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How Mahershala Ali & Viggo Mortensen Bonded Long Before 'Green Book' | Close Up - YouTube
Channel: The Hollywood Reporter
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(funky music)
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- Mahershala, Viggo, how do you actually
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form that rapport as actors?
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- We met over, about a year ago
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and about nine months
before we started shooting
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and we had that moment, funny enough,
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not knowing each other,
where we were just sort of
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both having this introverted moment
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at this big luncheon with a
bunch of amazing actors around
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and we were sort of, found
ourselves tucked in a corner
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and we spoke for a while
but I think that was
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the initial conversation that, I think,
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sort of peppered the
moment for us to meet later
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and to begin working and
having, at that moment
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not knowing we were going to
work together on something,
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and to connect and then
step into a project
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we're about to start shooting,
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we got to sit down and sort
of share and communicate
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some of our concerns and fears
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and go through the script in a way that--
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- Can you tell me one of your fears?
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- Don Shirley is just so
different from me, physically,
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and so when you're dealing
with someone who isn't famous,
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who does not have a
presence in the culture
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in the way that, Don Shirley
was an accomplished man,
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accomplished pianist, but no
one really knew who he was.
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No one knew what he looked like.
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And so I got to see some tape on him,
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that he appeared in this
documentary call Little Bohemia
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and he's in there just in moments
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and his voice, the pitch,
was quite a bit higher,
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it was like up here, you know?
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I couldn't go there but I
could like dorp it enough
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where it wasn't a distraction.
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- And refine it.
- And the physicality,
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you find, you're kind of like tuning in,
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get your tuning fork right so
that it's not a distraction
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to the audience so that they
can actually enjoy the story
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and not be distracted by a choice
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that they don't have
anything to root it in.
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- Anything you learned
along the way surprised you?
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- I wasn't aware of the
Green Book going into it
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but once I did my homework on that
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and that aspect of it, Don
Shirley resonated for me
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and the fact also that I
didn't feel like that he,
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as an archetype, especially
within the black canon
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of characters, I didn't
feel like he existed.
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If you take a gentleman
going back to the 1960s
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and who was educated and
had this degree of affluence
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and has this regal presence
and his interior struggle,
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like what he's going through,
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what he's not necessarily
trying to come to terms with
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but what the things that he
has to hide for his own good,
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the whole combination of things.
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I didn't feel like I
had ever seen him before
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and not that present in a story.
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And so I wanted to step in to his shoes
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and offer that character
to the conversation.
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But within that car, within that Cadillac
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driving through the south, he's in charge
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and he doesn't need to go on this journey
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he chooses to go on this journey.
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Specifically to sort of make his offering
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and to make an impact on the perception
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and perspective of black
people, which was very limited
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not only in the south
but in the north as well,
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and but for him to go down
where the laws are different,
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was a different thing so
there's a degree of empowerment,
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in this character that
I had never seen before.
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(funky music)
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With the way we talk about acting,
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the way we talk about the business,
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we really don't talk about
the workman-like qualities
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within it and how you
really only actually act
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between action and cut, the rest of it
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is looking for material
or to prepping for it,
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to the wardrobe, the
costume elements of it,
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the building the psychology,
the getting ready
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for the piece itself.
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- And working on yourself
and trying to be ready.
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- Actually getting to act is so,
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it's such a minuscule
part of the experience
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that you have to love it that much.
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And to have a real accurate portrait
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of what the work is really like.
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That's not to say it isn't great,
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cause it's holistically,
it's an amazing experience
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but there's a real tax within it
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that you have to be
conscious of going within it
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and say, "Alright, I
love this so much that
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all these little aspects
that add up to make this
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the fuller experience, I'm okay with."
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The time, the sacrifice
your family has, you know?
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- You don't see em.
- You don't see them
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and it asks a lot of the
people around you as well
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so we could do a better job of really
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helping folks understand what it is
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and sort of demystify it a bit
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so that it's a little bit clearer
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as to like the work that goes
into building these characters
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and telling these stories
and how hard it is
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to actually do that well
or to have something
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that people actually want to go see
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and walk out the theater and say ,
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"Wow that was a great experience."
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But for me what's most important,
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my relationship to this work
is honestly not about money,
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it is 100% about
connecting to these stories
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and these projects and these characters
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and these lives and as
soon as I don't feel that
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I will not be doing it any longer.
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(funky music)
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