‘The First Time’ With Jamie Foxx and Dominique Fishback

Jamie Foxx and Dominique Fishback — co-stars of the upcoming Netflix action flick, Project Power — discuss their earliest performances, first records and most striking celebrity encounters in the latest installment of Rolling Stone’s The First Time.

The clip opens with Fishback recalling her audition for Project Power. She flew out to Los Angeles, lost her wallet along the way, but kept her composure to not only make it through an emotional audition scene but then perform some spoken-word poetry for Foxx. As she was leaving, Fishback mentioned her lost wallet, and she says Foxx immediately jumped to her aid.

“Jamie was like, ‘Oh you need cash, cause I got cash!’” Fishback says as Foxx laughs along. “And he pulls out a wad of money in a white envelope and he gives me a $100 and then the director gave me like $50. And then Jamie’s like, ‘It’s not every day you leave an audition with $150.’ But then when we wrapped, I gave him a wrap gift that was like a picture frame, and then inside it was like the $100 and I autographed it. He was like, ‘Don’t give me that, I’ma spend it!’”

Elsewhere, Foxx spoke about frightening his religious grandmother whenever he listened to Prince’s Purple Rain, and Fishback remembered inheriting her aunt’s massive CD collection as a kid. They also recounted some of their most pivotal early performances. For Fishback, that was her one-woman show Subverted, where she played 22 different characters and, in the process, proved her versatility to her agent. And for Foxx, that meant stand-up, a craft he’d been honing since his days recycling Johnny Carson jokes for his classmates in third grade. Foxx’s first real stand-up gig came when he was in college, but being 18 at the time, he was still forced to wait outside the Comedy Store in La Jolla, California, until he was called in to do his set.

At the end of the episode, the pair recounted their most remarkable celebrity encounters. For Fishback, that was meeting Jay-Z after playing his mother in the “Smile” video (Jay-Z hadn’t been on set, but as soon as he saw her at the Roc Nation brunch, he recognized her, Fishback remembers). Foxx meanwhile spoke about his days as the self-described “Oh shit!” guy — meaning the kind of guy who would excitedly yell “Oh shit!” whenever he saw a celebrity he loved. This move, he joked, once allowed him to sneak into Wesley Snipes’ entourage for a night, although as he recalls in the clip, his attempt to give Denzel Washington his props didn’t go as smoothly.