A majority of Queen Latifah‘s roles over the years have one thing in common — none of them die on-screen. While it may sound like a coincidence, there’s actually a unique reason behind this.
While walking the red carpet at the premiere of her new family road trip action thriller, End of the Road, the actress revealed that she has a “no death” clause in all of her acting contracts and even shared the genius reason behind it.
Queen Latifah came up with the clause after realizing her characters were killed off in her early movies.
In the late 1990s, Queen Latifah landed her breakout role as Cleo Sims in the 1996 film Set It Off. The character was met with a brutal end and for Latifah, that fate seemed to carry over into 1998’s Sphere and 1999’s The Bone Collector, both of which killed off her characters.
After that, Queen Latifah came up with her so-called "no death" clause.
“I noticed I was too good at it, so it’s kind of a running joke,” Latifah told Entertainment Tonight of her on-screen demises. “I was like, ‘I don’t get to do any sequels if I keep being this good at [dying].’ So I said, ‘Look, you gotta put a no death clause in these contracts so they can’t just kill me off like this. I’m never gonna get a sequel in!”
Queen Latifah says she would play a character that gets killed off for the right price.
Though she would rather play characters that live through films, Queen Latifah isn’t opposed to taking on roles that have brutal ends — that is, if the money is right.
“But, um, I mean, of course, for the right price, you know,” Latifah joked. “She dies! That s**t’s in the script, you know?”
