Jonathan Daviss is all set to play the popular hip-hop artist Snoop Dogg in the rapper’s biopic by Universal Pictures. The announcement comes days after the studio hired Craig Brewer to direct the film. Both Daviss and Snoop Dogg have confirmed the news through separate posts on Instagram.
Daviss is best known for his role as Pope in the YA Netflix drama Outer Banks. He has also starred alongside Sophia Turner, Maya Hawke and Austin Abrams in Netflix’s 2022 movie Do Revenge. The 25-year-old actor opened up about his role on the 2025 BET Awards’ red carpet. “It was crazy, I was auditioning for that role for months,” he said. “It was a stringent process, you know? Dogg wanted to put me through my paces and make sure that I was the right person for this. I was relieved, I was excited, just ready to go. Once he met me, he kinda just took me under his wing and I spent some time with him so I could get a better idea of who he was as a person so I could play him as well as I could. It was just a great process, we gon’ keep working on it.”
Snoop too, was full of praise for Daviss. For him, “Jonathan is the whole thing, man. He’s a dynamic actor, he’s a great spirit, and he’s a learner. He’s able to take things and make it better. Just to have him around me and see how he engulfs the spirit of, and how my family gravitates to him, it’s just a beautiful thing to be able to find somebody that can actually do justice to you while you are still here and able to see it,” he told Entertainment Tonight, at the same event.
The studio describes the biopic as a “definitive biopic about the entertainment mogul and icon.” It looks at how Calvin Broadus Jr. entered the West Coast hip-hop scene. By taking the stage name Snoop Doggy Dogg (the middle name would be dropped later), it chronicles how Dogg takes his laid-back delivery and sharp lines to Death Row Records, where he would later work with Dr. Dre on his smash debut album 'Doggystyle'.
The rapper has further added that the biopic will also portray his family life. “I think you're going to learn what family is all about, what the roots of family means and what love is. Like how my mother taught me how to love, and that's how I was able to overcome and, you know, beat a lot of things that I faced in my life. And that's what I teach and preach, is love,” he says.
The film is produced by Snoop Dogg, Brian Grazer and Sara Ramaker, the president of Death Row Pictures. The film joins the long line of successful biopics of hip-hop icons by Universal Pictures, such as 8 Mile, starring Eminem, and Straight Outta Compton, about the seminal rap group N.W.A and its rise to fame. The film is also the first project under Death Row Pictures’ overall deal with NBC Universal Entertainment & Studios.
