- Something that I'd always been doing was writing poetry
and doing these poetry slams and things of that nature.
That just led to me being in an acting class,
honestly because I didn't
wanna take the second semester of Spanish.
So I figured like, "Yo, let me go ahead
and take this acting class and see how it goes,"
and it worked out.
[bright upbeat string music]
My name is Mahershala Ali,
and this is the timeline of my career.
I used to be the new guy.
Tremaine Sanders. Call me Trey.
- Well, I'm Jordan Cavanaugh.
You can call me whatever you want.
- I booked "Crossing Jordan,"
which is my first pilot, my first TV show,
at nine months out of school,
so I almost didn't go on that audition.
It was like my third audition of that day,
and I didn't feel prepared,
and I went in and I just winged it.
And at that time I wasn't very good at auditioning.
I felt lucky that day, and it worked out,
and then they called me back.
Getting to book that pilot,
it was a pretty wonderful experience.
Things were beginning to make sense and pay off for me,
in a way, not without its complications,
but very, very excited to have a job at that time.
- That wasn't good enough for you.
You had to cross the line.
I'd put in for a transfer if I were you.
[slow dramatic music] [footsteps shuffle]
- My first gig,
I think I got fired because I talked too much.
I had opinions about my character, and in all fairness,
I don't think they were expecting that.
So in communicating those things and it feeling
like, at that time, like it backfired,
I think by the time I got around to "The 4400,"
I was just really grateful to have
what I felt like was a great character.
I became hyperconscious of how I communicated things
that I had any issues with or things
that I thought could be better in certain ways,
but I did speak up.
But I just made sure that it
was things that really mattered.
What I really, really appreciated about getting
to play a character over, say, multiple seasons,
it actually really reminded me of theater
because in theater, you have to,
spending that type of time with a character
for several months or a year, in some cases,
as however long a play might run,
you're constantly getting to know it,
even though you're doing the same play every night.
What's great about television
is you're still having that time with the character
and you're getting to know him and things
are continuing to open up and be revealed,
and you're being challenged.
Gotta cross your fingers and hope
for the best in terms of your arc.
Richard Tyler, yeah.
I loved playing Richard and learned a lot along the way.
- Yeah. - I've heard great things.
Remy Danton.
- And you work with Claire? - In a way.
- Hello, Remy. - Claire.
- I see you've met Gillian. - Yes, just now.
- She's doing fantastic work for us, as you can see.
- David Fincher has a knowing of what he wants to accomplish
'cause he's someone who
can do everybody's job a little bit better than them,
but he has to like reel it in
and just really focus on directing.
But I'll never forget, I was in this suit,
and we were trying to lock in the look of my character,
Remy Danton, and he literally starts marking up my suit
and like, "All right, this button needs
to be [laughs] 1/4 inch higher.
This sleeve is this. This shoulder needs to be this.
This is too square," and there was no tailor
or wardrobe stylist in the room.
He started tweaking my suit and then had it communicated
what he wanted done with the suit.
The breadth and range of talents and how deep his vision is,
it doesn't start and stop with how pretty the picture is.
He sees the nuance, in a certain way,
a little obsessive about it, and I respect it
because you just see final product and the performances,
and you have to be in awe of that.
[muffled chatter] [muffled rock music]
- Interesting place to watch [indistinct].
- Ah. [laughs] It's more fun this way,
you know, hanging with the hoi polloi.
- So what brings you to DC?
- Well, all the Congress in town. It's good, rousing work.
- Since when do you hustle? You turn people away.
- How'd you know I was in town?
- It was like I hadn't existed before "House of Cards,"
and then once a "House of Cards" happened,
my experiences out in the world changed.
"Oh, Remy Danton!" [laughs]
And I was shocked at how much people responded
to the show, and going to DC
and White House correspondents' dinner and having senators
and congressmen and women coming up to us and being like,
"Oh, it's a lot like that, we absolutely love the show."
And I'd never been on something that resonated in that way.
