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