tavis: good evening. from los angeles, i am tavis iley. tonight a conversation with don cheadle, whose acclaimed series is now in aes" second season. ethicallyt an challenged business consultant who will stop at nothing to get ahead. are glad you joined us for a conversation with on cheadle starting now. cheadle starting now. ♪ captioned by the

national captioning institute --www.ncicap.org-- >> and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. ♪ tavis: is one of the most honorable man and the star of ," but inanda his current series he plays an antihero. year he plays a

win at all cost business consultant. we take a look at a scene from "house of lies." >> do you want some coffee? i have a coffeemaker somewhere. move in seven months ago? >> i am not exactly patty homemaker. >> i guess no fresh baked muffins. >> no. we leave that noon. think it was his idea. i hope you pull it off on your end because rumor on the street is that you've lost it. >> i am imagining this rumor was started by -- >> somebody had to. >> coffeemaker. do you have any coffee? >> i do not.

far am waiting to see how marty can push the envelope. is there a wall, or is there no wall? >> we haven't seen the wall yet. i think he is trying to find imself. tavis: what is enticing him to drive so fast? got a real --has his mother committed suicide. he has huge trust issues. he has picked a business to go into where he is challenged daily. the mostbably

frightened character i have ever played. >> frightened of? >> what is in there. i think he is rate of what is in there, so he wants to go 1000 miles per hour in the other direction so he doesn't have to do any introspective work. playingun for you of the most frightened character in your career is what? >> that he is completely a live wire and impossible to anticipate where he is going to go or what he is going to do. it is attributable to the writers, but it is fun to have a character who is so elastic. he can be in a fist fight. be in a moment he can situation where he is having to confront feeling love. he is all over the place. he is hard to get a handle on. >> maybe you do know the difference, but i think if you know the answer this would be gold in hollywood. we can answer the question of

a character. >> i think for me the guy really he is a problem solver. he figures stuff out, but he is ruthless. he is fundamentally flawed, and i don't know why i like this guy. >> there is something sort of endearing about him. loves his son. he loves his father. nerves and drive him insane. he doesn't know how to deal with the, but we know he is in process of trying to. he may neglect them at times. he may throw them under the bus if he needs to, but at the end of the day he is trying to figure out how to be a good father and a good son.

>> i am speaking as a fan. what i love about this character your is he is a black guy atypical role that is for the complex kinds of a chances you all get to play in this business. i love that, but i wonder whether or not i should be concerned about the fact that while he seems to get other things right, it is the love thing that is missing. often has driven conversations about the way black men are perceived because we seem to lack that love, love for the babies, love for the families we create that we don't want to take care of. you have got stereotypes. am i making sense? i love him that he is a black character, but i wonder if i should be concerned that this guy had to figure out this love thing because i don't want to

drive this message that lachman cannot love. >> i think it is antithetical. -- that a black man cannot love. >> i think it is antithetical. he feels deep love. if you want to talk about sexual identity,his gender that is something for a lot of our culture, you got to get your son correct. fix his son.ing to he is trying to understand his son. he loves his son. he is trying to figure out how to make him a part of his life. i think he is a champion. he is dealing with it in the best way he knows how. he doesn't have a lot of tools, but he is a clumsy craftsman, but he is trying. as far as his relationships go, a respect of his race, he has

got a wound he does not know how to fix with the abandonment issue he feels with his mother. the ruthless nature of his business doesn't allow him to access those soft parts that would allow him to be vulnerable, to potentially be hurt again. he is always feeling like he has got to be the top dog. we are seeing he does let that guard down. it cost him. every time we see it there is a cost. tavis: what were your concern storyline was going to develop for the coming season? >> i wanted to make sure we were seeing the character develop and get richer and deeper, and we were going to put him in more challenging situations and have him confront things we didn't

confront in the first two seasons. not just for my character but for all the other characters. the season is great to get all the other actors, ben, josh, -- we arehey all have all figuring out our ways on our own in this season. it is great to get the characters richer and more developed. tavis: but everything is falling the fun for us fans is to see how these broken pieces are going to either come back together or not. what form will they be when they come back together? that has to be fun. >> i am left wondering what are we going to do. he doesn't have a business, but his family is not there.

his son is like, i am going to leave you alone. he is himself. at the end of the second season he has his family, but his is this family is gone. clyde has gone on to work with his ex-wife, and jeannie has stayed, too. journeys disparate they are trying to figure out how to get back together and when we get back together what does that look like? avis: this might seem like kiss up, but i think it is true, which is it is not often for me as a fan that i see a show cast so well from top to bottom, and some of these people are folks we know. others we have not known so well until now, but the casting seems perfect. >> felicia has done a great job

and really bringing interesting , and our casting process is not rigorous, but we are all tuned into thery types we are trying to bring in. it is a big part of our show, and there is casting people wouldn't have assumed would happen on the show. turned into an interesting storyline. >> i expect with your humility you set this aside, but i want to explore whether or not you are just doing the work or whether or not you are consciously or have thought fort the doors being opened other actors because of this successful ong so

showtime. >> i haven't thought about it. >> it is hopeful. there are moments in any doesess when somebody something, and we haven't seen that before, and what it does hopefully is open the doors for others. >> absolutely. when this part was wrought to me one of our producers -- it was really because a bit nevins -- because a vid nevins -- david nevins, president of showtime, said, you can do this. it was really his inking outside the box but created this whole situation, and i think we just took our lead from there, and we wanted to take people who were

not conventional. i don't know who else could have played this role any better than the people we had. if there are doors open behind me, that is fantastic, because in this business the doors are closing. for everybody the doors are closing. tavis: what are you making of it? >> it has gotten more corporate. when the financial situation happened everybody was looked at as a piece of a portfolio as opposed to a place where this is still about dreams and fantasy people are trying to quantify it and make it about bottom line, and when that gamblesthe driver, the are less, and we need people who are gamblers in this business. we need people who are willing to go, i can't quite say why on paper that is going to work, but i think it will, and i am going to back that. those kinds of people are getting crowded out, and the

people being put in their seats are more and more corporate and thinking about the bottom line. how to quantify the outcome of the close to champy meeting -- as opposed to champy being something they think is great. i want to talk about a couple projects you are working on beyond house of lies. when you are an actor, and in your case, an actor and producer , director. you do what you want to do. how do you stay ahead of that curve? much of what you just said what you try to accomplish. you have to have a game plan. you have to stay ahead of the curve.

