good evening from los angeles. i'm tavis smiley. tonight a conversation with dr. charles mulli and director scott hayes join us to discuss their award winning documentary "mully" which explores dr. charles mully. he became a successful man, a millionaire before giving it all up to save children's lives. today he's the founder of the largest children's rescue rehabilitation and development organization in africa. we're glad you've joined us. that conversation in just a moment. ♪

and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. ♪ >> delighted to welcome filmmaker scott hayes and dr. chrls mulli to this program. their docudrama depicts dr. mully's unlikely rise to power. known as the father of the world's largest family his work helped support more than 12,000 orphans in kenya. before we start our

conversation, here now a clip from "mully." >> he needed to sell everything and start hipping the poor in the society, the children who were abandoned. >> how did you let go of what you hold dearly and how do you decide when to share your love? >> kenya was burning. we can't let this happen. we have to do something. the children don't have food. if we don't step in, children are going to die. we had three children, four children, and the number kept on growing. >> the day will come, this is your family now. these are all your brothers and sisters. >> it's a miracle. >> we are one family. we are one -- i see the impossible becoming possible.

>> first of all, honored to have you both on this program. thank you for coming on. >> thank you so much. >> doctor, let me start with you. this is pbs. you may not know how it works in the states. you have time to talk here. you can take time and tell your story. let me start by asking tell your story of being orphaned as a boy yourself. >> when i was 5, 6 years old, that is a time that i found myself to be alone, be abandoned by my parents and after they went, i did not note exactly where they went. life was very difficult. lack of food, lack of shelter. love from anybody and so i started now begging food from anybody, from the street everywhere. >> uh-huh. >> so that was my life as a child. >> yeah. you were abandoned around 5 or

7. >> 5 or 6. >> so where do you go? i know you're begging? but where do you live, where do you stay? how do you exist? >> really, i existed so much on donation, on begging and in fact, even sca advantaging from where food anywhere it could be found. therefore, i had a grandmother and my grandmother was very poor and very old and therefore, my own, you know, ungs they could not wait to have me around. so they kicked me out. the life of begging as a chide is so so bad. and therefore, i faced a lot of difficulties like any other child abandons. then i went on up to 16 years old with that kind of life and also working in different places like you know, child labor, you

know, digging and doing something when i was a little bigger boy. and then at the age of 16 years, then that's what life is like, the climax of everything that well, how do i live in this world? a world which has no love and rejection, all these things which i was exposed to. >> scott, tell me how do you get involved in this project and how does it become a documentary? i'm always fascinated because there's so many great stories in the world but only a handful become documentaries with academy award winners like mr. mull who are connected and great actors like yourself. tell me how you get connected to this. >> the mall attack happened, a terrorist attack. a man named john barr diswas at account clinton global initiative. clinton gave a speech about one of his friends who passed away

in the attacks. john knew of this man in kenya that was changing the world. so he called me and said would you be interested in at thing a story in africa that can change the world? and then i read the book. father to the fatherless, and i said yes, that was four years ago. >> uh-huh, yeah. >> so you got a crew and packed up and went to africa? >> yeah, i ended up hiring some of my friends, a guy named lukas and elissa shay. i own a theater so the had i people -- i didn't know exactly what i was going to do. it seemed overwhelming. the book seed like a fairy tale, something that was a fantasy. and after getting that call from john bardis five weeks later, my team, four off us we were in kenya. >> that's a quick turnaround. >> it was. you're living this life of a beggar, a beggar child until you're 16. what happens at 16? >> at the age of 16 years old, something happened to me.

i had really made up my mind. why? it's because i was completely you know, fed up with the life of begging, life of poverty, and hopelessness and then i wanted to take away my own life. commit suicide. and during that time, i was standing somewhere. a young man was passing by, and he was a little bit older than me. and i felt wow, what can i do? god, and this man approached me and said i want to take you somewhere. i would like to go with you. that moment was really a different time because i felt like oh, somebody's calling me to take me somewhere. then i followed him. we ended up in a church where i found the young people. they were singing and dancing. they were full of joy. and myself, i was appeal, my

face looked pale with a lot of the bitterness especially because of my father who abandoned me or used to beat me or used to create -- in our home when i was a little child and therefore, there came a preacher and the leader, you know, a pastor and then he was preaching. so hard those days when i was that age and i can still even today remember that there is forgiveness of sin. there is forgiveness for whoever feel that he has been offended by somebody else. and this is the moment now to be able to say it, to say it that you are completely upset. you don't want to live in this world. this is the moment that he would pray for anybody like that. me, i felt the message was about me. i felt that like oh, this time,

someone can give me a new life. and they talked about jesus. i don't know that's exactly what i had. i said, here i am. here i am. and then i was prayed for. and after that, i go completely relieved of the anchor that i had and the bitterness that i had and i remembered even though i've never seen my own parents it, i forgive them. and i forgive even my own father. after that, after only few days later, i decided to go to the city of nairobi. to do what? to look for a job. i was knocking and knocking. when i knocked, one of the house, a woman east asian woman came and then said, why you disturbing us here? i said i was very hungry. i've never eaten. please help me.

