good evening from los angeles. i'm tavis smiley. tonight a conversation with the prolific actor as winston churchi churchill. he has taken awards. this weekend you can catch him obthe big screen as billionaire property developer. we are glad you have joined us. conversation coming up in just a moment.

and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. ♪ always pleased to have prolific actor on the program. for his portrayal as winston churchill in his series "the crown." this weekend you can catch him on the big screen in politically charged dark comedy. before our conversation a scene from beatrice at dinner.

>> when i first came to the united states a long time ago. >> did you come legally? >> yes. >> and they are all citizens? >> you are grilling her. >> i'm curious. a lot of people come here illegally. i was interested in how she did it. [ laughter ] >> i'm laughing already. because i have seen this i whispered to you when you walked on the set that i have not seen you play a guy who i disliked so much since maybe ricochet and denzel. your character in dexter wasn't the nicest guy. >> i'm a full service entertainer. [ laughter ] . >> you put it to good use. >> i played the good guys and

the bad guys. most interestingly the people who fall somewhere in between. >> what is the joy in playing the bad guy, the arrogant guy? >> i don't even consider him the bad guy. when you play this role you think of him as the righteous one. he thinks he is right so you have to put yourself into that mindset. so does the writer michael white. he just sort of loves just the cureiasity of human beings. and these are complicated times. this is a complicated villain. his name is doug strut. he is a billionaire developer. he has a sort swagger to him. he is very comfortable with his own decisions in life. he has no conscience or remorse about anything. who does this remind you of? >> the thing is this movie has

all the elements of a comedy. it's a sort culture clash story. it is a dinner party among three billionaires and their wives which by a couple of turns of plots there is a seventh guest and this is a poor mexican immigrant who works as a physical therapist for the lady of the house. so you have bit by bit a dialogue and debate. it is rare that you see someone of the extremely rich end of the social and economic spectrum actually debating with someone at the very bottom. it makes for comedy at first and then gets more and more uncomfortable as such a dinner party would.

>>. >> you described that brilliantly. >> a hard one to describe. the social calmitary in this thing is searing by the time this thing starts to turn. when you read this on paper were you immediately turned on by this? >> i was very turned on. you're always turned on by dialogue that is that good, that has that much crackle to it. i already knew it was my dialogue. i had already been in one of his films. and i knew he is interested in comedy but also interested in much broader things. when he set out to write this he and the director who has worked frequently with mike, they went to selma and presented this as an idea.

what if this character got stuck in a party with six wealthy people what would happen? and they got her excited about the very idea and two weeks later presented her with a script. he wrote it that quickly. he knows these people. he is very, very interested in tensions between dissimilar people and people who come at situations from a completely different direction. and it just radiated. i read it and i thought i really want to do this. it's also a comedy about what is really going on. i mean, we go through our lives, one of the problems in our lives is that people from different segments of our society just don't communicate with each other nor do you see entertainment where they communicate with each other and fight with each other. and that's what mike set out to

do. i was just fascinated by that challenge. >> when you changed as nicely and lovely as you did by saying to me i don't see him as the bad guy i knew immediately where you are going. in his mind he isn't the bad guy. he believes what he believes. he isn't shy about expressing his opinions. so i took your point when you said that. and yet the other side of that is that that kind of arrogance and that kind of elitism as one sees in this film is hard to break through and makes me wonder how it is that we do that in a world where classism is so entrenched. if the people that we are talking about are like the character that you play and really just isn't any there there to appeal to. >> it's very unsettling. it's a troubling film.

it's a challenging film in this way. but i think it is very accurate. there are these social enclaves, certain golf courses, certain social clubs where people have set up sort of battlements around them. there is just no communication with the rest of society. they are a protected breed. it's almost anthropological and yet they are human beings. in doing the film i was quite surprised and excited by how miguel, our director, he would direct me to really enjoy himself, genuinely enjoy himself, be very comfortable. he himself was interested in looking around the other side. of course, particularly liberal film goers already bring all sorts of expectations to the

film. they have their -- we, i should say -- i'm a liberal democrat myself. i know what the vision and the point of view of this film is and yet miguel was intent on turning that on its head on really challenging people. >> doug strut said some very frightening things particularly towards the end. he completely accepts, for example, the fact that the environment is decaying and the earth is doomed. he accepted that. what can you do about it? enjoy yourself. he says these things and it is heart stopping because he is going at the things that terify us most and yet here is a person who is not afraid of that. as i say, it is very unsettling stuff.

