Don Chea­dle: ​‘Film­mak­ing is a very risk-averse business’

Don Cheadle’s career has all the unpre­dictabil­i­ty and idio­syn­crasy that befits his foun­da­tion in jazz. In his 40 years as a per­former, he’s done every­thing from award-win­ning biopics; to social­ly con­scious doc­u­men­taries; to Mar­vel superheroes.

Through­out it all he grounds his per­for­mances in an old-school grav­i­tas and uses his plat­form to speak about his val­ues, be it stop­ping African geno­cides or pro­tect­ing trans chil­dren. In Noah Baumbach’s White Noise, he plays Pro­fes­sor Mur­ray Siskind, who faces an ​“Air­borne Tox­ic Event” while hop­ing to become the fore­most author­i­ty of Elvis. We spoke to him about imposter syn­drome, the busi­ness of Hol­ly­wood, and dooms­day prep.

LWLies: When you start­ed out did you have a pic­ture for the career you want­ed to have ahead of you?

Don Chea­dle: No, in high school I spent extracur­ric­u­lar time between the­atre, and I was pret­ty heav­i­ly into the jazz band, and I played, and I sang in a city-wide band. When I grad­u­at­ed from high school, it was kind of a toss-up between pur­su­ing act­ing and pur­su­ing jazz. And I made a weath­er choice and moved in with Cal­i­for­nia. But it was also about what I thought I was going to real­ly com­mit to and be able to do at a high­er lev­el and music at that time was just a lit­tle fur­ther out of my reach.

So, I accept­ed a schol­ar­ship to The Cal­i­for­nia Insti­tute of The Arts and stud­ied the­atre and start­ed work­ing my junior year and that was kind of it. After Dev­il in a Blue Dress, and that year I did five movies and I start­ed think­ing I could cob­ble some­thing togeth­er that will look like a career. But it was always pep­pered with doubt. I remem­ber call­ing my mom at one of those points and she said, ​“You’ve been talk­ing about want­i­ng to be an actor for a long, long time and I don’t know that you should just give it up right now. Think about the regrets that you will have.” My mom was kind of a frus­trat­ed per­former who had nev­er real­ly pur­sued that, and she knew you don’t want to be sit­ting it around think­ing ​“If only I hadn’t quit.”

From that point were there roles that you look back on as being pivotal?

It just always feels like a house built on sand. I nev­er felt like I ​“made it”. Some peo­ple would say it would be Dev­il in a Blue Dress. Some peo­ple would say it was Hotel Rwan­da, or the Ocean’s fran­chise or the Mar­vel fran­chise. But the expe­ri­ence from the inside is there’s always this feel­ing of need­ing to hus­tle a lit­tle bit. I’m not try­ing to be coy or false­ly mod­est or any­thing, but it’s a neu­rot­ic busi­ness and I don’t always play the game.

When I grad­u­at­ed, I would leave and go do the­atre dur­ing pilot sea­son because I’d get to do Shake­speare or Fugard. But it didn’t make any sense for the busi­ness because you’re sup­posed to hang around and try to get a pilot. So, I always had a coun­ter­in­tu­itive thing with me and the ​“busi­ness” I was fol­low­ing things that I had a pas­sion for but con­verse­ly that meant always won­der­ing if you’re in the right career path. It’s only until very recent­ly that I’ve been like… I’m prob­a­bly gonna be okay.

Do the block­busters facil­i­tate pas­sion projects like star­ring and direct­ing in Miles Ahead?

There’s an idea of ​“one for them, one for me.” But it’s still about does this speak to me or not? And will it come togeth­er? The first day of Hotel Rwan­da my agent called me at lunch and goes, ​“I just want to let you know there’s no mon­ey in escrow for this movie so I can send you a tick­et home.” But I was in South Africa and my kids are in school and we’d moved into a house. The pro­duc­er float­ed the movie on cred­it cards for two weeks until the mon­ey start­ed again. So even when you think it’s hap­pen­ing like, it may not be happening.

When it comes to direct­ing again, does that unpre­dictabil­i­ty put you off?

It’s very stress­ful and it absolute­ly fac­tors into your deci­sion mak­ing. More often than not, it’s not going to ​“work”. It’s rare that all the pieces line up and some­thing that is real­ly good, and peo­ple see it and you’re proud of it, chances are much high­er that it doesn’t do that.

I’m always so amazed by hear­ing about that lev­el of unpre­dictabil­i­ty in this giant industry.

