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Viggo Mortensen "There's No Character I Wouldn't Play" | Close Up - YouTube
Channel: The Hollywood Reporter
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(upbeat music)
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- There's no character
that I wouldn't play,
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that doesn't mean they're
going to let me do it.
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(laughing)
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You know.
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- Would it be okay for you
as a white actor to play,
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a black character.
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- Obviously that would be insensitive and
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you know it's a difficult thing because I,
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even as a kid I don't like being told no.
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It stimulates me.
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The, sometimes I speak before I think
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and I say, well I can do, you know?
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But there are moments in time
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and you, sometimes you have to be careful,
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and if you make the mistake
of speaking out of turn,
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it's important to recognize it
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and I think your question
about Othello is,
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yes, I could try to but why should I?
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What does that say beyond,
it's going to obliterate
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no matter how well I played Othello,
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the overriding concern and
interest, and criticism
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would be why is he playing Othello?
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So why waste my energy?
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Aren't there other
characters I could play?
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It's not a cop out for me not
to play Othello just because
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they told me I couldn't.
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- He's coming with the easy questions.
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(laughing)
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- You know there's a-- (laughing)
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(upbeat music)
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Acting is the easiest and most
enjoyable thing that I know
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as an occupation, when it works.
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When it's not working,
it can be depressing,
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it can one of the most humiliating,
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because you're doing it in
front of people, you know?
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And, but when I say, it's
a great time for acting,
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we draw from what's going on around us.
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Acting is a very intimate
thing and in a sense that
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you are, exposing
yourself, a little, a lot,
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it depends on the moment,
depends on the character,
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and when you're doing
that with someone else,
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you know, like in Green
Book, if we didn't do that
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for each other, it wouldn't work.
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Two guys in a car, road trip,
it could be pretty dull,
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no matter how sparking the dialogue is,
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it's not all on you.
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But there are people trying to help you.
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The only thing that I always do is
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I ask myself the simple question,
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what happened before page one?
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You could spend the rest of your life
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answering that question.
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- You played a real life character,
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did you find, I don't
know if he's still alive,
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did you find out those things from--
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- He passed away the same year, 2013,
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within months of each other,
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Mahershala's character, Don
Shirley and Tony Vallelonga.
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- [Stephen] Oh, did
you meet his family or?
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- Oh yeah, and that was invaluable to me,
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I had, I have to say, I
had a lot more resources,
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like obvious resources at
my disposal, Mahershala did,
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you know, he had to do,
the way you put I love,
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I had to do the math,
based on this documentary,
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based on the music,
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but whatever you did, it worked
man, I mean it's beautiful.
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- Thank you.
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- I had the one of the, the
guy that brought the story
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to Pete Farrelly, Nick
Vallelonga, that's his son,
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and then, Nick Vallelonga he's said,
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well I was freaking out when I said yes.
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I always do a little bit and if I didn't,
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I'd be like, I must be
getting jaded. (laughing)
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But in this case it was a
little extra just because
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I'm not Italian-American,
there's some pretty good
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Italian-American actors
out there and I was like,
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what am I doing?
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What am I doing, Pete you're
nuts, you'd doing a drama,
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that's already a big chance,
now you're going to have me,
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but once I said yes, I
said okay, I got to talk to
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Nick Vallelonga immediately.
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And he said, well come
over and we'll have a meal,
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you know long story short,
he opened the doors,
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very generously, to everything he knew,
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all the materials he had about his father,
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the recordings, which we both listened to.
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- Oh wow.
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- Because he spoke about
this trip, about them,
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and Nick had also spoke--
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- And these tapes were like 20 years old.
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- [Viggo] Right.
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- Right, yeah.
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- Yeah, yeah, and Don Shirley,
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he taped them a little bit too,
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because his father told him all these,
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he's a great story teller,
and he told him all this stuff
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that happened and he says,
but if you're serious
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about doing this Nick, you
have to go talk to Don Shirley,
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and you have to get him to corroborate,
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and he wants to add, change,
if he objects to anything,
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being told, so forth, and I,
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Don Shirley was particular
about certain things
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and he told Nick first of all,
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everything that Tony's saying here,
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yes it happened and I'll
tell you some other things,
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or I'll give you the
perspective on certain moments,
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but I don't want you to tell
the story, until I'm dead.
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He was a private man,
when you see the movie,
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you'll see, there's probably
good reasons he didn't want to
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you know, for his
family, for his whatever,
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I think his closer, artist
friends in New York,
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knew about, his sexuality,
and other things,
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that maybe his family didn't,
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I don't know, we don't really know,
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but he didn't then--
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- [Mahershala] Well just knowing the time.
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- [Viggo] Yes.
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- And it's easy for us to forget, in 2018,
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you go back to the 50s and 60s,
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that people had a lot to protect,
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you're coming out of the Lavender scare,
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or what have you, there's,
there are real reasons why
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people needed to, and
just culturally as well,
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all those things play a part,
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in people wanting to own their privacy.
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And you could throw all
that away and someone still
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wants to keep something
private that's their business.
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(upbeat music)
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