THR Full Drama Actor Roundtable: Jeffrey Wright, John Lithgow, Ewan McGregor, Riz Ahmed & More!

welcome to the spotlight with The Hollywood Reporter we're here today with Sterling Brown Billy Bob Thoron Riz Amed John lithograph Jeffrey Wright you and McGregor and we're going to dive right into this well done Lacy, let's do it, let's do it, what was the last scene or role you it made you really nervous this yes yes the role or a particular scene uh this you're talking about the Western world you're talking about being at this table I'm talking about this round table I was very nervous two nights ago I I did a solo exhibition. I travel with a one-man show and I haven't done it in two and a half years.

I did it two nights ago in Oklahoma City actually and that's 2 and a quarter hours alone on stage for about 1,200 people and I'm not a stand-up. I was terrified, so what are you called memory stories? Okay, you want to know, no, tell us something, well, it's a two-act evening and each of the two acts features a short story, okay, a PG Woodhouse. and a ring Larder an Englishman and an American very funny very ironic what the two stories have in common is that they are both contained in a big fat book of stories that my father read to me and my SI when we were children and I used The same book to read to him when he was an old man yeah, very depressed on the verge of death and he chose Woodhouse's story and it made him laugh and that little moment was the inciting incident of this whole solo show, uh, the only thing I've ever written for me and very personal to me, but both stories are excellent pieces of interpretation.

I'm going to talk about this for the next hour and, uh, what I mean is the rest of you were there, whether it was this current role. Or was it amazing? Where did you have reservations? Did you have questions? Were you worried about the kind of repercussions of these roles? I just filmed a scene that made me nervous. I'm working right now on a movie called. Hold the Dark based on a novel I was working in Alberta and was filming a scene with five wolves wearing a caribou suit and wasn't sure how appetizing the wolves would find the suit, but as it turned out they were a little confused, which the Caribou was actually talking so they got scared so it was all good but I got into it with you some reserves survived a strange coincidence three nights ago your car was lying upside down.

Down in the snow just outside of Boston in a scene where four wolves were sniffing around me. Is that you, Ser? I can't believe the coincidence, yeah, last week, yeah, what about you guys? Oh man, what will I say? Nina Jacobson was in a round. her last year for People versus OJ and she talked about how difficult it was to cast the role of Chris Darden and how she had a lot of trouble finding black men who wanted to play that role because they so much hated who he was and what he didn't represent. I she told me a little bit about it and I would say it was quite stressful for me because it was like the beginning of being invited to events like these and you know your boy lived in Pico and they We were searching all over South Africa and then London etc. .

I thought, I'm here, but what was so interesting about the whole process was being surrounded by people I admired, who have been doing this for much longer than me. held at a high level and how egoless everyone was in terms of hugging me, which taught me that when you are confident and feel good about what you do, there is no need to make other people feel small and like I think that they were going to accept me. do coffee runs or, you know, do push-ups on the corner because, hey, newbie, do that, but everyone was so cool at Jump Street and they got on my nerves really quickly so we could tell the story, so I was nervous , but He went through this pretty quickly, which is true.

You know, the

more

confident you feel, the

more

generous and loving you can be with other people, which is why I'm always an S personally. You know that guy who makes faces, right? you're going to do it like this, do it like this. They actually did that to me, which is kind of weird, weirdly useful because it just highlights wild card stuff that you would never do, but probably doesn't belong. Although the scene I mean to talk about nervousness. I don't know about you, but I get nervous before every job, yes, I get nervous before every Ro I take on.

I haven't been doing this as long as most of you. but um, I know if that's something that you ever find out, it goes away, it gets worse and worse, yeah, yeah, really, I find that before every role, now it's my wife will tell you that there's a period of two where I won't be able to do it. Do it, I can't, I'm not going to be able to do this one and I really believe that, if it manifests itself in a really real way where you can imagine yourself on set not being able to cut it, things like no.

Being able to remember lines, even you know, we've been remembering lines for 25 years, but the nerves and my experience are getting worse and worse. I think that's the central f

actor

for an

actor

is not to make a fool of yourself. You know, sure, at first, you know what your motivation is to not make a fool of yourself, but in a sense, we're all putting our insecurities into play. I mean, at a certain point you realize I'm terrified. that's good yeah that's the Catch 22 I mean I've done guest stars and stuff you know some different things and my nerves don't always get up because of that but when I'm nervous it means that's the one I should be doing, you know what I'm saying, what's exciting and you look back and realize that the best things you've ever done, your real breakthroughs came in roles that you were afraid to do, yeah, and the ones that you sometimes felt .

