♪ >> from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. charlie: concussion is the new film starring will smith. theakes on the role of pathologist that found a connection between injuries and the nfl. say theyike tom brady plan to see the film when it is released christmas day. here is a look at concussion. >> when i was a boy, kevin was here. en was here.

america was here. you could be anything, you could do anything. as long as you are an american. after there broken loss of hollister, who had slipped into financial ruin. >> why does this hero of the city die in disgrace? i can tell something is wrong. >> in 25 years i have never requested a test like this. what are you looking for? >> i am the wrong person to have discovered this. >> if you do not speak for them, who will? ? >> repetitive head trauma shocks the brain. it turns you into someone else. >> whatever it takes to keep

them in the game. >> get me a meeting with the commissioner. >> they do not want to talk to you. >> they are terrified of you. war with theto corporation with a day of the week. will smith: if you continue to deny my work, your men will die. i have to keep going. these men are not machines. we must honor our warriors. >> do you understand the impact of what you are doing? will smith: tell the truth. ♪

tell the truth. ♪ >> think you're going to be an american hero. joining me now is the writer, director, and a couple of the stars. what brought this together for you? >> there was an epidemic of football players who were withdrawing, committing suicide, and falling into financial ruin. there was see gq article that ridley scott had bought. that is how the film came to be. he was involved from the very beginning. he is part of the fabric of our family as filmmakers. i'm an old journalist. and i immerse myself completely in the story.

what is great about will smith is his joy and preciousness and professionalism matches bennett's. charlie rose: why did you choose this? will smith: this one was very different from my normal process of choosing. how it happens, you get a screenplay on friday night. so you can read over the weekend. so they can know by monday. i get a phone call and my daughter says daddy a man is on the phone named ridley scott. that's not just some man. that is sir ridley scott.

he said i have a gift for you. he sent me this screenplay. i was thinking to myself. this ain't no gift. i am a football dad. my son played football for four years. grew up in philadelphia with the eagles. i was deeply conflicted about being the person to bring this film to life. it is a very inconvenient truth. a part of me was like, would i be hypocritical?

when he was growing up in nigeria, heaven was here, and america was here. it was the place god sent all his favorite people. i was so moved by his life and his story. became deeply impelled as a parent because i had information. charlie: his messages that human beings should not play football. will: that is not the part of

the message that i connected to. for the evolution of human kind, we can't discard scientific truth. the idea that repetitive head trauma can potentially cause long-term brain damage should not be something we had a hard time accepting. yet we did. charlie: why were you insisting on gugu being a part of the film? [laughter] right now,to do this right here. a large part of bennett's journey is his journey as a man. he was incomplete as a man that he knew that he could not

fulfill his mission unless he had the right partner. gugu's character completed him. the moment i laid eyes on gugu, i knew it. charlie: tell us what the film is about. peter: in a strange way it is about joy and discovery. his only desire as a pathologist, his job is to usher these people across the divide to the divine, to heaven.

doing this by solving the riddle of their deaths. our cycle is not complete until we answer the question had a -- how did we get here? one day he got the body of one of the most mythological football players who ever played, mike webster. he didn't even know who the steelers where even though he lived in pittsburgh. how did this man become homeless and then die so mysteriously? everybody else want to do this man buried. how could you voluntarily not know something? he spiritually stole the brain and figured out that webster had died of a disease that no one had ever seen before. repetitive blows, not necessarily concussions from all those blows that a football player takes to the head 79,000 of them. 90,000 hits. it unlocks a killer protein that

moves through the brain like sludge. it is very different from what you would get from boxing. boxers, once they get hit, they don't get back in the ring for weeks or months. in football, it is not the knockout blow. it is the thousands of little blows. on one play you can take six blows to the head. you add those up and you were talking about blows in the tens of thousands. boxers, their diseases more like als or parkinson's. a very different biological mechanism. charlie: why don't helmets protect you? peter: what we're talking about is on the inside. helmets protect you from the outside. the brain is in a cavity surrounded by fluid. there is tremendous movement. even if we were to move our heads back-and-forth, literally like a ping-pong ball in a jar of fluid. it bounces back and fourth thousands of times.