Literally on the street on some like, "Yo, I love the show.
I love your character and whatnot."
That character at that time, to play a lobbyist,
to be a black man in DC who was empowered,
what it really just does is it gives permission
for there to [laughs] be more of them,
and they didn't exist in that way before.
It gives Hollywood incentive.
It gives other filmmakers permission to be like,
"Yo, we're going to make stories that feature ourselves."
It was unfortunate that there weren't versions
of a Remy Danton I could audition for before that time.
I'm grateful that that character,
that type of character is present now.
[slow moving music] [water laps]
Let your head rest in my hand. Relax.
I've got you, I promise. I'm not gonna let you go.
Hey, man. I got you.
There you go. 10 seconds.
That right there, you in the middle of the world.
Good.
I think with "Moonlight,"
it was so moving because I couldn't believe I
had just read that story.
To read something that feels like characters you know
and places that you come from or grew up in proximity to,
to get that from an agent was unbelievable to [laughs] me.
And so to see what Barry did
with Tarell Alvin McCraney's work
and how they assisted each other through the process
of creating "Moonlight,"
it was jaw-dropping because it felt so easy.
Those characters felt so known. They felt so close.
Was a shock to have something so well written
that was already on the page,
and I'm grateful for having had the experience.
I believed it was possible, I did, but that wasn't my focus.
My focus was just do my best work
and try to work with great people.
I just believe it's bigger than me.
I believe in them in a higher power,
and I believe that if it's for you, you'll have it,
and if it's not for you, you're not gonna have it.
I just pray to do my best work,
and I believe I can be guided to my excellence
through my prayers and actions.
[birds chirp]
Saw your mom last night.
- I hate her.
- Hmm. Yeah, I bet you do.
I hated my mom, too.
I miss her like hell now.
Something to say about that.
You know what draws you out when you look at that?
[dramatic music]
A crown.
Wanna know why?
[man coughs and sniffles]
[punch lands] [man grunts]
Hmm? 'Cause everybody wants to be the king.
Every character is the hero of their own story.
I don't think any hero thinks of themselves as a villain.
With Cottonmouth, what I really tried to work
on doing was just really making him human.
One thing I remember doing is one moment,
Cottonmouth could be throwing somebody off of a roof,
and he could shed a tear over it and be impacted
because he felt some sort of closeness to that character,
who he was at odds with at the moment.
But I think in that way, I felt a responsibility
to show Cottonmouth's humanity, and therefore,
I think it makes it more difficult to dislike a character
like that, even when he's doing terrible things that you
can somehow still root for a guy
who's technically a bad guy.
If you're playing a character that is crafted on the page
in a way that feels very strong,
you need to quickly find where he or she is weak
and work to cover those weak places,
but always know that your character
is being pulled down by those weak places.
You gotta be fighting to carry a certain type of strength,
and I think in some ways, that that creates a tension.
A lot of what we do and how we present ourselves
is about protecting ourselves.
If you have real understanding and a real consciousness
about the things that that makes your character whole
and human and the things that you want your character
to share and also not share, somehow,
something comes alive that I don't have all the answers for,
but something I think wakes up and then begins
to feel like real friction and tension.
[footsteps shuffle]
Mr. Vallelonga, sorry to keep you waiting.
I'm Dr. Donald Shirley. - Tony.
- Yes. Please, sit down.
- Some place he got here. [laughs]
Are them horns real?
- Elephant tusks, yes.
We spent several days hanging out
and going through the script,
and I just loved and appreciated his attention to detail.
Two very different characters, very different people.
It's very clear on the page.
And I think our mutual approaches to the work,
I think it just made for good chemistry
and gave me real permission to finally break open a bit
and have a real space to shine and reflect.
It was great working with him and just finding the energy,
finding the chemistry, finding the moments.
We were both really excited about it.
Just as actors, it felt very alive,
like the whole experience.
That's some education in semantics you're giving me.
Hey, let's skip the deposition,
and I can just take notes on your lecture.
[clock ticks]
I brought my case file.