While you were doing it, you were just completely ruining it because you constantly felt like you were out of your comfort zone, at least that's how I sometimes felt when I'm just, I'm finding this until the last day. I'm still finding it, um, that's so listen to the transition that your character went through in man's night, from kind of a choir boy to a shaved, tattooed head, you know, dry, she was beautiful, thank you , so the fact that He had incredible nerves, shout out to him and obviously you've had this tremendous career. What do you wish you had known from the beginning?

How to handle Hollywood success? Would you have done anything differently? Probably not, yes. I don't think I would have changed anything and it wasn't easy. In fact, I was, I mean, I was homeless here for years, you know? And now I look back on those days, and they're probably my best moments here because everything that happened. I do it now and I resort it comes from that you know and uh from not wanting to go back to that place I didn't love it at the right time uh I forgot uh how uh I after a while you forget what it feels like to dream MH H And then I remember being so alive and so anxious and so uh with a fever, I mean, with a lot of fever too, you know everything at the same time, uh, but when you have everything in front of you, uh, and you're dreaming like that.

It feels so good and maybe at that moment, you know you wish things were different or you were starving or whatever, but when I look back on those days, there were some of the best moments of my life and Which were. you dream of dreaming of being able to be I never thought I would become a movie star. I dreamed of being an actor and maybe being the fifth or sixth man in the future playing a role like Walter Huston might have in the old days or whoever. Was that, that's what I thought I liked Warren Oats, yeah, and guys like that, you, anything different, you, uh, no, no, I don't think so because I think our way is our way, right?

Isn't it and wouldn't it? I want to change some of that because it's gotten me to where I am now I don't know I don't know anything you wish someone had whispered in your ear something like this is what this will get you there faster the path may be a little different no, because I wasn't really pointing anywhere, I don't think I meant to. I was always arrogantly sure that everything would be okay, really, from the beginning. I was, you know, people who would care about me. in my name, family or whatever, which is a difficult profession and you may not be me.

I always said no, everything will be fine, I understood, I was right, that was exactly right, you always think that tomorrow is the day, yeah, I mean, if you know how long it's going to be if you knew it would be different but you don't feel that you feel like everything is going to be okay tomorrow is the day you meet Billy, you are the only one at the table who In fact, I have worked with you and you know that we consider you one of our great serious actors, but I remember being surprised and It was shocking when you told me that you had actually started in a comedy with John Ritter, well, not really.

I did that. I did that for a couple of seasons, but I started doing theater around here and also a one-man show and that's where the Sling Blade character came from, it was a one-man show and my first job was in something like divorce. court or something like that and then me and then I did a mat block and a Knots Landing, you know, just rubbish like that, but you took everything you could get, but one of the problems I had in the early '80s was me. I would go up to southern boy parts because I was from the south and they always told me I wasn't southern enough and I would go up to bad boy parts and they told me I wasn't bad enough because I never was. a good auditioner and I didn't, maybe I should have thought about that if you hadn't gotten into the casting director position, this is before you could see the directors and all that, you know, uh, if you were going to apply for a bad guy and let's say he's a bad guy from the south or the midwest, if you didn't jump on the table and spit and scream, you didn't get the part right and if I didn't play a southerner like this and I don't talk like that and up, boy, I'll tell you what I never did, you know, if I didn't do that, I didn't get the part, so if I went in for the southern bad boy and said, listen, man, one more word from you and me.

I will kill you, do you understand me? And then yes, and they are like the following. You already know. I would say to that point the difference between I went to graduate school at NYU and I started my career in New York and felt like I was in theater. The community valued the ability to transform more than the L.A. community, they want to see you come in like the guy, so when I did, uh, OJ, I talked like Darden the whole time as soon as I got out of the car and asked where I was supposed to I had to go because I just didn't want to do anything to mess it up because there were times when I thought it was okay, now I'm going to take my moment and then do something and then they say no it's not. him, you know he's putting something, whereas in New York it's a big choice, yeah, you know, choices like appreciating it and The is like "I want to see the boy John" to the question you had asked Billy, obviously you mean to your career. you fluctuated back and forth, I mean, you won an Emmy for being a serial killer and you also won one for being an alien dad in a multi-camera comedy, what do you get, what offers do you hear the most in what?

What type of genre do you approach? Well, they really come from all directions. I mean, I'm a lucky actor in that sense because I've worked in different veins and I think everything that comes from the whole first third of my career was in the New York theater MH uh, and I've been bouncing between film, television and stage throughout my career. I mean, I'm a man of character and I've acted a lot in my time, so usually when there's a total job. I'm right at the top of the list and uh, and it's a very short list, uh, the professor surprises me all the time.

