Idris Elba and Taraji P. Henson’s No Good Deed has turned into the sleeper hit of the late summer. It was the #1 film at the domestic box office last weekend and it was still in the top five this weekend. Considering it was probably a relatively inexpensive production (little to no CGI, no massive marketing campaign), I’d like to think that Hollywood producers will see the box office numbers and realize that Idris Elba is a lead actor, you know? Anyway, to promote No Good Deed, Idris sat down for a Reddit Ask Me Anything. You can read the full piece here. Some highlights:
Working on RocknRolla: “Rocknrolla was wicked. It was a lot of laughs. All the actors – me and Gerry Butler became really good friends from that film, and Tom Hardy. Guy Ritchie is a genius, and it was just like making a film with your college mates.”
His American accent for Stringer Bell on The Wire: “The truth is I had been living in America by 3-4 years by the time I got The Wire, so my ear is pretty good at picking up accents and I’m a bit of a mimic, so it was a combination of living in the country and picking up an East Coast accent for Stringer. So the short answer is: it took me 4 years, but in honesty I cheated because I was living in America.”
His favorite classic animated Disney movie: “What is my favourite classic animated movie…dudududu… what is my favourite… that’s a good question. At the risk of sounding corny, I think it is The Jungle Book. And it’s not animated, but it fits in that world, Mary Poppins. I loved Mary Poppins. Classic, man, just classic! The songs, the animation, amazin’.”
How he prefers to deal with fans: “Ehmm- I really like it when fans just say “Hey man, I’m just – nice to meet you, you know. this is who I am” a lot of fans don’t say hello, or just forget the ordinary common niceties. They just go straight to “can I take a picture” and sometimes that’s, it’s nice to be spoken to, not spoken at.”
Are we cancelling the Apocalypse today? “Uh…haven’t you heard? I cancelled it once. When I cancel it, it stays cancelled.”
Working with Nicolas Cage on Ghost Rider: “Yeah – Nic Cage came back one day on set, and he came down to set and he looked a little bit tired, a little bit – kind of like he’d ben up all night. So I was like ‘hey Nic man, how you doing man’ and he said ‘i’m alright’ and I said ‘You seem a little spoked out’ and he said ‘Yeah man, I went up to Dracula’s castle…the ruins up in the mountains, and I stayed the night’ and i said ‘What?! Why|?’ and he said ‘I just had to channel the energy, and it was pretty spooky up there.’ We were shooting in Romania, Transylvania, and he just went up there to spend the night, as you do. And then he walked away. True story.”
His favorite animal: “My favourite animal is a dog. I’m allergic to dogs, but I love dogs. But my second favourite animal is a lion.”
What he thinks of Prometheus: “I think it’s an incredible film. I think that the finished product was, you know, full of all the promises it had promised. I suspect the story was a little dense in places for some members of the audience, but didn’t let them take away from its sort of ambition and achievement. Ridley Scott is an incredible director.”
Idris talks a lot about The Wire and Luther too. He says he wants Luther to come back to TV, or maybe do a Luther movie. He also talks a lot about directing himself in Mumford & Sons’ “Lover of the Light” and how he basically just asked the band if he could direct it himself, and that’s what he came up with. Apparently, the guys in the band are HUGE Idris fans and they asked him to do whatever he wanted.
I LOVE his Nic Cage story – it’s so Nic Cage-y!! I also like how diplomatic he is about Prometheus, which a lot of people didn’t like. I was one of those people. I never blamed Idris or any of the actors for the problems with the film – they were doing their best with a terrible script.
Photos courtesy of WENN, Reddit.