that's what we're talking about, not blows to the head from the outside. will: something that bennett said that was very interesting is that the helmet is part of the problem. he says that in american football because the equipment is so good the helmet is so seemingly protective, that the players feel comfortable using the head as a weapon. in reality, it is not stopping your brain from slamming into the skull. charlie: any contradictions for you, any pushback? peter: we knew what we were walking into. we know that football is not a sport. it is part of the social and cultural fabric of the country.

on thanksgiving day we think of the cowboys in the lines. we knew we were walking into a cultural phenomenon. we all stayed true to our mission, which was character. the man that will plays was truly one of the most unusual and joyful people. whistleblowers are complex people driven by complex motivations. he was so pure spirit. you stay focused on character. the consequences to the sport, that is what is happening around us. charlie: he did it because it was the right thing to do? will: what is really interesting about bennett, how i try to understand the character.

what i found with bennett was that he wanted to be accepted as an american. everything in his life, he has eight degrees. the way that he dressed. where he lived, where his friends were. everything was about living up to this this spiritual ideal of what it means to be an american. when he was presented, very ironically, with the knowledge of cte. this guy who loves america and is chasing the american dream just happens to be the guy who discovers the disease that the player of america's greatest

game get. for me, when i connected to that idea, i could see how this was a spiritual mission for him. he had to keep going. he could not stop. theecame how he earned spiritual right to have all of the gifts that he has in his life. it was really complex, but deeply faith based for him. charlie: what role does his wife play? gugu: i wasn't really interested in doing a football movie per se. that is not part of my personal cultural heritage. the film felt so much bigger than that. in terms of this relationship between his wife and the doctor.

both characters coming as immigrants to america. prima really started as needing the support of bennett. their relationship sort of involves in a sort of delicate eccentric way. she breathes humanity into his very scientific world. he is so consumed by his science that she brings a warmth and a human quality to him. she becomes the emotional and moral compass of this journey that he goes on. inadvertently taking on the nfl. charlie: it sets up this clip where you don't feel adequate to complete the mission.

will: what i was a boy growing up in nigeria, heaven was here and america was here. i have never wanted anything as much as i wanted to be except as an american. mike webster goes mad, and nobody asks why. they make fun of him. they insult him on tv. they want to pretend that his disease does not exist. they want to bury me. i am the wrong person to discover this. peter: her character is almost more than that. he builds her a dream house.

she was an intrinsic part of the dream. he needed her to unlock the rest of the dream, family, americanness. they build a house in a beautiful leafy suburb outside of pittsburgh. a dream house that they have to abandon because he was exiled and destroyed. charlie: did you tone it down at all? peter: not at all. there was a strange moment when we were accused of something we had no idea was on the air. i had no communication with the nfl. didn't want it. they had nothing to offer us. we were making a story about this man not about the nfl. charlie: you believe they want to do something about concussions? that they are aware of the danger and are prepared to take action? peter: i believe the nfl wants to protect its bottom line. they will do whatever they have to do to do that. including saying the right things.

doing as much as they possibly can. i do believe they are doing as much as it is possible to do to protect the players. the bigger question is the sport in general. whether you can really do something about this or is it just baked into the sport. knowing what we know and information, as long as a football player knows that this can happen is incumbent upon them to make that decision. it is the same with putting your children into pee-wee or pop warner football. is this something you want to engage in? that is upon you to decide. ♪

charlie: this is a clip from our brain series. this is a noble laureate talking about traumatic brain injuries. >> the brain is a gelatinous organ that is protected by being encased in a rigid, bony skull. when we move about and there is minimal movement in the brain. it's the result of two kinds of forces, impact and inertial forces. there can be serious jarring of the brain as it moves rapidly back and forth within this enclosed space. it is only separated from this

bony inflexible skull by a small layer of fluid. having had a prior concussion is particularly important for two reasons. one, it means it takes longer to recover. also, one of the sad and interesting things about her concussions is it you have had one, you are much likely to have a second. if you have had two, you are much likely to have a third or fourth. it is not that in its self, but what it does really for the future of the athlete. charlie: everything he said is exactly with the reality-- what do you hope comes out of the film, will? know as a parent, i didn't when my son played football. my son was on the field than i was concerned about him breaking his leg. he played from 14 to 18. we were on the field and i was