Winston Churchill couldn't have been a bigger surprise, he just came out of nowhere, uhhuh, and I couldn't. I think they were asking me to play the role and it was a phone call from my agent and at the end of the sentence describing the offer I said yeah, it was so surprising, you know, we're all in the business of surprising. people, but it's better if we are also surprised, without a doubt, what are the roles for which the rest of you are approached? I'm looking at you like maybe you know what I'm going to say. I think so.

I think you wrote a very moving essay precisely on this topic. Well, it's funny. I guess I walked into this kind of situation. Let's say you are. referring to that talks about representation, right, and that's really, I think what we all do is the type of business that we're in and sometimes I feel like when you start seeing gay characters in mainstream culture or black characters or Muslim characters can start out as a kind of stereotype, the stereotypical representation, it's the taxi driver, the shopkeeper, the drug dealer, yeah, you know, the shopaholic queen and then sometimes, if you're lucky, you go beyond that. that and they are still plot lines. that are tied to that character's ethnicity, they're still tied to their sexuality, but in some ways they're working against those stereotypes and in a way I was lucky to come into the game just as we were moving out of that stage one, kind of cartoon.

This is in stage two, so a lot of my early work deals with themes related to the war on terror or Islamophobia, but I'm proud to say that I think it deals with them and addresses those themes in quite creative ways and I hope. in ways that move us forwardfor you it was more fun to play, freer to play, if you were more comfortable in one versus the other, well, they're both because they're both very different, they're satisfying in different ways and and that and um, no, I don't have a favorite in terms of playing them because they're both interesting to play, but I think in terms of liking them, I like Ry, um, Ray Ray, that's the premise of this season. from Fargo what I'm doing is there are two brothers, one older and one younger, that when their kids were teenagers, I think when Ray is 15 and the EMT is 17, their father passes away and there's a tie in their driveway. and in his will he leaves EMT as red Corvette, he's the older brother and he leaves Ray a stamp collection and that's what they and what happens, this is all before the show starts of course, but What happens is that the EMT persuades Rey to take the Corvette.

Rey is probably a virgin and not No, and then he says you'll get laid if you drive this car and he and he takes the stamp collection and goes on to have an incredibly successful life as a businessman, becomes the king of the parking lots. from Minnesota and his brother, who now has a red Corvette and ends up living a shitty life in his police officer and has a red Corvette look. You got lucky. I don't sue. I mean a legal document that outlines things. He owes them to specific parties and a dead father in a driveway. older guy taking advantage of a younger glide no one took advantage it was a trade if I had a time machine you would see me playing the EMT tape come on I beg you take the stupid stamps now give me the car no It's not that you were cheating on me Ray but who also fell in love with this amazing character, Nikki Swangle, played by Mary Elizabeth Winstead, and she's out of her league, incredibly beautiful and intelligent, and what happened, I found out that playing them is and it's interesting that we're doing this during the kind of Trump era, it's that Ray has become kind of the embodiment of love, you know, like he's playing this man who is so in love and has a soul and a heart and an EMT.

He's the businessman and he has a wife and a family, he's a faithful man, but everything is compartmentalized in a way, he's a little heartless and I and, um, it's more fun to play because it's a lot more fun to be in love which is being someone like Trump, yes, yes, it's time to talk about politics. Some of you here certainly are Billy. You are someone who moves very fluidly from one place to another. Comedy,

drama

. Do they treat you differently in one than the other? B, do you feel more comfortable with one or the other?

Honestly, I'm known for playing all these different types of characters and I always play myself, uh, I think at least for me I'm not going to do my best work. If I play someone other than myself and the way I see things is also the same, you have to remember that this is my experience. I'm not saying everyone would agree with this, but I never saw an acting coach or director or anyone. make a good actor better. I've seen them make things worse and I've never seen anyone make a bad actor good. I think there are many personalities within someone, yes, and that if you have life experience and It shows a lot if you are a good observer and behave exactly as you would with MH in any given situation, because the character tells you that you already read a dash.

Hey, how did you come up with whatever this is? There is no explanation for it. At least in my case I read the script. I know what the guy is like, what he's like, and on my season of Fargo I played this cat Lauren Malvo and it was so perfectly written that I didn't have to go in there and be the Usually I'm changing everything, whatever it is, but what I probably did was different than what you probably imagined. I made it much more low-key and laconic than maybe they had thought, which was the case in a movie called A Man Who Wasn't There, which I did with the Cohen brothers, which was the same kind of deal, if you imagine Ed Crane and the man who wasn't there losing his mind, it's pretty much the same thing, and so that's one more thing.