and then she was so merciful. she was very kind. and she gave me of -- after six months, she spoke to her husband or the ceo of a big company and then i was given a job there. i was employed as a clerk promoted to become a supervisor, assistant manager and then later i bought a vehicle. good second hand vehicle. ford cortina and that one really it was my dream. a new life. >> right. >> and well, i said, no, i'll not continue to enjoy life with a driving car and then going to work. i decided to start a business of taxi taking people to you know, anywhere where they wanted to. >> so you were like the oranigil uber. you started driving people around in kenya. go ahead, i'm listening.

you're driving folk around in nairobi. go ahead. >> yes, and so i had many customers. i bought another vehicle. i bought buses. these buses could take people across kenya and it was called mullyesyd express. that how i traded in that name and it was like a dream. it never took a long time. and therefore, i grew up again on the side of -- and again, on insurance company. and so my income grew and i became a wealthy man. >> you become a multimillionaire is what you become. >> well, i can't call me myself that way. but i felt like yes, i had everything that i needed and my family and then we would go everywhere where we wanted and really enjoyed ourself.

but something happened. when i was in nairobi, there, i found street boys, a gang of young people and they said, well, give us money. and then i said, why should i give you money? and i started having bad feeling. when i saw children crying, when i saw women carrying, you know, children and these women were in poor state. i saw myself in their faces. >> oh, yeah. >> when they cried. >> you had a flash back to what you had gone through as a young man. is that when you made the decision that you were going to change your focus from making money to giving money? >> yes. after that, you know, for three years, it never happened in that year but in the year 1989, november 17, i remember that day very well that i could not work anymore. and in my office, i decided to go home.

i was feeling really so afraid. i was so afraid of myself. and there was fear. and i was, i became like really sick and i said, let me go home. i got in my car. i drove all the way but i did not go the direction to home. i got lost. i found myself over 35 kilometers driven not knowing where i was going. i starred crying and i cried and i cried, and i said god, what is that you want to teach me? what is that? tell me now. but i don't want to go to the old kind of life. then i was pushed so hard through the spirit. you are the one. you be the father to the fatherless. you take care of them. take them to school, feed them. and bring them up. and so i said yes. >> yeah. >> i said yes. >> that's the best way, just to say yes, and not fight it.

when you got there, scott, i'm curious, and i'm sure there's a moment, i'm sure there's a moment when you arrived in knya and you were disabused of the notion that this wasn't a fairy tale, that this wasn't too good to be true. you saw for yourself what he had been doing for these thousands of kids. tell me that moment that made you lose this notion that it was a fairy tale. >> it was my first time to africa so i touched down in nairobi and i was driving out to his property and as our van was pulling up to his property, all these kids started surrounding the mcf van. you could see it on the kids' faces, they would come up and greet me and say hel throw my team and the smile of that's what's so i take away from the film so much after some of the scenes i get emotional just thinking about is that you know that these young girls were either molested or mutilated weeks before. and here they are, they have hope when they had had their

lives were hopeless till they met charles or esther. so the children and seeing the smiles on their faces and every morning when you wake up you can hear the choir. you can hear them singing. there's a sort of magical spiritual place that you can feel immediately upon arriving. and then getting to know charles at first, i thought he thought i was pretty crazy at first because will he no dale what we were doing and a lot of people had been out to his land. we just immediately went to work. it took awhile for me to figure out who was going to play charles mulli in the film. i auditioned every older boy being an actor, doing scenes with rescued children. finally i went to charles after three -- we had breakfast every morning and finally i said charles, the only person who can play you is you because he looks oh young. he plays himself as a 40-year-old. and he finally agreed which was a huge blessing because he's