>> because as you said earlier, john, because he and all his cohorts at the dinner table are, in fact homo sapiens, human beings, as well. i have to believe that every human being has a humanity that is worth respecting and maybe reveling in no matter how wrong they may be in their political ideology they have a humanity that is worth respecting. how did you connect to the humanity in this character? >> through his humor. that had a lot to do with it. through his own enthusiasms. when he talks about game hunting in africa he talks about it with real genuine passion. it's something that really reaches him emotionally. try to find the things that animate this man and get him excited, make him laugh. it's just what you do when you approach a character.

you try oo find out what makes him tick. that is particularly important if you are playing somebody who people already know is the villain purely on the basis of what they have seen in the quotes as you walk into the theater. it is important to upend that because nobody is the villain in his own story. >> i have been around people like this in my lifetime and in my work. it is so unsettling and never ceases to amaze me how people can be so blind to the opinions, the feelings, the world view, the experiences of others. this scene you raise now is a powerful example of that. so as you recall from the film, he passes around his cell with the picture of his hunting, his conquest. and when it gets to beatrice she

just unloads on him and throws the phone across the room. but the fact that -- i'm not naive in saying this -- but the fact that he couldn't processo see that coming or didn't have another way of viewing how somebody else might see his conque conquest, it's numbing to me. >> look at how he responds when she throws the phone. it's like wow, this is great. you know, the thing is we all live in our little worlds. it's very rare that people venture out of their world. and we are all subject to group think as a result. you know, my circle of friends, academics and theatricals, my wife is a professor.

many of our friends are simply faculty members of ucla, we all have more or less the same politics and reinforce each other and go to the same marches and write the same op-ed letters. it is very important to see what in the world is going on on the other side of the sort of political divide. it's the most distressing thing about society right now is the huge gulf. none of us can figure out why the other side could be thinking this way. >> how can you do this in your own admission -- in your own world when your point of view is reinforced by your wife and friend and colleagues how do you see the other side? now we are back to strut in the film who couldn't appreciate another point of view? >> curiously doug strut does see the other point of view.

at least he has certainly seen it before. people have protested. >> he finds it laughable. >> he dismisses it because he is far more powerful than they are. he knows they can't bend his -- he is going to accomplish what he sets out to do because he has done it 100 times before. he has power and the complacency and smugness of power. but he completely enjoys it. he is a curiously appealing character. just because he's sort of fun to be with. at least this is how mike has written it and miguel has directed it. to me this is what gives the film its terrific tension and makes it so challenging. >> you know, you simply got to accept the fact, for example, that our government is doing what it is doing right now because it is happening. you have to acknowledge it and

figure out ways of resisting it and at least creating a dialogue. it's a film that creates a conversation. >> when the struts of the world run the world and they have that kind of power, that kind of authority, that kind of control, when they think they are or appear to be untouchable, if these are the folk who run the world, what are we to do about that? what agency did beatrice have in that scenario? >> beatrice is heroic and fearless. she just goes ahead and says it. that is the most important thing is courage and to really make very clear to yourself what your convictions are and act on them. i say that. i'm not a particularly courageous person politically myself but it is time to stand up and say what you believe. and in fact there is a lot of --

i think in the midst -- this is a very upsetting time. i read the news every morning and get in the state of hysteria about the damage that is being done in my view. but it is also a time of sort of creative ferment politically. people are rising up. it's very significant that these political races are getting a lot closer now. and as soon as this devastating election took place in my world view it was devastating but the next day i began to already think this could be a good year. this is going to be a great year because people like this have a self-destructive streak. they tend to destroy the things that they have built up before our very eyes. and we are seeing it. we are seeing it.

