Don Cheadle Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters | GQ

are you Tony's stank yes this is this is Tony stank you're in the right place thank you for that is there an Avengers group chat yes there is who's the most active probably Ruffalo probably Mark what are you doing uh we we don't do that here [Music] Hotel Rwanda I knew nothing about what had happened in Rwanda Terry George who directed it reached out to me I read the script I thought it was amazing he said to me in my meeting very you know uh up front like I need to get this movie made I have to get the budget um right now they're talking to me about Will Smith or Cuba Gooding Jr and I'm going to make this movie with whoever gets me the the budget because it's a story it's too important it needs to be told and I said 100 I'm you know I would love to help you produce it even if it's not me who's going to get the role because I agree this is a story that needs to be told but ultimately the the role came my way thankfully and I started to dig into the research about it I saw a Frontline piece about Rwanda that Paul was in just you know learn through Terry and also other members of Paul's family and that's sort of how we went into it when you're portraying a real person you're trying to find where your spirit and their Spirit kind of meet and the things that you have to take on from them and the things that you have to bring that are of you to them and you to it and somewhere in the middle is where that the new you know it's not you it's not him it's some amalgamation of the two of you that you're trying to find to just tell the truth of the story and that's the most important thing is to get to the truth of it and to not do some sort of a an imitation or an impression we were with Paul a lot during the the filming of that movie but he was a great resource obviously which was kind of intimidating to play somebody who's you know sitting right there but ultimately I was very glad to have him there the whole time we knew that after Paul came back from that driving on that road that we needed to have he needed to have a visceral moment but we didn't know what it was going to be or how it would be expressed and so this went on for weeks and then finally one day he said I think we have to shoot it and I I said I think it needs to be something just simple it needs to be just simple I said well let me just come back and see blood on the tie and we'll just shoot it in three scenes like see me get the suit see him washing off the blood and then see him tie the tie and he can't tie the tie and something very simple is that he can't tie the tie takes him down and we did it and we shot it twice and it was two takes and we I think we used the first take it was not scripted we just knew that something needed to happen we had survivors that were in the movie that were extras in the movie just talking to them about the realities of what had happened and their experiences it's just yeah it's not it's not just a movie you're walking back into a traumatic traumatic moment in history with these people who are still dealing with it daily and will never be over it so no it wasn't something that you just put down and walk away so I still talk to his family uh now that movie sort of launched a lot of my own personal work um with activism in and around Darfur in Sudan it had a lot of reverberations past the past just being a movie Marvel Cinematic Universe the committee would now like to invite Lieutenant Colonel James Rhodes to the chamber roadie hey buddy to expect to see you here look it's me I'm here to deal with it it's famously known online how you unvived Terence Howard for the role of rodeo I Aunt vivd him I did not move Terence out of a role he was not they had decided that they weren't that was not happening and it was an open part um and I was at my kids laser tag birthday party and they called me and said this is what's happening um we're giving you the offer if you don't say yes we're going to the next person this is it has to be this is going to happen very fast so they said why don't you go ahead and take an hour and decide if you want to do it I said it was a six movie deal I was like in an hour I have to decide like what are the other movies they're like it's going to be these Avengers it's going to be these many Ironmans this is what it is so you kind of have to say yes or no if you're in or out like what's the trajectory of the character going to be well they're like we can't we don't know any of that but this is what it is so you've got an hour I said I'm at my kids laser tag birthday party they're like oh take two hours take two hours so so we played laser tag for two hours and I was talking to my wife and we just kind of thought about it and talked to my agent and tried to get as much information as we could and we just took a flyer and said okay we'll do it we don't have to do this Tony you want to be the war machine took your shot put it down you're gonna take a shot put it take it I'd done some special effects work before that and you know acting to tennis balls on top of a c-stand you know it's it's a lot to get used to there's no bigger platform in no bigger sort of special effects toys and bells and whistles and stuff than Marvel of course but ultimately it's you're you're still ultimately trying to do the same thing always is create believable circumstances for your character to step into inside your own head so that you believe what it is that you're doing and then the audience can believe hopefully the favorite one that I'm going to do is Roadies movie that'll we're going to shoot I think in in every successive film he's coming more and more out of Tony's Shadow and becoming his own person but I still think we haven't really figured out who he is and really dug into that so that's what the movie is for it's going to be a series now we're going to do it as a film armors so I'm looking forward to that it's been like 12 years now which is bananas that you know from that moment uh till now we've been doing it for so long and it just it just keeps expanding and growing and these universes keep you know folding in on each other and different characters being introduced and relationships popping up so I haven't seen any scripts I don't know where it's headed but I'm excited