Although “A House of Dynamite” star Idris Elba did say at the Netflix release’s Venice Film Festival press conference that he “does not have the courage to be in politics,” he certainly does not shy away from playing heads of state on film. Over a decade after his Golden Globe-nominated performance as Nelson Mandela, former President of South Africa, in “Long Walk to Freedom,” the British actor has played both the British Prime Minister in “Heads of State,” and the President of the United States in the new political thriller from Best Director Oscar-winner Kathryn Bigelow.
Speaking to IndieWire over Zoom, Elba said that while he is still not interested in being a politician, “I’m not shy of perhaps bringing my voice to something, bringing my soapbox in some way and articulating what I’d like to see happening.” But in accepting the presidential role in “A House of Dynamite,” he was not driven by some pain point he wanted to address, as much as he was excited to work with the people behind the film.
Diagnosing why exactly he seems like the right person to play political leaders, the seven-time Primetime Emmy nominee said, “You see actors oftentimes get into civil roles because of [the] skillset transfer into these things, but it’s really not something good that I’m going for.” He added, “I read this thing that said, ‘Typically we choose our leaders because of height and length of forehead.’ And I was like, ‘Well, yeah, I’m tall and I do have a forehead, so maybe that’s what’s going on here.’”
Below, Elba shares what it was like to not only play a President who must react to a nuclear missile headed for the United States but also what it was like to watch the movie as an audience member, without prior access to the full scope of the film, which also features strong performances from a star-studded cast that includes Rebecca Ferguson and Tracy Letts.
The following interview has been condensed for length and clarity.
IndieWire: Earlier this year, we saw you play the British Prime Minister in “Heads of State,” and now you play the President of the United States in “A House of Dynamite.” When and how did you become the go-to guy to play a world leader?
Idris Elba: When Morgan Freeman said, “I ain’t doing that no more.”
That’s a better answer than anything I could have thought.
Yeah, I snuck in there. It’s not by design. I found it very funny playing the Prime Minister and knowing that I am about to play the President. I was thinking about [how] the films are going to be in a similar cycle. So I was like, “OK, people are going to ask me about this. What am I trying to say?” I’m not trying to say anything. I’m not running for politics or anything like that.
If you’re following Morgan Freeman, the next step is deities. Are you ready for that?
I don’t know.
As far as how this film relates to more of your past work, I was wondering if you were attracted to “A House of Dynamite” as a story giving audiences a peek behind a power structure, similar to how “The Wire” informed audiences about the goings-on of different institutions. Are you particularly intrigued by scripts about how these systems and processes work?
There’s always a curiosity when I’m playing characters, especially characters that have a complexity to them. Maybe a natural contradiction in what they are and what they need to do, and who they are and what they need to say, and who I am and what I look like playing this character. The complexities are really interesting to me. John Luther is a detective who is pretty much a crook at the same time.
I guess I’m attracted to that type of character, but at the same time, I don’t really feel there’s a sort of real formula to the way I go for characters. And probably I should have a formula, but I don’t. I actually go for, “Have I done it before? Could I do a good job? What would I learn from this? Is there a skill set that I get out of it?” I’ve learned to do all kinds of crazy things, from sword-fighting to driving cars really fast by way of these different characters.
Was there at all a message in this project that you were attracted to? In terms of wanting people to see this film because of what it means?
Not in the beginning, if I’m really honest. I was just like, “I’d like to work with Kathryn Bigelow.” A bucket list opportunity. When I got to understand what the film was about and who my character is, I definitely latched onto the idea that [when] we elect a leader, I wonder, do we think long and hard enough about what and who we’re electing, and what will happen if we put our lives in that person’s hands?
I suppose playing the character as a human being as opposed to a POTUS, big, strong guy, [who’s] got to make all the decisions… Just someone that actually is a human being, wants to talk to his wife, doesn’t have the answers, isn’t afraid to ask, his shoe’s a little tight, his coffee’s a little cold. Playing that human side hopefully reminds the audience that, actually, when we do decide who’s our leader, just remember they’re human. And this is what it looks like when they have to make a very complex decision on all of our behalfs. This is what it looks like.
Would you say there’s any sort of partisanship applied to your character?
We definitely ignored that. We tried to show none whatsoever. And I don’t know, as an audience member, what did you think? Did you think that he was there on one side or the other?
I found it pretty objective. There’s things you can read into, but it does not fully imply he’s this war hawk. You talked about the goal of him being human, the work reflects that. But shifting gears, do you know if you were one of the first actors cast in this film?
I’m not sure, actually. I don’t know. I remember Kathryn talking about wanting to know who her president would be, and that might help her put together some of the other pieces. But I wasn’t clear if I was the first person. I know that she said to me quite frankly that she didn’t want to speak to any other actors about it, just wanted me, and to that I was like, “Wow, no pressure. You sure you don’t want to speak to Morgan Freeman?”
Did you have any say in your cabinet? Because if you’re someone coming in early, are you able to then say, “Well, I think this person would be good for this role.” Or anything along those lines?
