tavis: good evening. from los angeles, i am tavis smiley. tonight a conversation with chiwetel ejiofor, who is gathering just about every award possible. now with multiple oscar nominations. we are glad you joined us for a conversation with chiwetel ejiofor coming up right now. ♪ >> and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like

you. thank you. -- tavis: chiwetel ejiofor has five golden globe nominations as well as the coveted laurence olivier award. now he is adding to that acclaim with his role in "12 years a slave" a movie that has received multiple oscar nominations. you on theto have program. i was asking whether you are tired of all this running around and nominations. >> i am in good shape. it has been an incredible

journey with this film. i think it is a film we are so isply proud of. it incredible the way it has been received. i am thrilled about it. tavis: steve mcqueen was on the program weeks ago. he told me the story of how he to read of the story of solomon northrup. before you had seen the screenplay, had you known the story? >> i had never heard of solomon. i never heard of his biography. i have very limited awareness of the kidnapping in the north and people being sold into slavery that way. i didn't know anything about it. a was all a bit of revelation. it was kind of incredible. have done a must

sizable rewrite from the biography, because i felt of this was the story i would have known this. it is too extraordinary. when you first came to know of the story and you first saw the screenplay, did you immediately know you absolutely wanted to sink your teeth into this, or was there a moment of hesitation or equivocation or intimidation? you are a fine actor. you tell me. >> i was intimidated by it. the weight of the responsibility of it. had never seen a story from inside this experience to four. i had never seen a film inside the slave experience in this way. you come to the point where you think there is not going to be a film because the received information is it is too difficult to make, difficult to finance. if you talk about slavery you have to talk about it from an

animal that is more a bleak. you cannot confront it head-on -- talk about it from an angle that is more oblique. this was something that hadn't been done before. i first feelings were feeling the responsibility of that and then the self-doubt of that. i would have to look back on the experience and question whether i was the guy to do that. i sold all those things. those were the questions in my head. all those things. that's why i needed a moment of pause. i went back to the book. it is kind of a reflection on a man's life. it in such ant eloquent, poetic, beautiful,

humble way about his experiences. i don't have to worry about the weight of it or the geopolitical racial consequence of the history of slavery and so on. i just have to think about solomon northrup and his journey and what he went through and trying to connect to him in the story. tavis: it was the rereading of his text that convinced you to do it? >> it was trying to hear his voice. from the first time i read it i don't really see him in it. of a man whoory goes through the extraordinary circumstance. it made me realize it was the story of this man and hearing his voice a little bit more and connecting to him in that way allowed me to realize i was listening to the wrong part of my head, and i needed to go back to what comes more naturally to me, to try to get into a

character. tavis: the flip side is it seems to me with your comment earlier movies likefficulty this have getting made in this town. the flipside is this movie has met with so much acclaim and honor and accolade and nomination. what's your read on that? you have been running around going to parties. beyond thereet and has been great debate about how you read the fact this is a movie, a story that needs to be told,has been brilliantly and is being met with all the hollywood accolade, and how should negros read that? >> how should they? i don't know. i suppose you can look at it

from -- i suppose there is not one answer to that. feel this is in the unique space of storytelling in movies. i feel like there was a massive gap. there was a massive hole in cinema in terms of their had not really been one film made inside the slave experience where someone is calling out and saying, this is what is happening to me. this is what it felt like. i felt there should be one film that is about the experience and the people can see and reflect on what it was like not told through somebody else's eyes as objectively told about people but told from people themselves. tavis: i guess what i am questioning is what do you make of the fact that those kinds of object are difficult to get made but this one has been made, and it has been met with a lot of critical acclaim why white.