individualas an producer, actor, artist, how do you stay ahead of that curve? >> i think by not stopping. literally by continuing to go after material you want, and to me the biggest thing is to be a , someone who makes their own material and finds the things exciting to them, and then you have to go out and find people who still have that maverick ideology where they are willing to take a risk, and you have to hedge those bets by putting people in certain seats they need to feel comfortable about, and you have to be smart about how you put those pieces of your business together, and that's just the way it is.

unless you bump into some huge, deep pocketed whale who doesn't care about money -- they are out there. everybody is like my hey, want to play with me? you got to find the right one. then you are good. >> there are other projects you are working on that i want to talk about. i ask every time i see you -- what is up with miles? how is the miles project coming along? >> it is coming along. we are at the one-yard line. >> that close? don't tempt me. >> we are right there. our plan is to go on production. >> how long has this been on your docket?

it is always amazing to me, five or six years is a long time, but i talk to people working for 10 years. it is a glacier pace in this business. years to try to get something finally. >> then you work on something else and someone says, what about that thing? you put the red button the right chair and someone comes forward and love that person for this -- put the right butt in the right chair and someone comes forward and love that person for this. peace thatquantify they go, i will back that. this year there was really the success of black films last year. the butler. >> what did you make of that? there has been so much commentary in barbershops and

beauty salons, black organizations -- there has been so much and a lot of it good. i have seen a lot of good pieces written about in the obama era whether we big too much of this, whether it is a phenomenon, whether it happens once every blue moon and won't happen another 20 years like haley's comet, whether this really is a moment something is going to come out of this. how did you read all the success of that stuff last year? wax i think it is a bit of everything you said. i think there is something that is cyclical. if you were to ask people in the 70's, is this a good time for movies? they would say yes. if you were to ask in the 80's, damm straight. sin curve.is a

it depends who you ask, but i think our president has had something to do with the way people buy into a story. i think that also has to do with what is happening overseas. your movie can sell foreign, it doesn't matter. part of the box office is a small consideration. movies have to do business worldwide. the stories have to be thought of as profitable. you have to be thoughtful about the way you go about objects, but really it is hard to quantify. we will see. i wonder if three or four years we will be the same. >> one of the most fascinating points, and i am not sure if i have come to a specific answer

as of yet, but you are the act or and the producer. one of the more fascinating tenants i have wrestled with about this year of the black films so to speak is why it is these projects tend to be historic in nature. if hollywood can't do it. >> let's be honest. >> if it's not a project way wek when with segregation, can't do it every day. there has got to be a story for us. there is something there. probably one or for usthe biggest issues

to deal with as a country, not even just as a country, but how is somethingrace we are uncomfortable approaching. 12 years a slave has started a lot of discussion about how we deal with that. did you see the golden globe? say, i see amy poehler am so glad it really changed my view of slavery? it was so hilarious. it was something we are still not willing as a society to talk about or come to grips with. our history and what it means for us today. if that is true, you just need one incident to happen. >> white folk, black folk, everybody loved the music of miles davis.

i am curious about what the story is given his artistic genius. what is the story you want to tell? it. l of without trying to give short shrift to a career that spanned 50 years where he was actually potent and relevant and changed music four times. left, and music went left, and he said he played isial music, so for me it really getting into these ideas about who he was and what the music means to him and i want to ake the anti-biopic biopic. i don't want to make a movie about the fact that his life.

i don't care about when he played with charlie parker unless he forgot who he is and why it mattered at the time. nature,y is smaller in hopefully being more specific. we take a time in his life when he put down the horn for five years and was trying to figure out how to come back. >> that might even be more fascinating. >> when i am reading the to when hed i get didn't play for five years, i need to know about that part. tavis: you are doing another project. tell me about that. >> i am really proud of that movie. curmudgeonlylays a -- tisocial, non-pc cat

>> it has been cast well. murray can do that. >> he is fantastic. he is just a dude trying to live his life and gets run into and starts a relationship with a andg kid who unlocks him gets beneath that shell and we find out who he is. it's a plot point i don't want to ruin. this kid kind of opens him up. tavis: you care about the world, and there is always something you are working on. miles plays social music. you care about social causes. this climate change project i read somewhere about you working on. >> that will be premiering on showtime. james cameron and jerry weintraub producing. there are about 12 of us who are investigating the way climate

change is affecting people present day, not something that is going to happen 50 years down the road or 100 years down the road but today. sunday night join me and millions of others. they run it 18 times through the week, but you have got to watch in the coming months. a bunch of other stuff we just talked about as well. back anytime.e happy new year, and have a great season. that's our show for tonight. thanks for watching, and as always, keep the faith. >> for more information on today's show, visit tavis smiley at pbs.org. tavis: hi, i'm tavis smiley. join me next time for a conversation with

-- branagh.n on that's next time. we will see you then. ♪ >> and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. >> be more. pbs.

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