Deadline is reporting that Don Johnson is about to officially join the cast of Tarantino’s latest, which goes into production this fall.  He’s joining a cast that already includes such awesomeness as Leonardo DiCaprio, Jamie Foxx, Christoph Waltz, Samuel L. Jackson and Kurt Russell.

Johnson will play wealthy plantation owner Spencer Bennett.  He’ll be pimp to a stable of slave prostitutes, apparently named “ponies”.  I’m guessing, though, that he doesn’t just comb their hair and draw ice cream cones on their bodies.

It’s always great to see a guy like this play a role largely unlike anything he’s played before, though he was a racist in Machete, which I sadly (?) still haven’t seen.  As Deadline pointed out, it’s a great move considering how against type it was for someone like John Travolta to play the role in Pulp Fiction that he did, so it’s generally something Tarantino has a good eye for in terms of casting.  It’s why I would have loved to see Kevin Costner (who Kurt Russell was ultimately cast over) in this film.  I’m not saying these actors exclusively play good guys, but it adds a new dimension to what an actor is capable of when that actor plays against type to be an evil sumbitch.

Why post this picture? Because I can.