Maher­sha­la Ali: ​‘There’s been a sys­tem­at­ic dimin­ish­ing of voic­es of colour’

Maher­sha­la Ali may have come to world­wide atten­tion in 2016 with his Oscar-win­ning role in Moon­light, but he’d been graft­ing away for over a decade with minor roles in tele­vi­sion and film, before final­ly break­ing through in 2013 as slick lob­by­ist Remy Dan­ton in House of Cards.

He’s back on TV screens in the third sea­son of True Detec­tive, but in Green Book, his first major film role since Moon­light, Ali plays Dr Don Shirley, a con­cert pianist who, in 1962, hires Vig­go Mortenson’s blue-col­lar bounc­er, Tony ​“Lip”, to act as his dri­ver and fix­er on a tour of the Deep South. In the unex­pect­ed hands of direc­tor Peter Far­rel­ly (bet­ter known for broad come­dies like There’s Some­thing About Mary and Dumb and Dumb­er) it’s an odd-cou­ple crowd-pleas­er that will no doubt see Ali back on the awards trail this year.

LWLies: You must have been sent hun­dreds of scripts after Moon­light. How do you begin read­ing a project? What’s the first thing you look for?

Ali: For me there’s three types of scripts. There’s the ones that you can’t get past page 30. There’s the ones you get past 30 and you’re want­i­ng it to work, like the premise is good, the char­ac­ter might be great, but it just wasn’t exe­cut­ed well and the third act falls apart, or what­ev­er. Then the third is the one that just pops. And for me, when I can hear and feel that character’s rhythm and sort of find that voice in that first read­ing, that’s some­thing that I want to engage in further.

That hap­pened with Green Book. It was the first script I’d read in a long time where I laughed out loud. In part because of how well it was struc­tured, but some­times because of the inap­pro­pri­ate­ness of some of [it], like know­ing you’re walk­ing a real fine line with this [fried] chick­en scene… I think and hope we lived up to how well it was written.

There’s an increas­ing pub­lic aware­ness not just of the sto­ries we tell, but who tells them and from which per­spec­tive. Is that some­thing you think about when con­sid­er­ing a project?

I think that all those issues have their place because there’s been a long sys­tem­at­ic dimin­ish­ing of voic­es of colour, and now we’re liv­ing in a time where there are peo­ple empow­ered enough to say, ​‘Hey, peo­ple of colour have to have their place in these sto­ries,’ in front and behind the cam­era. But I think it’s easy to just slap that stick­er on any­thing that has a black per­son in it that a black per­son didn’t direct or write, and some­times it’s not nec­es­sar­i­ly appropriate.

This sto­ry is told from the per­spec­tive of Tony ​“Lip”, and [writer] Nick Val­le­lon­ga was doing a sto­ry about an incred­i­ble jour­ney that his father had, and in doing so you absolute­ly have to go into Dr Shirley’s sto­ry. So if you’re in [Nick’s] posi­tion, what do you do? Do you give up your con­tri­bu­tion to the sto­ry and say there’s a black guy in it, here take the whole story?

What I appre­ci­ate so much about Pete doing it is that he was so will­ing to lis­ten and was so hum­ble about it. He went to Octavia [Spencer] and want­ed her input, and came to me and was very, very sen­si­tive about my voice and my opin­ion, and I know that had an effect on the sto­ry. So as long as some­one is real­ly open to your feed­back, which was not my expe­ri­ence ear­ly on in tele­vi­sion, com­ing up and say­ing, ​‘I wouldn’t say this,’ or, ​’I wouldn’t wear this,’ and they were like, ​‘Yeah you would’, [or] ​‘You’re gonna wear it any­way or do it any­way’… This was a very dif­fer­ent expe­ri­ence, where I was lis­tened to and I feel like it had some sort of impres­sion and effect on the story.

What was it like work­ing with Viggo?

We met at an Oscar brun­cheon a few weeks before the Oscars and we real­ly con­nect­ed. I think there were just a few peo­ple around and Vig­go and I kin­da locked onto each oth­er and start­ed talk­ing and the next thing you know no one else was around… I was just thrilled by the organ­ic con­nec­tion we had and I real­ly admired him, both as a per­son and an artist. He’s one of the best actors in the world, and now I’ve had this expe­ri­ence of work­ing close­ly with him. A lot of the time it was just he and I at work all day for two weeks straight. So just to be in that mas­ter­class and to be chal­lenged in that way was real­ly inspiring.

In what way did he chal­lenge you?

I think his speci­fici­ty. There are things that he does take after take that you would nev­er notice, but those are real, con­scious choic­es. When the arm goes up on the back of the chair or when you turn around and deliv­er a thought, how clothes are worn… There’s such a height­ened atten­tion to detail that was all in ser­vice of the sto­ry or the char­ac­ter. It wasn’t just indulgent.

And how did you find your­self respond­ing to that? 

I think a place where my metic­u­lous nature can find space to breathe – and for it not to be a dis­trac­tion, but some­thing that makes a con­tri­bu­tion to some­thing larg­er than myself – is a real gift for my per­son­al­i­ty. So final­ly see­ing an exam­ple of that [way of work­ing], and being in such close prox­im­i­ty to it felt like it gave me per­mis­sion to go deep­er into how I per­son­al­ly work. It was an expe­ri­ence I’m very grate­ful for, because I took that with me. I start­ed True Detec­tive a week lat­er and that three months with Vig­go kind of set me up to take a cer­tain approach to the work that I felt real­ly jus­ti­fied in because of my time with him.

Green Book is released 1 Feb­ru­ary. Read the LWLies review.