"Not double trouble but twice blessed."

Chadwick Boseman.

“To see (Downey) affirm for other people around him”

affirm (v.): to declare or offer emotional support or encouragement

“A few years ago, Robert Downey Jr. and his wife were fans of ‘Happy Endings’ and they called me to come in to meet with them.  When I got there, Robert was like, ‘I want to create a web presence.’ And I was like, ‘Why? You definitely don’t need to do that.’ And he was like, ‘Well, I want to anyway.’  So I was in charge of coming up with crazy ideas for him to do on the web. Uh, he did none of them.  And then he put me in [Iron Man 3] from that, which was awesome.”

Since then, now, he’ll still text me if something good happens to me and he sees it.  He’ll text me in the middle of the night. Like weird stuff.  Like, if he saw a movie of mine or something, he’ll text me like, ‘Hey it’s your Big Papa here … You did an exquisite job. You didn’t push. You didn’t pull. You pulled it right down the middle. Home run. Over and out.’ And you’re like, ‘What the hell is going on?’

First of all, it’s like 4:00 in the morning and god knows where Iron Man is. And it’s bizarre and you know, I get these pretty frequently!  The only thing I did say to him once was, one time we were in a meeting in his house and he walked downstairs in, no joke, what looked to be a maternity dress.  It was 11am and he rolls downstairs in a maternity dress and a giant Rasta hat. He’s eccentric, you know!  

That was the one time where I was like, ‘You know you look insane, right?’ And he goes, ‘Do I?’”

”Photographer Pari Dukovic is shooting Robert Downey Jr. for the cover of this, the first issue of GQ Style. We’re in the Downey world headquarters on the Westside of L.A. Pari’s camera is flashing away, but he and Downey haven’t yet found their groove, partly because the music isn’t quite right. So I start playing reggae from my iPhone through a portable speaker to keep the energy up.

After a while, Downey’s constant companion Jimmy commandeers my iPhone and fires up the soundtrack to The Harder They Come. 

As the tune “Pressure Drop” starts to fade out, Downey looks over and asks, “Hey, is that Toots?” Yep. “If you play ‘Funky Kingston,’ I’ll get this thing going.”

Jimmy plays the song.

And that’s when Robert Downey Jr. proceeds to ska, skank, kung fu, Jagger-move, and Funky Kingston for four minutes and 56 seconds of ecstatic photo-shoot bliss.” 

– Will Welch, editor-in-chief of GQ Style.