concerned about him breaking his leg. the big thing was spinal injury. i had no idea. so i know that other people also have no idea. it is strictly about the knowledge and the information so that people can make informed decisions. charlie: if you had to make a decision now, if he was 134 agan and you know what you know now. into itrtunately he was -- that would be very difficult. i would want him to have the information. i would want them to understand. we would have to make the decision together. reallyam going to say is weak, but i would support him and then make his mother say no. [laughter]

if we're going to be really honest. was just me and you, but your mom man..." [laughter] charlie: tell me more about the story of the doctor. this is at the spine of this story. it's about concussion, but it is about him. one man against system. will: you have a man who was born during an air raid in the jungles of africa. this is a man who came from as humble a beginning as possible.

he looked to america as a boy what we stand for, what we have been in the world. and he comes to america and he gets 8 degrees, he discovers this disease and almost loses everything. charlie: take a look at this. this is ray lewis on this program talking about how additional rules protecting players diluts the game. ray: they are taking the game and diluting it because they want to protect their claims. if you leave the game alone, the game will take care of itself. this is disgusting to me in college football. they are now created a term called targeting. saying, if a player launches his

head, that's the first thing on your body, what you lead with -- you launch your head into someone, that's targeting. they are kicking babies out of games. but the referee makes a mistake and they are never punished. what is the lesson we are being taught? you will make these rules. that's what we have helmets, that's why we have shoulder pads. if i turn my neck to the side, i'm putting myself in jeopardy of being hurt. you have people sitting at the top of these food chains -- the herds of athletes are so great, they don't care. it's on to the next one. charlie: what did you think about that?

peter: i would be curious to see him revisit that 20 years from now. he may suffer and someone who plays as intimately and aggressively as he plays. that is the rhetoric of someone who hasn't been inside the unbelievable shakespearean of a man of a family who is the breadwinner and goes through this disease and becomes unrecognizable to themselves and to their children. it is a shocking clip to me. will: i think we should be careful with that. there is a context to what he was talking about that we are not aware of. i know ray. charlie: if you know him, you must know how he feels about this. will: we haven't discussed this.

not the movie or the science. charlie: he is a very engaging guy. will: as the science is evolving, he can make the decision. he absolutely can make that decision for himself and for his family and for his kids. i don't want us to appear to be in opposition to that. i want him to have more information so he can make whatever decision that he wants to make for himself and his family. charlie: in a sense, is that part of your mission in milking this film --- in making this film to be a stimulus for information, let everybody understand how concussions happen and what the impact is? is-- what the impact charlie: and how we should ask the right questions about that. will: when i had the science

explained to me, it was a revelation. as much as it seems simple and logical when you say, if you bang your head 30 times a day for multiple decades of your life, there could be an issue. when you say it that way, yes, that makes sense. but when i had the actual science broken down of the way when a brain experiences trauma it releases protein and it experiences a concussion it starts to release more protein. it gets locked into that loop of releasing protein. it reaches for a spinal protein which is too big to go through the pipes of your brain. when i had it broken down and had it explained, it became very obvious and very clear to me that a human being should never launches head at another human being for any reason.

charlie: in an interesting way, you would assume that is the kind of thing that the nfl should that is the kind of thing that the nfl should do. peter: i think they do now, and i think this film will help that effort. the nfl look to have these protocols. they are pulling people out of games. and we have commercials for our film on their games. charlie: do you feel the nfl is listening? peter: i feel the nfl is embracing it. charlie: are you finding this a more enriching career than journalism? peter: i was a painter before i was a writer. to me, everything was a journey. everything was a rehearsal for filmmaking, which takes the words and the visual and i love