sidebar own community. i want to get a sense of how you juxtapose the difficulty. >> i think it is simple. steve mcqueen. he is an absolutely phenomenal filmmaker. he made an extraordinary film. i think that's the reason people came towards him with some financing for the film and also based on his other work, hunger and shame, and i think it is a film people responded to. he collaborated with an .xtraordinary team of people hans zimmer and and it destroyed -- and an extraordinary cinematographer. the people who worked on it are exemplary, and that is what created the film. not just a movie or cinema but

film. >> the minute it came out of your mouth it to be back to a somersation i had with friends of mine at a party not long ago, and the conversation centered around this notion of masterpiece. something thatte gets regarded as a masterpiece. for many people that never happens. if it does happen it may not be celebrated as such, but i think you are probably right that what mcqueen has done is create a masterpiece, but it star is you, and what i want to ask is how you process that. you are going to work. you are going to do a lot of great stuff in the future. i just want to get a sense of how you process what if this is my master beas and it never gets as good again? >> i think that's -- this is my masterpiece and it never gets as good again? west i think that is a possibility. you have this idea in your head

of what you feel the best version of this film is, and then you go away, and the director goes away and works in the little room, and you are presented with the film. if you are lucky the film matches the level you expected or hoped for when you were making the film, but i think it the film surpasses your imagination of how good it could be, and i think for me -- this is only my point of view. that sohe film exceeded completely that i felt steve had done something extraordinarily special and very rare for my working life, but that's also a great thing. i think that's the gift of working with somebody who has such a great artistic

sensibility, but yeah, working with people like that on projects that come together in the way this one did can produce what may in the end be some of the best work you will produce. to ask an awkward question, and i want to beg your forgiveness before i ask it. you were in the movie amistad, and you are the lead in "12 " both part of this wretched history. you were in both. not people were -- not many people were. i just want to get a sense of what you make of the fact, and some have situated this in the era of obama and "12 years a at thiss a phenomenon point in history. i am trying to get a sense of what you make of the fact that one did ok and one has been met

with critical acclaim and accolade. both very different films. i think it goes back to this idea of telling the story from inside the experience. saud, which i thought was a terrific film, tells the story from a distinct angle. i think what has become unique and exciting about this film is exactly those things, that it is from solomon northrup. the historical account tells you something about slavery that it is not possible to access from any other source but a primary first source historical document. thesederstand how plantations are created with

three-dimensional characters. you do that with somebody who is there. that's it. i think one point of the story and the excitement the story generates is part and parcel of that. it is part and parcel to solomon northrup talking about his life from that perspective. tavis: i want to pick another word and get you to juxtapose whether it is excitement or disappointment that it has taken you foreigners -- you people from the other side of the pond to educate the rest of us, to bring to us a story that has been met with this kind of response. >> i just don't think it is -- i in the yearas born -- i never thought of slavery. i have encountered the idea of slavery ever since i had consciousness, but i never thought of myself as outside of that experience. i never thought of myself as

part of a different -- thisis was not taught -- was taught in british schools. >> it wasn't taught in detail. my family is from nigeria where hundreds of thousands of slaves, especially eastern nigeria, hundreds of thousands of people were taken to america, to the west indies. i remember speaking to people telling me about the extra bolts used in some of the underground places for the ebos. my history is completely connected to that history. anybody in the african diaspora has a connection to that history, mostly a psychological connection, so i never felt the ideas of separation in that way. i know steve mcqueen poss family is from granada, so he also doesn't have any separation.

part of the diaspora. england and britain and france and all the european countries that profited from the slave industry, it is all part and parcel of the same thing, so when i approached solomon northrup's story, i didn't approach it as a foreigner. i approached it as an american story. andy five percent of people involved in the film are americans, but i also felt it was right there was an international element to the cast and crew am a the people there, because there was an international element to what happened. it was an international trade, and it felt to me correct that it takes an international group to tell that story, and moreover, i thought it was a story really about human respect, and i don't think there is in the national border to that. it is a wider story. it was always a wider story to me. >> you say confession is good

for the soul. when i first saw you, the very first time i saw you on screen dofront of my eyes i went to some research, and there wasn't as much then as there is now about this guy. i had to learn how to pronounce his name. i said, i am going to see this guy repeatedly. i want to learn how to pronounce his name. one of the things i perhaps most respect about you be on your nationality is the choices in the roles you decided to play, because i know for all the stuff i see you do there is a bunch of stuff you passed on, turn down, and an find of interest. i love the stories -- choices you have made. i am saying that to get into how much more pressure your representatives are under to bring you high quality stuff, because when you do something like this, you can't go out the -- how do you make choices -- obviously, you are an

