Don Cheadle On Chris Rock, Kevin Hart & The Oscars Being So White

Don Cheadle

Golden Globe Award winner actor, producer and director Don Cheadle known for his roles in “Hotel Rwanda” and Showtime’s House of Lies is taking on the role of Miles Davis in the upcoming film “Miles Ahead’’ the biopic on Miles Davis, a famous jazz musician in which Don is co-writing and directing. In a recent interview with the New York Times magazine, Cheadle explains the Oscars whitness, why you won’t see him in a comedy anytime soon and his new Miles Davis biopic. Check out a few expects from the interview below. 

Kevin Hart

On why he does not do more comedies:

Kevin Hart is doing all of them. F-cking Kevin Hart. Who actually was a contributor on the film. Thank you, Kevin.

On his first acting performance:

The first play I ever did, a fifth-grade production of Charlotte’s Web, in I played Templeton the Rat. I remember going to a little café up the street and studying my lines. I wanted to be off-book very early. I wanted to know what a rat was thinking and feeling.

On why the Miles Davis movie was not shot in a typical biopic style:

I just thought that a movie about this person needed to be as mercurial and unexpected and improvisational as his music was. As opposed to a movie that’s, like, checking off all the boxes about Miles Davis’s life. What’s true is the spirit, what’s ‘real’ is that it’s truly Miles Davis-esque. Some people may quibble about omissions, that, for instance, the movie doesn’t focus enough on Davis’s spousal abuse. Twitter beef? Blog shit. Whatever.

Chris Rock

On what he tweeted to this years Oscars Host Chris Rock when the announced the nominations:

They got me parking cars on G level.

On why he didn’t go to this years Oscars:

I did not go because I was boycotting but because “it’s not fun.”

On what he believes lead to #OscarsSoWhite: 

That’s a symptom of things that are not happening inside the halls of power where movies are being decided.

On being in “the room” in Hollywood that will help Hollywood become more diverse: 

I don’t know.  I’m in a room. I’m in my room. I think the room’s change, and it depends on when you ask. Come back in five years, it’s like, ‘Oh, you’re not in the room anymore.’ This business retires you. You don’t retire from the business very often.

I know very few people who’ve ‘made it’ and feel like they are just good now and don’t have to hustle anymore. There are probably three or four, and two of them are wrong.

Read the entire interview here. “Miles Ahead” will be in theaters April 1st.

By –@Thankm3soon