Please specifically answer your question. What I find in comedy as opposed to

drama

is that I tend not to be very funny in an interesting comedy setting. On the other hand, I find it very fun in a dramatic setting because it's necessary because there's a certain energy that comes back into the character of the man who wasn't there, who most of the time just smoked and sat on a couch or something or liked it. cut someone's hair. He talked to people until they did. say rolling around and making jokes running around I wasn't like that at all like that when I'm sitting there still the energy of what I was doing is still there I was never the kind of person if I was going to be still and kind of pensive in a scene, the kind of man who goes to the corner and starts getting thoughtful and methodical like that, that's right M MH and/or eating in the hallway or you know, thinking about when your dad ran over your puppy or whatever, huh.

I'll always behave however I'm behaving and then I'll let that carry over into the scene and if you're out there trying to know how to make jokes with everyone on a comedy set once you get on the scene, you're already screwed up, I want I mean, I think because I don't like it and I don't like watching when young actors ask me for advice. I always say never look at a character like this mountain you have to climb and when you talk. about the character don't say well you know that Brad is the type of person that you know that if you separate yourself from that character you have already lost in many ways because if you are looking at a character it is a hill that you have to climb something that you have to become , uhhuh, so you're acting, yeah, and if you don't think about it and it's okay, you're playing Bill Johnson here or whatever runs a tractor shop in Nebraska, just walk in there when the scene starts and start barking, yeah, you know, as opposed to like like if I have to become Bill Johnson, what do I do, you know? and just put on some silly teeth or whatever and then, hey, I'm Bill John, just don't do that.

You know, I'm curious to know that you won the Golden Globe for Goliath and you said, I think, in the backstage press room that you wanted to play a guy who had to fight his way back from nowhere because it was something you related to, um, what did you mean by that and how do you relate to this character of Billy? Well, first of all, it was fun, not fun, it was good to play a character that had the same name, mhm, it was useful because someone says Billy. and you look, uh, that was great, um, I played myself on that show and in the really true sense of that, you know, uh, I never did much, uh, I, I wasn't very patient with it, in that first one. season, you know, I had a testy year inside my head.

How did that manifest itself every time someone pissed me off? I said look, man, you know, don't do that, you know? So people thought that was really cool, you know? show, but it was pretty real, so we should have your castmates around this table and get the real stories. You say no, I mean, I wasn't a fool. I'm just saying you know it's like it is. I'm an idiot, yeah, but it was, uh, I like the idea of ​​a guy who knows what it's like to be somebody and right now he's not, uhhuh, I like that idea, sure, and uh, you know, it started too.

Is it Paul Newman and the verdict or what you know, but then it takes on a life of its own and goes in other directions, you know, but honestly, it's the hardest thing for me in that, as well as movies like Armageddon, it's the hardest thing for me ? I'm always if I have a lot of technical things to say mhm like lawyer things, slang if yes, slang if you have to say things like that. I want to be able to say it knowing what it means, just like I was saying "we." I'll talk about that at my hearing because I'm sure your honor knows, as any good judge would know, even the crooked guy, that finding me in contempt entitles me to a hearing, a hearing in which I'm allowed to present evidence that include but are not limited to misdeeds committed by the defense attorney and here is good old judicial bias that's right your honor I said judicial bias just put it in my account if you don't know what it means and you are just listing things that the public It's not stupid, they can do it.

Say that, yeah, and then what do you do? You go talk to the NASA guys and you hang out with some astronauts and you're like hey when I say this, what the hell does that mean? And they tell you to go well, now I can say that with confidence, sure, sure. and I once played at being an air traffic controller pushing 10 right and I went to air traffic control school quack and we both went to air traffic control school in Toronto and, uh uh, actually I did, I mean, I can land a plane in New York.

York, you know, I mean, but you have to learn those things or you can't just say them right, so I found that the hardest thing for Goliath was to learn all this legal stuff for me and once I knew what it meant, then then you could feel like a lawyer and my wife says I'm like a lawyer anyway I argue, you know, I'm telling you the truth, I love it, you know, that's one of the things I enjoy most about what we do. it's the research aspect you actually did a phenomenal amount of research for this role um well yeah I mean I guess I just agree with you that within us you know that we all have a chance to be with each other, which you know within us under a different set of conditions, yeah, you know, if the given circumstances change, I'm more like you, you're more like me and, uh, we're all slaves to the circumstances that engenders us, you know, situation breeds character.

