MORGAN FREEMAN talks to GENEVIEVE PARLEY about playing Nelson Mandela in Clint Eastwood’s new movie, Invictus, which is based on John Carlin’s book Playing The Enemy: Nelson Mandela And The Game That Made A Nation.

GENEVIEVE PARLEY: You’ve wanted to play Nelson Mandela for a long time. Can you talk about that journey?

MORGAN FREEMAN: When he was asked during the press conference at the publication of his book, Long Walk to Freedom, “Mr. Mandela, if your book becomes a movie, who would you like to play you?” He said, “Morgan Freeman.” So, from then on, it’s like, “Okay. So, Morgan Freeman is going to be Mandela somewhere down the line.” So, we spent a lot of time, Lori [McCreary] and I – my producing partner at Revelations – we were trying all this time to develop A Long Walk to Freedom into a script. Couldn’t happen. And then, in ’06 I believe, we got this book proposal from John Carlin and it’s perfect.

GP: You always describe acting as playing, which is nice to hear. I was wondering when you played Nelson Mandela, did it become more than that?

MF: No. It might have become more than that were I working with someone other than Clint Eastwood. He is so enabling. He is so out of your way, as an actor. He likes to watch actors play. And I don’t think I do anything other than that when I’m working. I’m just playing. Work is something else.

GP: Mandela’s one of the most revered people in the world. How did you go about developing and preparing to play him? And what was the most important thing that you wanted to get across in portraying Nelson Mandela?

MF: Well, when he said that he would prefer that I be the one to play him in 90-whatever-that-was, I had to start then preparing myself to do it. So, I met him not long after that. And I said to him, “If I’m going to play you I’m going to have to have access to you. I’m going to have to get close enough to hold your hand.” And, over the years, while we were trying to develop A Long Walk to Freedom, that is what happened. Whenever we were in proximity, like a city away, for instance, I would know about it. And I would go to him. And have lunch, have dinner, or sit with him while he’s waiting to go on stage for whatever. And during that time I would sit and hold Madiba’s hand. Now, that’s not for camaraderie. I find that if I hold your hand I get your energy. It transfers. And I have a sense of how you feel. That’s important to me trying to become another person.

I have a lot of pressure to bring a character like that to life in any kind of real sense. The danger, of course, is always at caricature. You start indicating what the person is like: I’m superman. And so, the biggest challenge I had of course was to sound like him. And everything else is kind of easy to do. To walk like him and he has a few tics and things that I noticed and I could pick those up. I didn’t have any agenda, as it were, in playing the role, other than to bring it as close to reality as I possibly could. The agenda is incorporated in the script. And all I had to do was learn my lines.

INVICTUS is in cinemas from Thursday, rated [PG]. www.invictusmovie.warnerbros.com

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