about the potential the oceans trilogy I tend to do this job in Reno we're in Barney Barney Rubble trouble big Ensemble everybody had to play their position and everybody had their specialty I it was a lot of grinding on an on an accent that you know I've been both vilified and praised for all right chefs [Music] on to your nothing was real we weren't really blowing stuff up I mean sure there were some pyrotechnics and you know controlled things most of that stuff was just you know movie Magic Steven knows always exactly what it is that he's gonna do and how he's gonna do it once we're going you know he has a plan but he's able to adjust and and move with the plan when we came back to do the second film we hadn't seen each other for a long time we hadn't all been together we were just reuniting so we were just Milling around for an hour and then we realized oh wait we're actually here to shoot something and we all stopped and took our attention to Steve and he was like are you guys all where you want to be we're like yeah he's like okay all right go to lunch and we came back and there were marks on the floor and Camera positions and lenses and moves and all different color chalk it was like a beautiful mind on the floor he had choreographed the whole scene you've gone right out of your tree my son he's mad it's Madness yeah it's crazy no I love it that the second movie is the one that people will just unabashedly walk up to and go yeah I hated that one that one sucked it's like cool you just said that to my face like I'm not a person but all right thank you but that was actually for us the most fun of all of them when we're in Italy we stayed at the darussi hotel we had the whole sixth floor to ourselves because we really couldn't go anywhere you know Paparazzi is an Italian word we really were kind of sequestered but they they were able to give us that whole floor and all of our families were there so my kids were there and Matt's kids were there and we'd you know we just like toured toward Europe with in this big group and it was just a lot of fun everybody's had a lot of fun together Devil in a blue dress hey you better shoot this song easy Mouse when we're shooting oh I had worked with Carl Franklin the director before he uh done an AFI project I was in so I came in and I was just in his head stuck in the same age that he I was 19 years old to him he was like you're not Denzel's contemporary this isn't going to work I'm 10 years younger than him but uh I came in and read and he was inspired and had Denzel come in and I read with Denzel and we had an instant chemistry and the rest is just kind of history when I got a gun in my hand foreign got blood on my coat easy it's a damn expensive coat well we both you know come from a theater background and both had very similar way of working and both really were interested in creating these characters and and this relationship and digging into what our history was and how we understood each other and the shorthand that we had obviously I was impressed and a little intimidated at first to work with Denzel but once we got on set and just started doing it was just a couple of actors coming to work you just said don't shoot him right that's right well I didn't I just I choked it what well how am I going to help you out if I'm if I'm back here fool around with him now easy look if you ain't want to kill why'd you leave him with me that line is just hilarious that there's a person who's dead and it's your fault because you left him with me I mean just the logic of that I don't know how that can't be Darkly funny I think you know it wasn't to play it for Laughs I think the humor just came out of the situations in Mouse's perspective on things which for him was just a matter of fact logic you know I'm a killer you leave a dude with a killer he's gonna kill him like what that's on you kind of really when you think about it and it was something that literally we found in the audition uh it just kind of went that way and it became something that just was their relationship oh look here now I'll cut you over half because I know you was too big a fool to take your chef and that white girl yourself all right I think that year was kind of a watershed moment for me that movie did you know get a lot of attention and a lot of critical attention so that was probably for a lot of people where they became aware of me I had done a lot of movies uh that year and just started the ball rolling sort of as a feature actor Fresh Prince of Bel-Air [Music] man I'm just gonna kick back here for a few days let somebody else do all the work excuse me young man and this house everyone carries his own weight too easy there's a lot of gangster movies during that time and you know if you're a young black actor and you could be in a gangster movie that was a thing but then there was a lot of people going like why are these the only kind of movies that we can do I didn't know any of them personally it's the first time I had met them first time I had met Quincy first time at will obviously I knew he was a rapper I knew you know his his I knew him from that world but I didn't know anything about his acting I thought the part was going to be fun and and something just cool to do and you know just to work with this new Talent who was super green and was you know mouthing our lines as we were off camera you know while he was on camera mouthing the lines that we were saying so he had to get up to speed but it was a it was a lot of fun hi hi [Applause] that's the one person actually that I did know before the show it's fun to work with your friends um and it's fun to uh be in an environment like that where everything is just like new and popping and we just had a great time and then after the I think third day of rehearsal they came to me and they said you know we want to um do a show around around you so there was um a pilot that we actually shot called in the house that never went to Air and it never became so they later kept the the name it was a completely different concept and everything you know I wrote the music for the the intro and all this stuff and it was going to be on right after Fresh Prince and so the show went the way of the dodo bird but that was that was going to be an interesting sort of back to back Boogie Nights you're