I agree with that, but I think sometimes you need to have those reference points that you know like you knew when you were an air traffic controller, so you play a kid from Queens in New York and he's a Knicks fan. I don't know about basketball, I don't know. I just don't even know how to pronounce this, I have no idea, so what is that process? Yeah, I researched everything I could about the New York Kinks and, you know, I tried to really get to Under the Skin, you did, but it's interesting. because when you start doing that it's crazy what that opens up and the idea of ​​just being a sports fan who can't play the sport at all and what is that about being a spectator in life, living your life like?

Seeing other people living your dreams always wanting to be in the game but just sitting on the sidelines and a lot of interesting things like that opened up. I guess something else, something else that I really enjoyed because I'm always asked to play outside of my own accent, so I started out being just for those purposes. I interview people and record them, but what I discovered by doing that is that I get a lot crazier. I mean, you didn't spend time at Rikers did you? I went to Rikers Island prison, which luckily I heard they're closing now because some of the stories I heard there, what were you hearing, how do you know what it is even if you forget, if you show up there as a new inmate, if you comply.

Up there as a correctional officer the inmates will test you so if you show up you're a new guy the inmates will start picking on you or just disobeying you or like you know you're verbally abusive and you have to prove it to yourself and me He said well, what does that mean? How do you do it? You're just too harsh about setting the rules. He says no, you have to fight them. How do you mean? How do you fight them psychologically? handcuffs, you go out into the hallway, you make sure the cameras are off there, you take them off and you go on, yeah, oh, that's how you know how to get respect as a CEO, so there's a kind of crazy Gladiator, gladiator, Doggy.

The dog situation there and interviewing people who have been through Rikers and the prison system, yeah, I mean, all those stories are very striking and they stay with you, but it was kind of a detail of things like how people just let go. to the family, mhm. I know it's too painful after a while. It's like you don't want to. You don't want that umbilical cord to survive. Hey, buddy, I'm asking you to use that cell phone I gave you. Why did you say no? Because it's mine. What do you think? I was just trying to save you a chip for the pay phone.

It's a fake ATM. $10 per minute. I'm going to turn you into a com, so interviewing is something I really enjoy. I go crazy. on that and you just record people for hours and every once in a while you hear someone the way they talk and it's like it makes you sit up and you can't explain it and you think that's the cadence or that's the thing. you know very well, prison is an interesting place that I have filmed in many prisons and that is an environment that can really put you there, I mean you understand it right away and you start to see how people operate everything that we do.

They were filming Monsters Ball at Angola Prison in Louisiana, they also call it the farm picture there. You filmed in Angola, yeah, yeah, in a very interesting place and, uh, Sean Colmes, who was in the movie, you know, uh, you know he wasn't an actor. I know he was a big star, yeah, and I'll talk to you out loudhigh. I'll tell you all about Hipop later, but Sean told me it was a scene where he went to the electric chair and we filmed it for real. death row and it was the electric chair that they always used there, well the sea was there before the scene and they shaved his head and all that kind of stuff and he told me, listen man, I'm really nervous. vaI am, you know, he goes, this is not my bag, he goes, I'm in the music business, he goes, I know you are too, he said you're on stage and you grew up as a musician, he says, but and I do not.

I don't know if you need this, but whatever you need in the music business, if I can give you some advice on similar moves on stage, I said I'm not really an expert on moving, you know, but you know tips on how to do it , yeah, right, and I said, he said okay, but he said, but man, anything you can do to help me, you just give, you have something for me, you know, you know, because I'm nervous, yeah, and I said well. You're already there, friend, yes, yes, and me. and he says, what do you mean I said you're going to the electric chair and he says, oh yeah, that's like that all the time, right?

I don't know if you guys will ever understand this, but it's almost like I feel it. a process of the process of acting is a process of getting out of your own way it's like things are happening this if you surrender to the circumstances not only on the page but on the set sometimes things have a strange way of reflecting themselves The dynamics ending John Toro and I have this kind of relationship on the show, he takes me under his wing and, um, it became a little bit like that on the show, I'm sure you know that, and it's really fascinating, I think the way those dynamics they end up replicating on and off set they actually filmed a shot of a movie just something about the prison U um theme of a movie shot from last year at a functioning maximum security prison in Indiana um largely with inmates uh in the cast my co-star is a young man, he is 34 years old, he has been in office for 65 years, there is another young man who is in office for 170 years, he plays one of the Heavies, his sentence was reduced from 210, another guy who is an extra was on death row for seven years talk about uh you know atmosphere kind of information uh behavior and you know I think I'm still trying to figure out how this piece will be received you know um I think it's I hope what we've What's done in this piece is that we have um um, it can be an act of forgiveness.

