-My first guest is a Golden Globe-winning actor
who stars in the new movie "The Harder They Fall,"
which is in theaters now
and streaming on Netflix November 3rd.
Here is Idris Elba!
Yeah! Oh, wow!
Oh, wow!
Oh, no! He's rising!
He's rising! Oh, my God!
-How are you, Jimmy? It's good to see you.
[ Laughter ]
-You're the greatest.
I love that you dressed up, buddy.
How you doing?
-I'm great, man. I didn't dress up.
This is me every day, bro.
-Oh, well, I apologize.
I hope you take no offense to that.
Yeah.
I guess you're in the Halloween spirit, bud.
-Dude, I'm actually deejaying in 45 minutes at a nightclub.
-Is that right? -At Annabelle's, so --
Yeah, so I didn't want to come on the show like this,
but just in terms of efficiency, I had to get there.
You know what I'm saying?
-Of any show, you know that you are allowed to --
you have to do this on my show.
Of any show. You know, come on, buddy.
We're a family, right? Yeah.
-Yeah. Shout out to The Roots.
What's up, gentlemen? -There you go. That's right.
We love you. We love you, bud.
[ Cheers and applause ]
I love that you did that.
Idris, I want to -- by the way,
even dressed like this, you're still sexy, buddy.
That's all I'm gonna say.
-Oh, yeah? Thanks, Jimmy. -Yeah, yeah, yeah.
-Is this a zucchini moment?
-No.
[ Laughter ]
Unfortunately, it's not.
Well, it might be. I don't know.
I do want to ask you -- but before we get into the movie,
I have to ask you about working with Paul McCartney.
This is Paul McCartney's newest album,
and you do a whole remix on it.
And you sound amazing, by the way.
-Aww, thanks man.
-How did you get involved with this?
Did Paul just call you?
-No. Did he call me? No, no.
You know what, I had the opportunity to be you for a day
and interview Paul McCartney for The BBC.
And we're sitting on the sofa, having a great chat.
And then, during one of the breaks,
he tells me about this album and he says, you know,
"I'm going to remix it.
I'm going to get a bunch of artists."
And literally, like, a bone it just fell out my mouth.
I was like, "Let me do one."
[ Laughter ]
-And then you were like -- -There was a real awkward pause.
-Yeah. -He was like...
-He's like, uh... -"Yeah, sure.
Sure, Idris. Yeah, yeah, sure. Have a go.
Have a go, if you like."
And then I started talking to him about the stems
and the Pro Tools files.
He was like, "Oh. Okay. I'll send them to you."
-You know what you're talking about.
It's fantastic.
It might be one of my favorites on the album.
I was going to ask you -- -Oh, thank you, man.
-We have this.
You're doing a song with Paul McCartney, who is a legend.
I know that you've also deejayed for Madonna.
I know that you also -- we talked about that.
You deejayed the royal wedding, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle.
These are high-pressure gigs.
Which one is the most stressful?
-The wedding. No doubt.
-Really?
-The wedding, yeah.
This wasn't like, you know, this wasn't like my cousin --
my cousin's wedding, you know what I'm saying?
This was like... -Yeah, yeah. This is --
-You know, this wasn't at the community hall.
You know, the reception.
This was like a big, big deal.
You know, they're good friends, and I wanted to make sure
they had a great time,
so it was a lot of pressure.
-Do you know what -- -I mean a lot.
-Do you know what song you're going to play
when you kick off the party, or is it...
-No, but I have a collection of songs
that any one of them could be a good kick-off.
And Meghan had sent me a playlist,
so I knew what she wanted already.
-I was -- I wanted to ask you about this,
because I have an idea.
We might have crossed paths before I even knew you.
Were you a bouncer
at Caroline's Comedy Club here in Manhattan?
-Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I used to work at the door.
I was upstairs, and then I went downstairs and watched the show
and just, you know, made sure no one misbehaved.
-Did we ever run into each other?
-Yeah. I saw you. I saw your show.
It was, you know. It was all right.
[ Laughter ] Remember that --
-I was just -- I was just starting out.
I was brand new. -No, no, no.
You used to do that -- Remember that --
You used to do that Troll skit.
-I did!
I had a Troll doll bit, and I would do impressions.
Yeah.
-Yeah, it was terrible.