Yeah. It’s wild. It’s a very risk-averse busi­ness, everyone’s look­ing for an excuse to say no to some­thing. They’re not look­ing for a rea­son to say yes because that could mean you lose your head. Every­body is fire­able in this business.

Hotel Rwan­da aside, there’s a clear thread of social con­science in your work. Where do you view the role of activism in art?

I think we’re very priv­i­leged to have the oppor­tu­ni­ty for peo­ple to like in this inter­view, to be asked what we think. The job that we do requires us to pro­mote and talk to the press and media and gar­ner a cer­tain amount of atten­tion based on what we’re doing so I want to use that in accor­dance with my values.

I found myself think­ing about Hotel Rwan­da dur­ing White Noise, there’s a sim­i­lar ques­tion of in a cri­sis, would you become the hero, or would you flail?

I think you do both, right? You flail and you see some­times that you’ve got that hero in you. In Hotel Rwan­da Paul wasn’t think­ing of try­ing to be a hero. I love that in the begin­ning he’s just try­ing to keep his job. It was very per­son­al and then it became some­thing big­ger. And who is a hero in White Noise? The same per­son who saves their fam­i­ly might also try to kill somebody.

The very spe­cif­ic tone of the film is set with an intro­duc­tion of Mur­ray lec­tur­ing about car crash­es in Amer­i­can cin­e­ma. What did you want to come across?

Mur­ray is telling peo­ple how to process death, mis­ery and vio­lence and I thought it was a very inter­est­ing and fun­ny take on what it is that we were about to see. He is sort of the MC and I think when you lis­ten to the words, it’s true. It’s sup­posed to be devoid of the emo­tion of what it’s real­ly sup­posed to be depict­ing and instead the car crash is a love let­ter to our abil­i­ty to pull off spec­tac­u­lar things. It’s dis­joint­ed with the real­i­ty which makes a lot of sense in the movie where everyone’s try­ing to fig­ure out their emo­tions. What is the impact of emo­tions when everybody’s dis­con­nect­ed from the feelings?

You spoke at the begin­ning about the role of music in your life, there’s a scene in the film where you and Adam Dri­ver face off. of Hitler’s moth­er ver­sus Elvis’s moth­er aca­d­e­m­ic per­for­mance that to me seems so musi­cal. Do you think your inher­ent musi­cal­i­ty was key to that scene?

I had to trust Noah as that scene was ulti­mate­ly put togeth­er with what Dan­ny Elf­man did with the music, the way that it was then cut with real footage, the way that it was all the post work that was done on it. We had no idea about how it would play when we were doing it. We could read the script and we knew there was gonna be some inter­cut between the train wreck, but all of that oth­er footage, but we nev­er heard the music for it and that’s what took that scene to anoth­er place.

The jux­ta­po­si­tion of those images between the Elvis crowds and the Nazis real­ly made it scary and very rich. That’s the great thing about movies. You have the third oppor­tu­ni­ty to direct the movie again in the edit­ing room.

It’s based on a 1985 book but real­ly cap­tured this cur­rent near-apoc­a­lypse atmos­phere. Did that speak to how you’ve been feeling?

Yeah it’s cycli­cal, right? We have these times where we feel like we’re liv­ing in the best time. And then 10 years lat­er it feels like the last days. We’re in a cold war again and Ukraine, cli­mate change, covid, mid covid, long covid, and present covid. So, we’re right back in the sweet spot of what that movie was deal­ing with. I hope when peo­ple see it that they will feel that it’s a cool frame of ref­er­ence for what they’re liv­ing through.

When you’ve done some­thing that’s so much about con­fronting the fear of death, like White Noise, does that have any impact on your future plans?

Well, I’ve start­ed my bunker bud­get. I’ve start­ed stock­pil­ing weapons.

Wait, you only just start­ed stock­pil­ing weapons?! You are years behind most of us.

I know I’m late to the game! I’m an Amer­i­can, I’m already sup­posed to have five AKs by now. But being seri­ous, the piece rings that bell in a way that makes peo­ple intro­spec­tive and thought­ful about it and come out of the oth­er side not think­ing we got­ta like hit the mat­tress­es and get ready to kill every­body. It asks you to start reflect­ing on what’s impor­tant and not in a dis­sim­i­lar way than when the pan­dem­ic start­ed. You start to pri­ori­tise and real­ly think about how you want to spend your time and what mat­ters. Time is the one com­mod­i­ty that you can’t buy. The movie made me think about that again, but not in a dif­fer­ent way, just in anoth­er addi­tive, just anoth­er brick in the wall.