I think we often make movies about prison or we make movies about issues of social importance, and as artists we often leave the problem-solving to others. We know we kind of raised the red flag, but we didn't necessarily engage with you, you know the dirty work of the solution, but I think what was interesting about this process was that built into it was a kind of solution in that sense. It was, you know, a collaboration of unlikely partners who came together with men who are, you know, The Wretched of the Earth, you know, who have been completely, you know, forgotten and asked them to do something humane and something positive. , and I think it can be replicated in other ways, not just in filmmaking, but it also requires a human lens to look at them and I think if we were to understand criminality, if we were to understand the drivers behind what led to these men to this. place, so that's a necessary, um, necessary lens, but you know, as you say, in the era of Trump, unfortunately, that's not where we are, you know how we're looking at complex problems through the eyes of Nuance, so, anyway, but yeah, but no, I think it's, I think.

It's a really important, beauti

full

y made point man because I think we're living in a time where so many people are being dehumanized and it's kind of strange right now as an artist to just say that being on a human team is a political act. It's really strange the kind of projects you want to do, the kinds of roles you want to play in this era. I hope so, I hope so for everyone. I mean, it shouldn't just be about the entertainment you hope to be. able to give people a break from certain things, but hope

full

y you can also educate and edify people at the same time.

You know this is us, the most important comment I've received is that it brings people together. in a very interesting way and it's the only show that is a very family oriented show and it's about connection and it's very interesting because we meet gay people and you have overweight people and you have black people and going out into communities that you might They do not have the opportunity to see things that are as heterogeneous as the program is in the most homogenized places in the country and the world. They are getting the opportunity to meet people for the first time and hopefully meet people the next time they meet. they see them as people, yes, it's not the first time, I think it's a strange thing, isn't it?

I think certain stories or certain storytellers have a responsibility to be seen as political, whether they like it or not. right, you know, because sometimes it's like the first story of that kind or, you know, I'm thinking I don't know some of those trans actresses in oranges and new black, for example, or I mean, I know Khan. family on the night of I think you know it's a Muslim American family, right? and it's getting, but the strange thing is that I don't think it's a political act that wasn't a political decision that just doubles down to affirm our common humanity, which is really kind of the baseline for all creativity, it's nothing crazy, uh, it's not a move for Renegade to do that, but then a couple of months after the show comes out, MH certain Domino drops and people start seeing it through in a different way. lens, but yes, I think it is the responsibility of an artist to commit to the times in which we live.

I'm sure you know that Merill Streep's kind of extremely notable speech at the Golden Globes was a very political speech, but she ALS there was a long passage in that speech that defined what we're talking about when she said that our job is to inhabit other people. It is an empathetic gesture to be other people to inform. She put it much better than I could, but if I remember correctly, it was written. Bottom right, just to show people what it's like to be them, and in a sense, that's our mission at best. I'm talking about our most idealistic aspirations to do exactly that, just show people how other people feel.

I think The Act of Empathy is a treasure right now, it's very important right now because these are the unacceptable times that we live in and I tend to think that because I CU grew up in Washington DC, everything is political and I think that even in the absence of a political gesture there is politics, I mean, it's almost the most political type of art because in a way it reinforces a status quo but it doesn't comment on it or question it in any way and I've always found that. Sorry, no car, I've always found it strange that people often say to me, why do you always do political work?

And the strange thing is that I'm just telling you that there is a certain subset of stories that are open to me. Yes, and I'm happy to say that that subset is expanding and I think maybe it's a kind of progress, whether it's political progress, social progress or cultural progress, but it's strange because I think politics is just one point of view of the world. and each story has a point of view on the world. I think if it's just a point of view that you're not used to hearing or seeing, it suddenly gets labeled as political, kind of marginalized from the mainstream in the past. in the back of the DVD store with things like, you know, subtitled movies, but actually you know what we consider conventional stories or stories that are not political, they are very political in the absence of interrogations, so when Friends is shown in New.

York, you know, in people of color, you know, um, that's right, there is politics in the sense that it leads to an understanding of, you know, among those homogeneous communities in this country, that you know, um, that's right like it's, you know, uh um, what's a valid story. Exactly, it validates their own isolation and leads to a misunderstanding of the complexity of who we are, but did you hear from the royal family what the kind of comments were? I know we were going to take a hard left turn. here, um, but I'm curious in terms of comments about seeing yourself on screen, have you heard from the family?