- Thanks for coming in, Wayne. It's good to see.
- Alan. - How's the job?
- Still there.
"True Detective" came to me,
but the part in true detective that I wanted,
I had to pursue because I
was originally offered the co-starring role,
and I really honestly just connected
to the Wayne Hayes character, Purple Hayes.
I really connected to that character,
and I just thought he was pretty fascinating
and really well written.
I just wanted to play that character, so my grandma said,
"All they can do is say no," so I asked and it worked out.
I shot "Green Book" first and then, again,
had a week before I started filming "True Detective."
It was a pretty tight window.
I really just tried to understand
and quickly understand the differences between the eras.
What was I gonna do when I was, I guess like 33?
What was I gonna do when I was like 43,
and then what was I gonna do when I was like 70?
And I had a sense of it,
and I just trusted that once we started working
and I really had the time to focus on it on the day,
that I was gonna lock in and I was gonna discover it.
But I just allowed it to be, really,
and I just focused on "Green Book" while I was trying
to do "Green Book" 'cause I didn't really have a choice.
[soft ethereal music] [footsteps shuffle]
- Molecularly regenerated. Mapped to your DNA.
Cameron Turner to the molecule.
- Benjamin Cleary's script was really phenomenal.
It really touched me.
It was something that was clearly written from his heart,
inspired by some very real experiences.
But the dilemma itself, the premise,
it just felt fresh and new and unlike anything
that I had ever, ever seen.
And I was also up for the challenge
and trying to figure out one actor playing two characters
and how that was even gonna work.
It made me really nervous,
but I was also really excited about it, too.
One of the things that Ben did a wonderful job of
was making it very clear
that these characters had different wants, different needs.
They shared and having the same family,
but one had weeks to live, potentially,
and then one was waiting for permission to live.
The energies, to me, of each character
were so clearly different that I felt
like a different person when I was playing Jack
in comparison to playing Cameron.
Cameron had a different set of worries and concerns,
and I think just being clear on some very simple
and subtle differences, my physicality,
being aware that one is managing an illness
and the other one isn't,
what do those things do to the body, the mind?
But a huge help in really crafting these characters
was what they wanted and needed was clearly written out
in a way that felt different from the other.
I think in some ways, I discovered the arts just
as an option because of my father.
I'll never forget. I found a card in the 2014.
I had this storage that was in Brooklyn for 14 years.
I'd gotten married, and my wife was who I knew in college,
and she was like, "Yo, what happened
to that storage that you had?"
And I was like, "Yeah, it's in Brooklyn still."
She's like, "What? That's crazy.
You need to clean that thing out."
So she made me go.
She was like, "Yo, we're going to clean this storage out."
And one of the things I found in there was this card
that my father had written to my grandma,
and it was a postcard, and my father,
his shirt is off and he's making this like pose,
and it's a beautiful, beautiful postcard.
It was like a casting postcard.
That's not a headshot, but it was like a body card.
And I flipped it over 'cause I remember I
had lost my copy of it and I took my grandmother's,
[laughs] and she wasn't paying attention to it.
And I had my grandmother's, and so I turned it over,
and I read it, and I remember it said,
"Hey Ma, still trying to be that leading man."
So finding that in like 2014,
right around the time I was trying
to get off of "House of Cards"
'cause I just wanted to do more,
it was something that was really affirming.
I was reminded that, oh, he had like these real deal,
larger aspirations that I discovered 20 years
after his death, and I'm not crazy for that.
And I felt like he and I had talked about that,
and me actually in that moment making choices
so that I could have that very thing
that he wrote about on a postcard,
and this is my first one right here,
I'm like, yeah, I feel like he would be proud.
He's the only reason I've been able
to do it 'cause he's what I saw.
Knowing that he made certain choices
that got him out to New York that put him on stage
and allowed him to travel the world, for me,
27 years after he passed away to be a lead in the movie
is a bit of a miracle, and I'm really grateful,
I'm really grateful for.
[uplifting music]