But, you know, people loved it.
[ Laughter ]
-You saw that? That's crazy, man.
-I was there. -That's so wild, man.
I loved Caroline's. That was one of my favorite --
That was one of my favorite clubs ever, man.
-Me too. Me too. -That's wild.
-Nah, you were great, actually. I do remember, you were great.
And, you know, I --
Oftentimes, I get brought into the comedy
'cause I was a English guy.
Black Englishman at the door at the time
is still a novelty out there in New York,
and they used to just roast me basically all day.
You didn't roast me, but most of them did.
-Thank you. Yeah, good. I'm glad I didn't.
But look at you now, bud. Look at you now.
Now you're in -- -Yeah.
-I love this new movie. -I'm in "Blacula."
-Yeah. I didn't mean that. That's correct.
But, also, you're in a great new movie
called "The Harder They Fall."
Jay Z is a producer on this, as well, by the way.
It's a great cast.
You know, I love LaKeith Stanfield.
He's one of my favorite actors out there.
Do you want to set up who you play in the film
and what drew you to this movie?
-Yeah. No, dude, I'm really proud of this film.
It's an incredible movie.
You know, I play Rufus Buck,
who was a real character, you know?
Rufus Buck was notorious -- sort of criminal.
And, actually, the real Rufus Buck
was probably -- excuse me, one second.
Ooh.
-Yeah, that makes it better. -I couldn't even talk.
-Ah, there you go. -The real Rufus Buck --
-That's better. -He was a --
He was, you know, a young kid.
He was probably about 19 years old.
In the movie, we depict him a lot older.
But he was notorious.
And all of the criminals in the film,
you know, from Trudy Smith,
you know, LaKeith Stanfield plays Cherokee Bill.
Cherokee Bill, these are all real characters.
And so, this film not only --
I mean, it's a piece of fiction, but it really does lean into
some real characters that existed, you know?
-I do love a good Western, too.
And I know you're on the horse a lot.
And I heard that you realized on set
that you were allergic to horses.
-Yeah, yeah. -That sounds like fun.
-No. It was [bleep] horrible Excuse my language.
It was horrible. -[ Laughs ]
-I mean, you know, interesting thing about --
-That is a nightmare.
What are you supposed to do?
It's a Western. You got to be on a horse.
-Yeah, you know -- you know -- and now I know why
all cowboys did that squinty-eyes thing.
[ Laughter ]
Their eyes were bleeding, basically.
And there was this old gentleman
who was one of the supporting artists.
And he saw me sneezing. My eyes were red.
And he said to me, "Yo, Idris,
you know, you got to use some pickle juice."
I was like, "What?" He's like, "Pickle juice.
You got to drink some pickle juice.
You're going to be fine."
I was like -- You know, I had a long,
decent conversation with him.
-Try anything, I guess. -I trusted him, yeah.
The next day, we -- I drank some of that pickle juice,
and it actually worked.
I'm not even going to lie. -No way.
Pickle juice... -Yeah, yeah.
-...helped your allergies? -Yeah.
Completely. I drank a bunch of pickle juice.
It's something to do with the dill.
I don't know. Dill.
-Yeah, man. -Something to do with dill.
-What's the dill, man? I love it.
[ Laughter ]
Thank you. That's so corny.
People just walked out. People walked out.
My joke was so corny -- -I like corny jokes.
I like your corny jokes.
Man, when you did them at Caroline's, they were great.
[ Laughter ]
-Idris, I want to show everyone a clip.
Here's Idris Elba in "The Harder They Fall."
Take a look at this.
-Wiley Escoe.
-Rufus.
♪♪
The world you knew is gone.
There's a flood coming.
Do you think you can hold onto this place when it hit?
At least I know enough to get mine and get out.
Kill me...
and you'll have nothing.
-You know, a man like you will have us all subservient
to the end of our days,
so long as you can buy yourself a house...
a badge...
and them goddamn gold teeth.
♪♪
-You want to do this here?
♪♪
[ Spectators shout ]
[ Horse whinnying ]
-Come on. That's a star, right there.
That's a star! I love you, buddy!
"The Harder They Fall"... -Thank you, bro.
-...is in theaters now
and streaming on Netflix November 3rd.
When we come back, Idris and I
are going head-to-head in a new game.
Stick around. It'll be fun.