working with actors. when i was an investigative journalist and i was across the table from a source who didn't want to give me what they knew, or didn't even know what they have -- that engagement with actors -- we can help to bring out something more. charlie: what do you want from directors? will: what i want from directors? i have had it all. charlie: when you became an actor -- when you and i first met, it was "fresh prince." i came out to california -- will: that was like 25 years ago. charlie: 25 years. you could never have imagined the experience you have had, the career that you have had. will: never. i have been so far beyond my dreams for so many years, i have had to hurry up and catch up and dream some new stuff. [laughter] charlie: is there a passion for

you now? with all of that, with all of the box office success, to create your own films and to be not just an actor, but a filmmaker. will: i have partnered with most directors i've ever worked with. it is a partnership. charlie: financial and otherwise? will: both financial and otherwise. what i'm experiencing now is an actor, you get to put on a human being. you get to wear another human being. in that process you learn about yourself and you learn about them. you learn about human beings, you learn about the world. so, in this process, i am having new aspirations, new ways to be able to be of service.

and contribution in the world. when i played bennett or muhammad ali or chris gardner and even in the process of playing muhammad ali, i met and spent time with nelson mandela, i am deeply inspired by this second half of my life to elevate the quality of my contribution. i feel like i have so much more to give in lending my voice to the social conversation in very different ways. i am very inspired. i heard marvin gaye say -- i have a song inside of me and i know it is great. i just can't get it out. charlie: so, you feel a bit of that? will: i feel a bit of that. there is a much greater contribution inside me that i am

trying to get in touch with. to be able to get it out. charlie: did he surprise you? gugu: absolutely. we know will smith the movie star, the lightness and warmth and the charisma, but, i think, you know, especially in this performance, there is such a transformation as bennett and i think your emotional intelligence and intuitive -- emotional depth that will goes to in this film i think will surprise a lot of people. in terms of inhabiting this character so entirely. and really, as i say, a searing, truthful intensity that i think i have not seen in any of your other performances. will: thank you.

gugu: it was a surprise. charlie: great to see you. your visits here are all too rare. i hope you will always come back. will: absolutely. ♪

charlie: tom hooper is here, award-winning director of "the king's speech" and "les miserables." his next movie is "the danish girl," starring eddie redmayne. it tells the emotionally complex story. the telegraph called the film

beautiful and moving. >> the first time we met, she propositioned me. she seemed so sure. >> seemed so shy and mysterious. >> is there something you'd like to tell me? i'm your wife. i know everything. >> could you help me with something? >> you will not tell anyone about this. >> hello there. we're going to call you lily. i want to sketch you. we should go out tonight. give them something different. lily, you are exquisite.

>> you are different than most girls. i feel i need to ask your permission before i kiss you. >> exactly what happened last night? >> i wasn't me. there was a moment when i was just lily. >> but lily doesn't exist. we were playing a game. he has lost his way. he needs a friend. >> let me help. >> i think she was always there. >> i need my husband. i need to hold my husband. are you all right? >> the fact is, i believe that i'm a woman. >> and i believe it, too. >> the surgery has never been attempted before.

>> you are my whole life. it could kill you. >> it's my only hope. this is not my body. i have to let him go. i love you because you are the only person who made sense of me. who made me possible. charlie: wow. what drew you to this story? tom: thank you for having me back on the show. charlie: my honor. tom: i was drawn by this incredible script that i read in late 2008. it was the first time i had encountered this story. i hadn't heard of lily. i was incredibly moved by the love story at the center of the

film, that this portrait of a marriage going through such a profound change. really, it has been a seven-year journey to want to move audiences in the same way that i was moved. charlie: tell me more about her. tom: what's interesting, when i looked her up on the internet in 2008, there was very little about her available. the information that was there has since proved to be often inaccurate. and i was struck that this extraordinary, courageous couple of pioneers have had their story marginalized somehow by history. a lot of people think christine jorgensen was the first recipient of gender conversion surgery in the 1950's. when i talked about it, people could not believe that 1930 was the first time that it began to happen.

