Idris Elba is on the cover of this month's Interview Magazine. Inside, he is interviewed by Jon Favreau. Here are some highlights from their conversation:
FAVREAU: "And then, of course, with Luther and The Wire, you're dealing with so many hours of entertainment that you're not going to have that same intense collaboration with one single person. It becomes more of a collaborative sport. I know The Wire better than I know Luther, but there was a tremendous level of consistency in the storytelling in that one. I think it's commonly agreed upon that The Wire is one of the best shows to ever air. How was that experience different? The character you played had just as much depth—probably more depth because of how much screen time there was—than the characters you played in features."
ELBA: "That's true. Television is where I cut my teeth. One of my first jobs was in a soap opera, five days a week. And what I found is, although there are different directors coming in and different crews, you just lived in your character. It's the nature of the story, the ongoing story, and it can get deeper and deeper. And The Wire—I had moved to America a few years earlier. I had to get a job. And this character came about, and I jumped straight in. And it was like, "Today we're doing this scene in this part of this story line in this part of this world." You don't have the luxury like you do in films to do one scene per day. But what kept the quality control up was that the writing was so phenomenal. The guest director could just drop into the world, those characters and their environments, and start filming, because it was sewn into us. That was our world."
FAVREAU: "Like special forces. Whatever the assignment, you're ready and you hit the beaches running."
ELBA: "Exactly. And Luther is similar. There were no luxuries on Luther. It was a tough set; we worked six-day weeks in London, sometimes in the bitter cold. But the quality comes from the writing. Neil Cross has always been a great writer. But, again, we just plug and play, like you say. It's a task force and we get on with it."
ELBA: "Can I ask you a question?"
FAVREAU: "Yeah. Please."
ELBA: "I'll tell you a story and ask you a question. So I was at a party not too long ago, and I ran into Ben Affleck. I'd had a bit to drink, and I was super excited to see him. And the reason why I'm excited to see Ben is because Ben, like yourself, is an actor who can direct. And I've sort of been in development to direct my first feature film. I've done a couple of music videos and a couple of shorts, and I'm going into that world of the feature. And I say to Ben, [slurring] "Oh Ben, hey, man. Bro, can you tell me ... I just, like, I think you're incredible." I'm like, "I'm so interested in that transition. You're an actor, and you're directing, and I want to know what you had to go through and how you're getting people ..." And at the time, he was like, "Idris, just call me." I didn't call him ever. But I wanted to pose the same question to you if that's okay."
FAVREAU: "Well, the first thing I would say is, just on a gut level, I would buy Idris stock as a director. You carry your energy into a room in a way that would be good for a film set. I think you naturally have a certain presence that would work well with a crew. I think you've probably cultivated that by being an actor because, as you know, if both the energies of the lead actor and the director are good, the whole movie tends to go well. That's intangible and hard to teach. The other thing I would say is that by working with this long list of directors ... Well, my secret was that I got this wonderful paid apprenticeship, being an actor on all of these film sets. I generally wasn't the movie star; I was number five on the call sheet. But I was still on the set, and that gave me tremendous access to everybody. And, as you said, what you like about a director like Ridley Scott or Guillermo is that he understands what every department is doing, and has a stake in every decision being made. Directing doesn't have a built-in apprenticeship as other crafts do, which is unfortunate because you can learn so much just by watching other people. So I think that you've already had your film school. A trick that I used especially when I was less experienced, but still draw on sometimes, is just channeling the behavior of somebody that I respect, carrying myself in a way, imitating somebody that I've worked for that I like. It'll get you through rough patches where you don't know what to do. "
Read the full interview at Interview.
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