not being fair this isn't fair this financial institution cannot endorse pornography pornography why are you doing this please I'm sorry Carl Franklin directed uh Devlin blue dress had met Paul and known him and said this dude's wild you got to meet this dude this young cat it's like he's the most confident cocky dude I've ever met and he wants to talk to you about this movie and it was I said what's the movie and he's like it's Boogie Nights about the porn industry I was like oh my parents are still alive I can't I can't do that and he said how you should meet him you should meet him and and and see what you think so we went to a deli and as advertised he was very cocky very self-assured it was like you know this is if you if you say no you're going to really be disappointed that you didn't do this so I think you should I think that's something that you should do and so I went back into a call yeah this dude's a trip and he was like yeah but I really have a good feeling about him so I just I took a flyer and said yeah I want to work with him and it was great we had a great experience oops a lot of blood that was a a crazy scene yeah and I think Paul just had a very very strong Vision about how he wanted that moment played and it's an insane obviously it's an insane moment but that Focus that pushed into the money and that push in the buck and he's like I just want to see all of your dreams the stereo store and you know being finally having the opportunity to be the person that you want to be and establish yourself and all of that just communicated in that in that push and then and in his face he's drenched with blood and brain matter it was it was crazy but you know it's the kind of stuff that Paul's great at I've been very fortunate to have some great ones where where these characters are very full to work with very good directors who know how to bring that all to life and create sort of the sandbox and let you play in it and Paul was very collaborative although he had very clear ideas he was open to like how you wanted to bring stuff in the ways you wanted to bring stuff so it was just a very creative and that cast is amazing it's a lot of just great actors and just a great environment and so in a movie unlike any movie I'd ever seen and or heard of until that time [Music] of course Captain Planet let's Spruce this place a bit huh okay well the funnier die Team I had done one of their first drunk histories with Will Ferrell playing Frederick Douglass and then on the set of oceans I think all the guys were talking about you know what really what we really need and what really doesn't exist and it's a shame that it doesn't is a a ball spa for men so I pitched this ridiculous idea for sax West was the ball spa and George Lopez did it instead of the entertainers in the clip and Ray Romano and Joe Montana and just Hallie Jones all these idiots came together to do this thing and I said okay well while you guys are doing this stupid one we have this thing called Captain Planet which we want to do uh would you like to do it I didn't know what Captain Planet was they're like oh he's like Captain planet's animated he's gonna save the Earth and you do this all this stuff for the environment you know you're the Goodwill and Ambassador for the environment program he thinks it's a great fit so I read the thing it made me laugh and I was like yeah so let's do it so I'm sitting down in the makeup chair and they start to come come over with this blue face paint I was like what's that they're like well it's Captain Planet I'm like I don't I don't want to do that and they're like well this is how Captain Planet looks and they showed me the picture of him I was like that's ridiculous I don't want to do it and I almost left and they I don't know how they talked me into doing it somebody talked me into doing it so I did it and immediately regretted it after I did it but then I saw it and it it made me laugh so I thought it was pretty funny and now it's ridiculous how many people talk about that character I can't let you do this captain [Music] foreign I mean they were just like we what's the craziest thing how can we end this in the craziest way that we can so let's have him be like the good guy you know and be the guy that would be your hero on Saturday but he's messed up in his head that Captain Planet was very messed up clearly remember turn off the faucet between usages and recycle those Plastics or else I'll turn you into a tree Captain Planet crash in L.A nobody touches you we're always behind this metal and glass I think we missed that touch so much to be crash into each other just so we can feel something he's a very cynical a character and a very seemingly you know disaffected and and and and burnt out kind of a kind of a cop who has a mother that is very disappointed in drug addict you know a brother who's a criminal like he's just in this broken family the dad in around he's a very broken dude I believe I promise you I promise I'm gonna find out who did this Mom oh I already know you did one of the best moments for that character in that movie is after his brother is is killed after he discovers that his brother's killed and has gone to his house his mother's house you know prior to that and bought all the food and brought all the groceries that she says you know as there's as they're in the morgue you know the last thing your brother did was brought me groceries it was the last thing he did like he's saying to him like he was the good kid and you're the bad kid and that he doesn't correct her and he just takes it and it just gets broken some more came home [Music] he brought me groceries it was a tragic character and the movie I think a lot of people had a problem with that movie because they sort of took it they I think they missed the broader point of the movie in some ways which is in my opinion not to be taken as literal and in some ways is more allegorical and a lot of what if and sort of sliding doors situations with these characters bumping into each other's lives and crashing into each other's lives in these ways yeah another great ensemble cast low budget you know grind one of those movies that you show up because you just want to tell the story it's not about let's all get paid it was you know just really really good cast and really solid