when i went to copenhagen to start researching it, even people in denmark did not seem to know the story. i thought it would be at least absolutely famous in denmark. it led me to think about the way that history has a tendency to hard bake in the prejudices of time, the way that history is constructed. there has been decades of prejudices against trans people. maybe it is no surprise. but the story of these early pioneers has been pushed to the sidelines and forgotten. at the very least, i wanted the film to redirect attention to this incredible couple. charlie: it really is the story of a couple. tom: who went through this transition at a time when the word "transgender" did not exist, when there was no roadmap to transition, when medical establishment consistently pathologized this is something

that required locking up or lobotomized. how did lily emerge in the 1920's? i think there was something -- there was a space opened up by the love that this couple shared that allowed lily to emerge. charlie: you said to "the indie wire," is what makes it a great love story is do you love someone enough, do you support someone enough, even though you might lose them as a result. tom: that, at its center, the film becomes an exploration of unconditional love. will she love her husband through this transition, even if there is a risk of losing lily as her husband? she goes on that journey and his able to commit that love that

every stage unflinchingly. her love allows her to see who her husband truly is. it allows her to see this hidden feminine identity. her love also involves an extraordinary clear-sightedness. quite often, tales of love and passion involved people distorting the object of their passion. they're in love with the fantasy of the person. they are not in love with the real person. this is almost the inverse of that. she is not in love with the person in front of her. she is in love with the concealed self and fights to bring that out. whatever happens to the marriage, that is the fight she embarks on. charlie: eddie redmayne was the obvious casting? tom: i imagined to eddie redmayne when i first read the script seven years ago. sometimes i put actors in my

minds eye just to flesh out a role. eddie was the person who became lily from that first read. i had got the chance to work with him when he was 22 years old. we did a movie for hbo with helen mirren and jeremy irons. eddie played a young rebel who tries to overthrow queen helen mirren and gets sentenced to death. i still remember the scene where he receives his death sentence. standing alongside hugh dancy. the emotional rawness of his performance was extraordinary. his fragility, almost emotional transparency. quite rare among english actors. a lot of english actors are in some kind of dialogue with their own reserves. you could even say they are slightly emotionally repressed. i wouldn't say that. eddie had this extraordinary emotional facility which i went on to explore when we did "les mis" together. charlie: this is where she introduces him as lily. claiming that lily is her cousin

visiting from the countryside. >> my darling. let me introduce lily. >> that is right. her cousin. >> my dear, you are exquisite. let's go in. come on. >> excuse me. >> no, never. tom: we see the very first time lily comes out in public. she is experiencing for the first time what it is like to be subject to the male gaze. charlie: and even knowing how she will be perceived.

tom: and also, she has all the nerves of whether she is passing or blending as a woman. whether people think she is a woman or not. that tension runs right into her encounter with henry. charlie: transgender has made a remarkable sense of being part of the public conversation. cover of "time magazine." i think the editor of "time magazine" the year that that appeared, which i think was last year, it was the largest selling addition of "time magazine." tom: i think even in the seven years i have been involved with the film, the landscape has changed to an extraordinary degree. when i started this, people said it is hard to finance, it is too risky, now they say it is timely, it is part of the zeitgeist.

jill soloway's transparent. caitlyn jenner's sharing her story so candidly with the world. i definitely feel, to borrow from the "time" cover, there has been a tipping point in terms of transgender stories breaking out into the mainstream but obviously there is a huge long way to go to fulfill the transgender rights. to go on the same march of progress, the opening up of trans stories. charlie: you said that one of the great challenges was not wanting lily to be othered in any way. tom: one of the reasons i thought eddie would make a wonderful lily is because i never wanted lily to be othered. i never wanted to transition to lily to be made strange or foreign. i wanted to go on a journey in such an intimate way that the

emergence of lily becomes inevitably necessary. i think eddie's great achievement, when you watch the film, you understand that he doesn't have a choice. you go on the journey step for step, beat by beat. eddie has an amazing ability to reveal the inner workings of his emotions. as an audience, you go on the journey in a very similar way. charlie: hard to get financing for this movie? tom: i was lucky enough with the box office of "the king's speech" and "les miserables" that i could get a passion project made. my seven-year involvement makes me a bit of a newcomer. i've been fighting to get this made since 2008.