running a whole corporation, mcf. and then he basically turned mcf into mullywood. we needed a set built. he would build a set. >> we got hollywood, bollywood and now mull luwood. >> the kids that were orphaned and rescued became part of our film crew. >> the kids became part of the crew which was a beautiful thing. help me understand and i'm fascinated how these decisions are made on documentaries or films. the decision to have charles play himself i get. then you have the film being flair rated by him by his wife esther and by eight of their children. tell me about how you made the decision that that was the best way to tell the story through the voices of his own family? >> i think some of the stories, there's a story in the book that's in part of his life where these kind of stories that are really rely on faith and miracles happened and god really showed up in miraculous ways it

seemed very imperm to break the narrative of have somebody else tell that story. the only person i felt like that could tell that story was charles or esther or the biological kids who had at a certain point thought their own father was crazy. they didn't exactly know what was happening. but all of the things he said and the miracles did happen and the things he said did come to pass. >> when you watch this film, this documentary and you happen to be agnostic or you happen to be atheist, what is it in the story that you connect to? because you're not connecting to his faith. you're not down with that, but what are you connecting to in the story? >> it's funny you ask that. i hired an atheist editor on purpose and work alongside him. i think what you connect to is a universal thing that is undeniable which is love and the way that esther loves the kids, the way charles loves esther and his own children and all the children, i think that love is the universal language that we all relate to. i kind of kept that as the

thread. and in his faith when times got hard, charles stuck to his visions and his calling when he easily could have gone back to business that he was called to do something. and it's miraculous he stayed faithful in the hard times. >> i did not know that was going to be your answer. i get surprised on this show every night. in retrospect or as i hear you share the story, it was a built decision i think. i want to ask, it was a brilliant decision on a project like this to hire an atheist editor. i think i get that but tell me more about what you hoped to get and why you specifically wanted an atheist editor for in project. >> the way i wanted to approach the film, i act in films and. >> yeah, we know. we see you. >> somebody says hey, we got a christian movie we want you to act in. there's a stigma and notion those aren't made, as well. for me i basically wanted to

tell the story in the godfather don corleone was italian. i want dd christianity and the way he walks like he was like don corleone was italian and get down to the core fundamentals of story telling, characteristics of story telling. that is what lends itself to the truth. people can read between the lines. they know when you're lying and trying to make you feel something. i wanted to keep it really honest and not -- i could have gone many different ways in telling the story but i wanted to keep it very straight forward. i think that it comes through without having to push those leapts. >> let me ask you a personal question, if i may. it seems to me it's impossible to work on a project like there and not have your own personal take-aways. what were your take aways? what did you learn from doing this? >> well, for me, this month i have three movies coming out. "only the brave," firefighters,

the 19 firefighters in prescott, arizona who paed away. thank you for your service which is to honor our service, and the film i directed about charles about -- i get emotional thinking about it because i feel that that's pretty much all i want to do with my life is tell stories that can enrich live and that have purpose. i feel so blessed to have been able to do that with this movie. i did a screening of this movie this weekend in colorado. there wasn't a dry eye in the house and people were saying their lives would be altered from this moment forth, the dna is altered after watching this movie being so committed to earning wealth or committed to your career. those values are great but what charles has done with his life and i'm grateful it's coming across in the film is what really matters is how to be of service to other people. >> i've got one minute to doctor, g-mully. what do you hope people will take away from this project?

>> mostly my prayer is that people would be motivated to do what is good for mankind. and again, to show the power of god. god who is the creator of universe and the heart that he lives even today. we can use this when we avail ourselves. he can really do great things through us. it doesn't matter who you are. even if you cop from a poor family or you're never going to school, it doesn't matter. he only really is interested with our heart. people look at, oh, you have done great things. but then i don't see having done great things. i've done what i'm supposed to do for others. >> it's a powerful project a documentary called "mully" about the life and times of this

brother here and the work he and his family continue to do in the country of kenya. good to have you both on the program. that's our show for tonight. thanks for watching, and as always, keep the faith. >> my name is. >> i'm. >> ivy. >> my mother passed away because of aids. >> i was a street boy. >> i was. >> i have a dream. >> when i grow up, i want to be a dancer. >> i want to be a doctor. >> a journalist. >> i have hope for them to hear my voice. it's not about where we are from but it's about where we are going. daddy mully is my father. >> daddy mully saved my life. >> i am the change. >> i am the future. >> i'm a wore yore.

>> i am anxious. >> we are all one. >> . . >> for more information>> on today's show, tavis smiley at pbs.org. >> hi, i'm tavis smiley. join me next time for a conversation with best selling author jonathan ooeg about his new biography if i of muhammad ali. that's next time. we'll see you then. ♪ >> and by contributions to your

pbs station from viewers like you. pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. -- captions by vitac -- www.vitac.com >> be mo >> be more. pbs. ♪

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