actor. you want to do a little of everything. i am trying to get a sense of how you go about making choices for the remainder of what is going to be a good i am sure career. >> you need all the elements you always needed. a lot of things happen in your absence. luck,ed those elements of and you need those interested somewhere else in the story and the ideas you are interested in, and somehow they come together. i suppose having a film like this that get out there and people will respond in a way that makes the process of you coming into contact with material you like a tiny bit easier. that's the hope for me. if that happens you can continue to do the work you want to do and make those choices about your work and your professional life based on what interests you and what you feel can be of interest to other people. tavis: i am trying to get a

sense of whether or not there has been a strategy you have tried to employee to bring you to a certain place. >> there hasn't really been a strategy. i suppose it away that is the strategy. i have always let the work speak for itself and be interested in what takes me in that time and whatever medium that is. i am not trying to planet at all. i am trying to keep my eyes open, trying to read everything i can and trying to see if i see myself in it, and if i do i can get excited about it. wanted to do something can actually come quite easy, that you can say, yes, even if it seems left

field, there is something that caught your imagination about this project, and you want to go with it. tavis: stage work, you want to do more of that? >> yes, i started out doing theater. i always thought i would be a theater actor. i didn't really plan on making films actually, and just through a sequence of events, and i went in to drama school being cast a seismicad made change, and the time i fell in love with film when i was working on "dirty pretty things" and that started my desire to make film. tavis: what was it about that project that made it clear that was when the lightbulb really went off for you? he approached directing in an artistic way, and i felt a real connection to that, that i felt

the real artistry in the cinema which i haven't really felt before when i was making other films. when i was doing amistad i was too young to understand what the process was, and be on that i felt the artistry was in the poetryaft and also the of direction and understanding of scenes and breaking it down. it was the way he approached that film that i realized there was a deep and passionate poetic i wasge to cinema that excited about exploring. >> you keep giving words and phrases to make these transitions. deep and passionate. it's one thing to do a film that but not every film that fits that frame ends up being a film that generates the kind of conversation 12 years a

slave has generated. is there a particular weight of ride or something you feel about the fact this movie has kicked up conversation beyond just reading a good film? -- just being a good film. >> it has, and i think that is really a credit to solomon northrup and the way he describes these experiences. if we were explicitly going after a film people have these conversations about -- it is a terrific thing we are. we are deeply passionate about telling the story and where that took everything. ultimately it is a story about human respect. is never feel is it too early or too late to get into the conversations of human respect and what it really means .

and how the treatment of others and often there seems to be a cottage industry dividing everybody all the time, dividing everybody into genders and sexuality is in races, and i think it is important to have discussions out there which really try to get to grips with where that kind of thing can lead, and maybe there is not as much of it as there could be and should be, so in the sense of that kind of conversation, i am deeply proud of the film. i want to circle back to where this conversation began just between the two of us. how are you personally handling all this? thisems to me there is much love thrown at you, which is a beautiful thing.

sometimes you have to manage your way through all this. you look cool. >> i am acting grounded. i have a grounding family as always touch in with absolute normality at any given point, which is a wonderful thing to have, so all of this is in the context of that. it helps that i am working in this profession for a while now. as young as i look. it helps to be able to put verything in perspective. tavis: are you ok with this moment that what is happening with you is happening right now? that works for you? whenu always hope

something like this happens and fortune comes your way you always hope you can live up to so that's what i would wish for myself going forward, that i could to -- that i can continue to do work. is howchiwetel ejiofor you pronounce it. he is all that and then some. one of the best of our generation, and he has earned all the accolade he and his cast to have youd. good aren't. congratulations. that's our show for tonight. faith. s, keep the !> stop overcome youelf be

will drown. >> have you stopped crying for your children. you make no sound, but will you ever let them go in your heart? you care less about my life than their well-being? he is a slave or. >> under the circumstances. >> i survived. i will not fall into despair. keep myself party until freedom is opportune. >> 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 actor joel kinnaman about his new movie "robocop."

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

ttnight onn"quest" -- p8 miles oof the coast of san francisco, the farallon iilands rise up from one of the richest marine ecosystems on the planet. -pcome along as quest ventures t to meet the scientists who call phe island home. and find out how bay area engineers are usiig laser technology to make virtual re-creations of the world's greatest monuments. major funding for "quest" is providdd by -- the national science foundation.