Mahershala Ali and John David Washington are on the cover of Variety‘s Actors on Actors issue, out now.
Here’s what the 44-year-old Green Book actor and the 34-year-old BlacKkKlansman star had to say…
John, on preparing for BlacKkKlansman: “I rid myself of all hip-hop, R&B, EDM. And the Cranberries as well, I love them. Steady diets of War, of Sly & the Family Stone, Led Zeppelin. This was for three months. I would go to bed to Soul Train every night, I would watch Super Fly weekly and saw what that was doing to my spirit. What that was going to my psyche, how I was talking, maybe even how I was posturing. And that was all prior to talking to Ron [Stallworth]. I’ve never experienced anything like that, the kind of preparation that Spike [Lee] introduced me to.”
Mahershala, on preparing for Green Book: “Green Book came, and the characters really popped off the page. I thought there’s a chemistry in the writing that was there. I thought the story was important. What I thought was amazing about Don Shirley was that he was an archetype, a person that I had never seen before on-screen. Usually when we go back pre-1975 or especially pre-civil rights, we are clearly in this place of oppression. That exists in this film, but I think my character is the most empowered you could be in that time. This is a guy who is the boss in that car. Because he didn’t even have to go on the tour. He could go to Europe, make his money, have his career. He could stay up North, but him going down into the South was a choice. He wanted to put himself on the front lines in his own unique way and allow people to be exposed to the type of man, the type of black man, that he was in order to sort of pierce the consciousness so that they couldn’t just think of us as sharecroppers.”
For more from Mahershala and John, head to Variety.com. Watch their conversation below!
