TAKERS -- Idris Elba interviewed by Andrea Chase
From: Andrea Chase
Series: Behind the Scenes
Length: 09:31
Idris Elba has several thriving careers going for him, not the least of which is giving powerful performances in both feature films and on television. He also took a comic turn in NBC's "The Office" as Michael Scott's nemesis. Elba speaks about how his career in music informs his thespian efforts, how and why he wanted to make his TAKERS character deeper than that of the usual crime lord in a glitzy crime thriller, opines on the reasons crime needs to be glamorous on screen, and why he wanted to travel to Rwanda barely ten years after the genocide there to star in Raoul Peck's SOMETIMES IN APRIL, which dealt with that tragedy.
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Piece Description
Idris Elba has several thriving careers going for him, not the least of which is giving powerful performances in both feature films and on television. He also took a comic turn in NBC's "The Office" as Michael Scott's nemesis. Elba speaks about how his career in music informs his thespian efforts, how and why he wanted to make his TAKERS character deeper than that of the usual crime lord in a glitzy crime thriller, opines on the reasons crime needs to be glamorous on screen, and why he wanted to travel to Rwanda barely ten years after the genocide there to star in Raoul Peck's SOMETIMES IN APRIL, which dealt with that tragedy.
Timing and Cues
00:00 - 01:29 Intro and first question, is there such a thing as too many career options:
01:30 - 01:37 (Laughing) They all tap from the same source and having an ambidextrous brain.
01:51 - 01:21 Music helps shake off the residue of playing dark characters that use up his psyche.
02:41 - 03:22 Why crime thrillers need to glamorize the characters to draw an audience. It needs to be taken with the same grain of salt as the perfection on women's fashion magazine. It's just entertainment.
03:58 - 04:07 Whether or not he got to keep the suits from the film.
04:25 - 05:40 Making his character more three-dimensional, discussing Robert DeNiro in HEAT has his inspiration. How the enjoyed the ambiguity of the relationship with his character and that of Marianne Jean-Baptiste. She did the part for the love of the part.
05:59 - 06:30 The pleasures and perils of a career that spans so many continents and accents. Laughs when saying that he's had at least one personality crisis. There is a bonus to being an everyman, from African to English to American. It's great when audiences love it.
06:51 - 08:40 Filming in Africa for the first time while making SOMETIMES IN APRIL. He discusses why the filmmaker, Raoul Peck, was the reason he wanted to work in Rwanda on a film about the genocide less than 10 years after it happened. He also expresses his unhappiness that so few people worldwide realized that the genocide happened or remember it the way they would if it had happened in a western country. He also recalls that the Rwandans were not happy at first to have the film made. He also notes that while his parents are African, it did not win him automatic acceptance, though it was better than having an American actor, rather it was his willingness to immerse himself in the culture made them come around.
Intro and Outro
INTRO:This is Andrea Chase and I’m talking with Idris Elba about TAKERS, a slick crime thriller which pits a daring and creative band of thieves against a determined Los Angeles police detective, with more than the loot at stake for each side. Elba plays Gordon, the leader of an astonishingly good looking group of human beings, each with a special larcenous talent and a flair for the good life. The film co-stars Matt Dillon, Hayden Christensen, Chris Brown, Mike Ealy, Jay Hernandez, Tip "T.I." Harris, Paul Walker, Zoe Saldana, and Marianne Jean-Baptiste.
Elba began both his acting and music careers in his native England, taking a turn as a gigilo on the wrong end of an enhancement product on television's "Absolutely Fabulous", before going on to more roles than I can list here but which include playing real-estate minded drug lord Russell "Stringer" Bell, on HBO’s "The Wire", Michael Scott’s nemesis on NBC’s "The Office", a Hutu trying to save his Tutsi wife during the Rwandan genocide in Raoul Peck’s SOMETIMES IN APRIL, the most dangerous man in Bostwana in "The No.1 Ladies Detective Agency", and the object of Ali Larter’s OBSESSION in the film of the same name. He’s also gone behind the camera with LEGACY, in which he plays an anguished special ops agent and of which he also served as executive producer, and as an associate producer of the BBC‘s "Luther", in which he plays a homicide detective. In 2011 he will be seen as Heimdall in the much anticipated THOR. Elba is also a DJ under the moniker DJBig Driis the Londoner, and a hip-hop soul recording artist. He also co-produced and performed on the intro to Jay-Z's 2007 album American Gangster.
OUTRO:Andrea Chase has taken you BEHIND THE SCENES of TAKERS with its star, Idris Elba.