No. Again, I didn’t have any exposure to who was going to be in the movie, and by the time I got to shoot that segment of the film, they had already shot everything else. But needless to say, it’s Kathryn and her taste for amazing actors to pick the characters that she creates is good. She has high standards.
Outside of Jonah Hauer-King and Brian Tee, who were around you physically? Did you actually get to work with this whole cast? Or were you acting opposite someone reading lines as, say, Tracy Letts?
No, I was pretty isolated, apart from the characters that were in my story. And I got to listen to playback for the questions and, honestly, I was lucky that I got Tracy Letts’s performance as my driving material. And they had my performance, even though I hadn’t performed it. They had me [do] a telephone run of my lines before I even shot it, which was a bit like, “Oh, I don’t even know what I’m going to do.” But I just trusted the script, and they used that in their side of the coverage.
In terms of your character’s First Lady, who is away in Kenya, had you ever met Renée Elise Goldsberry? Because that’s such an emotional moment in the film, but it sounds like that might’ve also been playback.
Yeah, actually, that was the one casting opportunity that Kathryn sort of asked [for] my opinion, and we were really lucky to get Renée, she was amazing. And I did. She came to set, but she shot all of her stuff in Kenya, but we were lucky to speak to each other and just look each other in the eye and have a quick connection, I guess.
What level of improvisation was part of this film? Hearing you talk about the basketball game, that wasn’t all lined up in the script? You guys were building that as you went along?
Yeah, it very much felt like a documentary. I think Kathryn wanted that. She didn’t want to know what I was going to say or what I was going to do, and of course, the lines that were written, I say those lines, but if I decided to take off my shoe and say, “Hey, what’s going on with the shoe?” That was completely improvised. She encouraged that. When I meet the girls on the basketball court and I’m telling them a story, I just made one up, and then I had to remember what I made up because we did it a couple of times, and I actually really felt quite liberated by that because it just meant that I was really in the character, in the moment. There’s cameras everywhere, and you don’t know where they all are, so there’s no point acting, just being is what it is and being reactive.
And there were scenes, there were some lines where Jonah and I were in the middle [of talking], and one of them made it into the scene; where he’s talking and I stop him and I say, “How old are you, son?” And Jonah was so great, he just made it up. I said, “You married?” And he goes, “Yes, sir.” And just that break in the lines brought a certain realism, and Barry [Ackroyd] was on camera, and he’s trying to find this. “Hell, this isn’t written down, what is this?” And it really just helped the realism aspect of it.
Speaking of how real things got, did you actually have a close look at what you say is a diner menu of nuclear options that this president has to review? Would an actual POTUS see that to a T?
We wouldn’t know if it was to the T, but [we] very much designed on what we understood to be fact, the choices the POTUS has in that box all the time. And it is a menu of counterstrikes, thinking in an emergency. And yeah, even though it wasn’t to the T as we might understand it, it was very much close, and it was shocking. And many choices of what to do [were] mind-blowing for me. When we shot it, he opened it up, and here’s this long incredible speech about it, and I’m like, “What?!”
So you’re taking a look at it for the first time in the scene, not quite beforehand?
No, it was all real.
An authentic surprise. Now that you’ve seen the whole film, what is it like watching it and dealing with its entertainment factor versus its realism?
I watched the film as an audience member because I didn’t know much about the first two acts. I had read them obviously, but I didn’t know what to expect. I didn’t know who was cast. I didn’t know what the atmosphere would look like and feel like. So when I watched the movie, I was like anyone who watched it for the first time, and even my segment was like, “Oh my. . . It blew my mind.” I sat there [for] probably about three or four, five minutes just in silence afterwards. “What did I just watch? Was that a movie or was that a documentary?”
Some of the experience is a bit of frustration with your character until we actually see what’s going on with him. Did you know that when you were playing him, or did you not pick up on that until you were actually watching the film?
I didn’t know that, actually. From my character’s perspective, “You’re telling me I need to get on the phone, the phone is not working. Who am I talking to? Who is this guy? Wait, you’re waiting for me? I’m busy, I’m doing something. I was in the middle of something. What’s happening here?” Playing catch-up. And then when I watched the movie, I was like, “The president needs to get on the phone. What is he doing?!”
And then you watch the movie, “Is it a basketball game? Wait, what?” I felt the frustration for the audience because it was like, “Isn’t he supposed to be on the phone right now? Why is his phone not working?” But there you go, again, that’s probably very close to how it would go down.
I believe you’ve directed or are going to direct a couple upcoming features, “Above the Below” and “Infernus,” since working on “A House of Dynamite.” Did you have any takeaways on that front from working with Kathryn Bigelow?
I’m directing my next film now. I’ve learned a lot working with Kathryn. She has this incredible, observant perspective on how she makes films. It makes me think about my story, my characters, my environments much deeper, and I’m really looking forward to getting behind the camera, having now worked with one of my directing heroes.
“A House of Dynamite,” a Netflix release, is now in select theaters on Friday, October 10. The film will begin streaming on Netflix on Friday, October 24.
