Decider reported that the actor appeared on Rob Lowe’s podcast, Literally, where he explained that the film intended to criticise tropes that were frequently seen in Hollywood at the time. 

In the 2008 comedy film, directed by Ben Stiller, Downey Jr starred alongside Jack Black, Jay Baruchel and Brandon T. Jackson plays a group of actors making a Vietnam War film that get stranded in a jungle. 

The Ironman actor plays Kirk Lazarus, an Australian method actor who undergoes “pigmentation alteration” surgery to temporarily darken his skin for his portrayal of a Black character. 

“The spirit that [Ben] Stiller directed and cast and shot Tropic Thunder in was, essentially, as a railing against all of these tropes that are not right and [that] had been perpetuated for too long,” the 58-year-old actor said. 

In 2020, Downey Jr. said that he had a “bad feeling” that the film could incite backlash but he went ahead with the role to “hold up to nature the insane self-involved hypocrisy of artists and what they think they’re allowed to do on occasion.”

The role landed him his second Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor, but lost to Christoph Waltz for Inglorious Basterds.