as i saw it in 1973, the last time i was this obsessed with journalism and what was being written about politics was in the spring of 1973. when the whole government fell apart because of [ inaudible ]. >> john dean sat in this very chair some weeks ago and was fascinating to have a conversation with john dean about the parallels as he saw between that nixonian moment and this trumpiam noemtn moment. since you remember that period as a citizen, does it feel as eerie, assicy now as you recall it feeling then to you? >> the interesting thing about watergate was you just felt

something is curious here, something is wrong. this isn't quite right. and then suddenly it exploded and -- this is quite different. things are happening so fast right before our eyes. every day something essential happened in the last eight years of a very good presidency is being taken away from us. and you are just seeing it happen. concurrent with that some scandalous things are coming to light. so there is this kind of hunger for things to move faster. i do believe these scandals will bring this administration down. i just want it to happen fast. >> sooner than later. gl i have asked this question of others. i'm curious to ask it of you given the role that you play in this film and given your earlier comment that you are not particularly politically courageous. i have always known you to be a person who speaks his own mind

on this program and elsewhere. so what do you see as the role of the citizen artist in this moment? you are a citizen artist. >> well, you know, tavis, i did do "beatrice at dinner". i did "the crown." in the middle of that i did "trial and error", "pitch perfect 3". i'm a full service entertainer. my job in life is to delight, excite, sometimes terify people. just keep them entertained. it's a wonderful thing when i do something that actually hits the mark which actually moves the goal post, moves the chains down

the field in terms of expanding people's consciousness. when i did world according to garth, when i did love is strange, when i did and butterfly on broadway, these were all pieces which in their way really jostled people's mindset and expanded people's consciousness. it's a wonderful thing when you can do that as an actor. but you can't make it your main mission. your main submission simply do your job. delight people. make them -- give them emotional exercise. make them cry, make them laugh and make them scream out in terror. those are my jobs. if possible make them think. that's not completely necessary. >> i take all of that and yet you will never convince me that you did not take or do not take

or will not take a particular delight in this film given the resonance of it in a time such as this. >> i'm so glad. we made this film in september. this was around the time when i saw your great interview who predicted the results of the presidential election. i said scary words, andrew. that is not going to happen. by the time we had finished the film they were just finishing the final cut of the film when the election took place. suddenly the film cast a shadow that it didn't have before. it became a much more provocative film as provocative as it was. it was really about our moment. here is the tricky question. i'm going to ask it and you would know how to answer this

without giving too much away. i wrestled with the way that thing ended. >> i knew you were going to ask that. i knew you were going to ask that. >> i'm not giving anything away. i wrestled. my spirit was vexed by the way that thing ended. what say you about that? >> i say people have got to see this film to see what you are talking about. like i said, it's a complicated film. it's a very troubling film. it's a film written by a very funny man about a very serious subject and you end up with intensely conflicted feelings in the end. how could you not when the film is about the thing it is about. >> i agree with you. i was very -- there are moments that are extremely upsetting. but if you put together this

combination of people for an entire evening and watch them drink wine all evening long and in one case smoke dope crazy things are going to happen. >> the truth can be very unsettling. in this moment, this for real moment off the screen, are you hopeful? and if you are how do you sutain your hope? >> i am a very hopeful person. i am an optimistic person, sometimes stupidly optimistic. i voted for hillary clinton on the morning of november 8 and i felt like a million bucks. i felt like i voted for the first woman president. i believed in her as a candidate. and my hopes were dashed. i felt like a fool for being so optimistic. then i was optimistic again the next day. i don't know, maybe it's just my

nature. i am in the business of exploring crazy possibilities. i am a story teller. and the stories i tell when i'm lucky are really good ones. it's very exciting thing to do with your life. that is what i think keeps me hopeful. >> you're luckier than most. >> i know how lucky i am. >> you do a lot of good stuff. you are a pretty lucky dude. insights are always profound, always learn something and go to bed at night after talking to you i feel smart. i can return the compliment. you challenge me to reexamine functions and help me expand my inventory. i thank you for that. i highly recommend it.

that's our show tonight. thanks for watching and as calls keep the faith. >> you think i'm the source? >> i think all your pleasures are built on other's fate. >> i'm a big boy, okay? listen, honey, i think you have great feeling that you project on to the world. to be honest, the world doesn't need your feelings. it needs jobs and money and what i do. >> the world doesn't need you. >> for more information on today's show visit tavis smiley at pbs.org. next time we have conversations with famed photographer steve shapiro.

and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you.

good evening from los angeles. i'm tavis smiley. a conversation with kenya barris creator of "black-ish ". we'll see how the electn of donald trump changed the show "black-ish." specifically tomorrow night's episode. kenya barris coming up in just a moment.