Kotto brushed it off when asked about it in a 1978 interview with Roger Ebert, but he did offer a different explanation for the on-set tension: "I would know my lines," he said, "and then Pryor would come in with brand new lines out of his own head, man, and what are the rest of us supposed to do? I had to figure out my relationship with him in terms of the fact that the movie is about two black guys and one white guy. Pryor was playing an ethnic character — he was the black in the movie … so you know what I did? I played an Italian. Right! An Italian in black skin … you won't find one so-called back mannerism or colloquialism in my entire performance."