Actor.

Amazingly, Mouse was almost not in the film at all. While “Devil” was in development at Universal, Mosley had written a draft of the screenplay himself, where he had combined the characters of Easy and Mouse in order to make Easy more of an active protagonist. Once the project was taken over by Sony, Franklin was allowed to adapt the film himself, discarding Mosley’s draft and the changes he had made. Restoring Mouse to the narrative not only gave Cheadle the breakout role of his career, but also arguably the best line in the film, as Mouse justifies his killing of Easy’s treacherous friend Joppy (the late Mel Winkler): “Easy, if you ain’t want him killed, why’d you leave him with me?”