filmmaking traffic sure I can't offer you something to drink I can offer you a joke you wanna hear a joke I got it I got it I got a joke I got a joke come on bro it's just a joke let me tell one joke I'm gonna tell you a joke okay all right why a hurricane named after woman I don't know because when they arrived they're wet and wild when they leave they take your house and your car again amazing director Stephen Soderbergh he called me and said I've got this other movie I'm gonna do it's not exactly a triptych but it was kind of three you know different uh looks at the at the drug trafficking it was based on a UK series and he's just like I want you and I just see you in Luis Guzman and his Partners three different styles visual Styles bridging that all together having these characters move in and out of each other's lives it was just really a a cool experience another really cool experience with a lot of great actors and Louise and I you know became really good friends after that and still registered lives today at the whispering the whispering alone you can't hear it I love the bugs too far away from the room man I told you it's halfway to the kitchen We're not gonna get they're saying something sounds like they're conspiring to conspire you know I could feel the lies vibrating from that home I don't think she's in on it man come on I dream about this I have actual dreams about this about busting the top people the rich people white people I know one of the joys of the job is that we get to learn a lot about a lot of different things when we get to inhabit a lot of different characters and and get to kind of stay in school you know get to always be a student of people and a student of of different genres and just a student of the crap it's one of the most fun things about the gig getting to play make-believe and things that we were doing is that we all did as kids right but with the best toys and the best circumstances and best props and best other play actors playing around you so it's always it's always something to look forward to and why the job just never gets old that are coming this way foreign [Music] if you look at the scene where Louise's character is killed it doesn't make any sense on film there's two blocks you can use the fresh air you know I've been stuck in that piece of hotel room for two weeks I'm gonna walk because I wanna walk okay it's emotional my character is destroyed he's lost his partner this scene doesn't make any sense but you are with those characters and you want you're invested in the characters you're invested in their emotional in their emotions you're invested in the story or mess invested in their Journey so I've I you know I when I ask people about that scene nobody's ever bad at an eyelash when I go through it they're like oh yeah that doesn't make any sense and I said yeah and I talked to Stephen about it and he said right it just goes to show you if you've earned the audience you know you can do a lot because they just they're invested in the characters why noise no just very interesting movies and this is a huge departure from the kind of movie that Noah does both in size and scope except for sort of the interpersonal character Dynamics and still it's a movie about characters and about relationships but it's wrapped what's it's wrapped in is this huge big dramatic undertaking of this event that is happening that is impacting the gladney family and ever all the residents of this town what happened katsakis my rival is no longer in the land of the living He said lost in the surf off Malibu it's a farce about death you know I think it's really is what it is is a commentary about our inability to control our circumstances and at a time like today it's a very interesting time to to have this film come out amid elections and covid and the Supreme Court and January 6th I mean everything is just sort of looming and making us have to deal with over and over and over again the shifting Sands under our feet I think it's a very timely moment for this movie to come out now I have a feeling about mothers mothers really do know the folklore is correct Hitler adored his mother he was the first of Clara's children to survive infancy Elvis and Gladys like to nuzzle and pet they slept in the same bed until he began to approach physical maturity they talked baby talk to each other Hitler was a lazy kid his report card was full of unsatisfactories Gladys worried about his sleepwalking she lashed out at any kid who would bully him Gladys walked Elvis to school and back every day she defended him in Street Rumble but Clara loved him so David and Adam and Noah and myself kind of just worked that moment out we knew that we wanted it to be like a performance piece that it wasn't just going to be two professors lecturing we wanted it to feel like a duel we wanted to feel like a dance we wanted to feel like some big moment that for Murray my character specifically wanted to sort of bring more attention to himself and and bring some sort of dynamism to his lecture his Elvis lecture that he needed to like work in a little Hitler to like really spice it up the supermarket is a waiting place it recharges us spiritually it's a Gateway look how bright look how full of psychic data waves and radiation all the letters and numbers are here all the colors of the spectrum all the voices and sounds all the code words and ceremonial phrases the supermarket is the place where you know you want to fight for a normalcy and I think it's it's a real commentary on like you said consumerism in some gross ways you know our desire to have instantaneous comfort and immediate calming effect on us this is a very American concept it doesn't exist in most places around the world in the ridiculous amount in the ridiculous way that it exists here but it's also uh I think the movie is kind of a love letter to the 80s and a love letter to 80s filmmaking in many ways and you know sort of Spielberg kind of feel in some ways it's got a lot of different genres that it's incorporating in this movie so it's a big it's a big swing no it took a really big swing and I think it's kind of expansive and really fun

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Id: sUKLqTEd4cw

Length: 26min 43sec (1603 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 05 2023