the producer has been trying to get this made since the 1990's. the obstacles they faced as producers speaks to the kind of climate toward transgender stories that i have witnessed and now it is starting to shift. charlie: do you select based on some rhythm of your own -- i just did a musical, now i want to do a comedy. i just did a comedy, now i want to do a drama. tom: to me it has been taking the best scripts. i have to fall in love with the project to want to fight for it, to want to go through the kind of tenacious journey that you have to go on to get a film made. it's funny. when i look back on the three films i have just made, there was a linking theme. "the king's speech" and "the danish girl" are both within 18 months of each other, so they both come from a similar period in my life. the funny thing about linking all three, all of us have blocks between us and the best version of ourselves or the true version of ourselves. that could be shyness or insecurity. it could be addiction, anxiety,

depression. it could be stammering, like in "the king's speech." it could be having been brutalized and losing your sense of self like jean valjean. but to not identify with the gender you were assigned at birth, i can't imagine a more profound block. it can be the cause of such distress. the film seems to explore how, at a time when there was no support to transition -- the way that lily is loved seems to unlock something in that marriage. just as the loving friendship of lionel in "the king's speech" is transformative for bertie.

and just as the priest forgiving jean valjean is a chance -- he rededicates his life to love and faith. in this film the love that surrounds lily makes possible transformation. the transformative power of love. anyone who is blocked anyway in their life, if they are lucky enough to be loved, then they have some chance of transformation. charlie: how did you find vikander? tom: what a couple of extraordinary years she has had. it is quite a challenge when you have eddie redmayne to find the actress who can go opposite him one-on-one. i wanted someone ideally who would push eddie to a new level. put pressure on him. i am lucky alicia vikander exists.

i had seen her in "anna karenina" and i saw her in "ex machina," and "a royal affair." how lucky for me to have a genuine scandinavian at the center of the film to bring that scandinavian strengthen freedom to kind of, it might've become -- scandinavian strength and freedom to kind of -- i suppose if there had been maybe another english actor at the center of it, it might have become unintentionally something english. she brought that energy in. she came in to audition with eddie and i. we did the exciting title scene 56. that is when lily kisses henrik in the ballroom. she confronts einar. the first take over the screen test was so moving. i had tears in my eyes.

eddie turned to me and said, there is no great suspense about who you're going to cast now. i kind of blew it. i'm not crying. [laughter] charlie: did you do a second take? tom: i did, just to pretend that i was being objective. charlie: but it was over. tom: i'm so pleased at the fact she has gotten golden globe nominations and sag nominations. i was with her. this has never happened to her before. she was in tears and calling her mom. she is so together you forget how young she is. charlie: how old is she? tom: she is 26. her background is very interesting. she comes from a ballet background. the interesting thing about a ballet background is not only are you not scared of repetition, because in dance you don't get to be above mediocre without a lot of repetition. excellence comes through unbelievable repetition.

she doesn't have that sort of -- some actors have that slightly superstitious sense that if they do it too many times, they will lose the essence of it. she does not have that fear at all. the discipline to learn english to the point where she speaks unaccented english as someone who grew up in sweden. charlie: do you know what you are going to make next? tom: unfortunately i can't announce it on the show much as i would love you to be the first to know. charlie: is directing all that you hoped it would be? tom: that's a very good question. i had the london premiere last week at the biggest cinema in london, 2000 seats, built in the 1930's. i had a ritual as a child. i dreamed that one day i would have a film on that screen.

there i was, standing up, introducing my film at that very cinema i felt an extraordinary. connection to the 12-year-old in me. that i as an adult are doing the dream of a 12-year-old. and he was right. i wondered after the success of "the king's speech" whether i would have that thing of saying, now i have done that, that i would be restless and want to do something else. i was so happy just to be doing the things i always dreamed of doing. i made my first feature when i was 30. i started making films at 12. it took me 18 years. i obviously started very young. you have to have an incredible stamina of believe that you will get there. charlie: it is great to have you here. tom: thank you, charlie. ♪

>> "brilliant ideas," powered by hyundai motor. >> the contemporary art world is vibrant and booming as never before. it is a global industry in its own right. "brilliant ideas" look at the artists at the heart of this. they have a unique power to inspire, astonish, provoke, and shock. push boundaries. ask questions. see the world afresh. artists like simon denny.