No, in a sense, that's what the series is about. There is this separation not of Church and State, but of monarchy and the public. Never say anything, your job is to do nothing and say nothing, and there is Peter Morgan, who wrote the script, he has modeled, he has created a scene in which they talk about this same idea, they never let them see the real thing. Elizabeth, the cameras, the television never lets them see. that they see that wearing the crown is often a burden that they look at you but that they only see the Eternal what the monarchy is about.

It is about doing nothing and betraying nothing and they have not betrayed anything if they have seen. the program or if you like, little rumors standing, what are the rumors? I wish I had a nickel every time someone asks me what the royal family does, but it's all about the fact that they are the most public and most private people. in the world and the only people they can honestly let their hair down with and trust, if they have to speculate on that too are each other, they are in a little bubble at Buckingham Palace, for some reason, this is something that has really intrigued people, they are fascinated by the pressures that this puts on royal people and Morgan has just done this remarkable act of speculation about what the conversations between the queen and the Prime Minister are like because no one knows except Well, the two, is that you finally pulled back the curtain on this world that I don't think we knew much about, now we feel like we know, and yet whether that's real or not, how they're reacting, we're not.

I have no idea South, it must also be based on some source material, right, yeah, Morgan did some incredible research, uh, and he had a small team of researchers and they sort of presented him with all this information and my idea is that He he just took these little episodes, these little details, and expanded each one of them into an hour of drama, like so many extraordinary one-act plays with incredible characters, you know, and Churchill is that into it, he's the man of the policy. world, the Prime Minister, who is the only one who crosses over into the real world, uh, was surprisingly fascinating.

I can imagine a really boring soap opera about the royal family and it wasn't, it was completely fascinating because it paid so much. a lot of attention to the psychological tensions between I mean, you have stories like two sisters, one of whom is jealous of the other, how different is it when they're both a queen and a princess that actually exists or uh, husband and wife, one of which becomes queen and the other is suddenly castrated. It's a fantastic psychological story to tell, so it couldn't be more rarefied or more different than what we're talking about in terms of American politics, so you guys I've played these roles some of them dark some of them light they're all intense in their ways how do you escape when they finish when they shout wrap what is that kind of process?

I think it's something we all know very well. I myself enter this predictable two-week state of sadness. This wonderful world has been taken away from you because while you're working on a play or a movie or a sitcom, you're in this social organism, you're in this creative process. you are also very cared for and cared for your words are written for you you have an audience that you know applauds you all of this is taken away from you and you simply rejoin the everyday world if you have a wife, she is suddenly very very irritable with you you know where you have been yes , but you know it's just for the joy of performing that you take all of that off for a period of time and then what does the Escape look like to the rest of you?

Oh, for me it's pretty simple, I'm a young father, I have a 5 year old and an 18 month old and once you come home, there's no, it's just your dad, uhhuh, and it's a wonderful thing because you pass So much time necessarily thinking about yourself in this business, it's nice to have something that commands you, gets you out of your head and just says: I need you to be my dad. I need you to clean my ass the way I need to. to whatever and then automatically it's like well, great, that's wonderful, yeah, it's an extremely important thing in your life to have something that's more important to you than yourself.

Amen. In fact, I think that's kind of a driver for you too. The best work we do when the work we do is not about us and on a basic level, you know when it's about the other character when it's about the scene, but I don't know, sometimes I feel like when when you've connected with him, it may just be a delusional notion of a higher purpose for your work, whether you know when you were working in prison or, you know what you were talking about, some kind of representation in some kind of invisible archetype. for a successful black man or me I feel like that somehow brings out our best work B MH um but maybe then no one does anything crazy come on it's not like some crazy trip you takeafter publishing or in the middle of, I mean, I found it was actually kind of a fantastic relief, um release, it's like, you know, something changed, it really changed my life in a lot of ways working here, um, on Westworld, I live in New York, my kids are there, um, they, they're older now, so.

IEverything was like that, I allowed myself, they allowed me to go away a little more, they are 15 and 11 years old, to go away a little more than in the past, um, it was also a kind of arrangement so that I had uh week off. to be able to come back so I was flying back and forth but when I was here I found uh I found the ocean here um and I finally discovered that the singular advantage of Los Angeles over New York is the ocean so when I wasn't working You know, I was staying in Santa Clarita where we filmed, where we filmed and I went straight to the ocean and you know how to surf and get in the waves and just get clean and get away from everything and uh, you don't know that you know.

