It’s been 25 years since To Wong Foo, Thanks For Everything! Julie Newmar drove into movie theaters as part of a wave of 1990s movies that brought gay characters out of the closet and put them front and center on the big screen. Along with films like The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, The Birdcage and In & Out, To Wong Foo became a mainstream hit and helped re-shape public opinion about gay rights in the process. A quarter-century later, John Leguizamo, remains proud to have played an important role in that larger cultural transformation alongside co-stars Wesley Snipes and Patrick Swayze. “It was a groundbreaking movie in so many ways, because… [we] were playing gay roles and giving them dignity and respect,” the actor and comedian tells Yahoo Entertainment. “That was huge! Especially with these action stars, Wesley and Patrick. We knew we were on a mission and we wanted to do it right.” (Watch our video interview above.)
Even as Swayze, Snipes and Leguizamo embraced their feminine side as road-tripping drag queens Vida, Noxeema and Chi-Chi, respectively, the actor remembers there being some aggressive energy on set. “Maybe we were too much into character, and we started PMSing too much,” he says now. On one occasion, that frustration almost boiled over into a fistfight between Leguizamo and Swayze. According to the actor, the dispute stemmed from his improvisatory approach to playing Chi-Chi, the youngest of the three main characters. At the time, Leguizamo was still finding his footing as an actor after a successful stand-up career, and his penchant for making up dialogue didn’t always make him a great scene partner for Swayze’s commanding den mother, Vida.
“I was ad-libbing… and [Patrick] was tired,” Leguizamo remembers about their brawl. “He said, ‘Are you going to do that again?’ And I go, ‘Yeah, you know how the routine is.’ He goes, ‘Well, why don’t you shut up?’ And I said, ‘Why don’t you make me?!’” Fortunately, cooler heads prevailed before any fists flew. “We were about to fight, but were like: ‘Take a look at ourselves — we’re in hot pants and f*** me pumps.’ It was ridiculous! So we stopped and we hugged.” (Swayze, who died in 2009, recounted his side of the story in his autobiography, The Time of My Life.)
In a separate interview, To Wong Foo director, Beeban Kidron, says she wasn’t an eyewitness to Leguizamo and Swayze’s charged confrontation. But she does admit that the three stars were often ultra-competitive with each other, which occasionally resulted in a tense work environment. “I would definitely say that Patrick and Wesley had their moments,” she says, laughing. “They both thought they had the best legs, I will say that! It was interesting because even though both of those men were great stars, at that point in time Wesley was the bigger star and was taking the biggest risk. He was really associated with a macho culture, and some of what he was doing was proving his acting chops and his ability to go behind the kinds of things that a Black American star can play. And John was in a very different place in his career, so he was boundlessly giving and good-humored. I think you have to commend those actors, and understand peoples’ journeys to travel to where they are.”
For his part, Leguizamo can confirm the Snipes/Swayze tension, recalling how the Passenger 57 star took his side when he nearly decked the Ghost heartthrob. “Wesley, was like, ‘I got your back!’” he says, chuckling. In hindsight, Leguizamo chalks up his own agro outburst to insecurity about being the new guy on set. “I had something to prove, and Patrick didn’t. It was stupid.”