It was a necessary escape, but I found it, you know, clarify, revitalize all these things and then I would come home to my kids and you know, and do that, but that has become my thing, so when you know, even if I'm in the middle of Indiana, you know, I'm, you know, looking for the nearest ocean. I want to say one more thing, although just my kids are kids again, you know, and they know, uh, ask, you know, them. We demand everything from ourselves, but my son told me something before I went to make this movie because I've done some things since we finished Westworld and I've been away, you know a little more than me and him. he said after he saw the show, he knows West World, which really captivated him and he understood that there were necessary things that needed to be done, you know, because he likes the school that he goes to and you know it's not a public school um but uh um he said when I left for this I said you know I have to come back you know I'm leaving again and you know I'll come back when I can on the weekends but he said okay he said um Make it count oh and it was like and then You know, I have like sometimes I have like, you know, sometimes I have like mantras that, you know, you know, I go through here before I do something just to kind.

Of you know, get my head in order, it has become one of my mantras. I love that you know that it's about something bigger than yourself and that's what motivates the best work. I like it, you would have fun escaping. Mine is the same as theirs. Kids, I'm not allowed to come, my favorite story is when in the '50s, when Sid Caesar, uh, after I had done his show, he did a show called The Sid Caesar show, he was working hard. he was producing, acting and doing comedy and he had little kids and he came home to his daughter, he always tried to be in time to put her to bed, but he was a little late, she was a little sleepy, he came in to say goodnight.

Dad said, why are you never here when I go to bed? He says, well, you know, honey, I have to work really hard, you know, on the show, she said, well, what show, and he said, well, you know the Sid Caesar show, and she said, Sid Caesar , that's fantastic, okay, let's take one more left turn just to wrap this up, which is what the Growing Up show was. You guys loved the A-Team. Sid Caesar shows the 18 for you. I'll tell you one for myself. I was a junior or sophomore in high school and I felt like television had done something unique and special—it was NYPD Blue, right, and I remember watching it at like 9:00 on Tuesday nights on ABC and thinking Oh, I've never seen like there are real people like this.

I felt like the breath was taken out of me from the whole thing and I thought maybe this is something I could do. I would like to do that. I would like to do that. I grew up where I was performing. I always meant in a very naive way, like putting on tights and speaking in a very high pitch, um, and I've worn tights and spoken Huton too, but watching that show and just seeing how raw this is, you know what I am. Saying it was real, I got really excited and all through grad school I thought that one day I would be on NYPD Blue, like you all wait and the shows and I made it to the last season. with your co-star, oh, and I walked around the set and I was talking to friends and I was like, man, this is crazy, son, this is where this happened and it's like you really like the show, like yeah, Fant, yeah, the blue is. blue is great, I love it, what about you?

Don't know. I'm just thinking about all the many comedy shows really from Britain, you know a lot of ER and wise and wise and I don't know the guy well, I guess when growing up, that was the kind of thing we watched during the week, you know, the weekends, when you could watch TV, yeah, I don't know, I didn't have a favorite like I Love Mash. I remember really loving Mash. I do not do it. This is really going to come out with me, I mean, I'm clearly the oldest at the table. I really loved the early 50's TV comics, yes Bob Hope.

Milton Burl and Sid Caesar. His program is shown so vividly. I mean, they were and, of course, there was just. three networks, everyone was watching the show and I had the opportunity to do a photo shoot with Milton Burl himself when in the heyday of Third Rock it was a kind of new and old television comedy, a real job that taught me all kinds to follow up with a cigarette and you know, it was crazy, but we got along well for those few hours and at the Emmy Awards I think I presented an Emmy Award and I was backstage a couple of years later and it was the night Milton dug to Bob.

Hope and Sid Caesar were brought on stage, Bob Hope literally in some kind of Palen Quin, you know he did it and the crowd went crazy right before Milton Burl came up to me and introduced me to these old guys in some kind of Half Light. from Backstage was that incredible. He was years old again. It's funny that we, you know, mention comedy. You know, everyone mentions comedy because I think for me too, I mean, if there is such a thing. You know, I think about my favorite show and It's a lot harder now like you say because back then we were all watching the same things but it was uh um sford and son.

I was about to say Norman Le and it was because well, Norman read, yeah, but because I think Red Fox was one of the greatest entertainers that television has ever seen, you know, yeah, um, All in the Family, he was on the same level, sure, sure, that comedy is funny, you know, comedy, so why don't we do more comedy? Yeah guys that's the question, well thank you. I know exactly for your agents, thank you all for being a part of this. What a pleasure to speak with you. I have the honor of being with you. Hi, I'm Oprah.

Hi, I'm Isa Catherine H. Kevin Bacon Billy Bob Thornton Elizabeth Moss Chris Jenner mini. host and thank you for watching thank you thank you for watching thank you for watching The Hollywood Reporter on YouTube on YouTube wait once again make sure to subscribe for more videos it's great