today on larry king now i had scandals tony goldwyn and i was blue shonda rhimes called me and said i'm going to play the president of united states with kerry washington that sounds interesting no matter what the situation is that the scene is every time you walk into a room you just have this power this power this aura the way people deal with you know you bring so much through every scene just because you got that title on his new project that divide the you find out where they innocent were they guilty who did what and we explore all of the great errors in our justice and on them you touch success at the moment larry i'm really grateful for you know i mean i've been doing this for twenty five years and as you know you know you go through dry periods and periods of success and you go up and down plus the most embarrassing

moment on the set of scandal probably was directing myself in the sexy kerry washington. and what do you do running around that can make it and be like ok you know what i got to get it fixed and it's all next on larry king now. welcome to larry king our special guest tony goldwyn one of my favorite people the plane back to director for d.c. he's known for ghost the public too brief divergent to walk on the moon and conviction he is the executive producer co-creator of we did these first original scope to series the divide that premier's on wednesday july sixteenth the nine eastern he appears as warren jeffs in lifetime's outlaw prophet and his fall back on your screens as president fitzgerald rant in the fourth season of a.b.c.'s runaway hit scandal god your every with six it's

a really exciting time creatively you know cnblue a rebirth time as an actor it kind of you know it is second. they surveyed huge second when they just kind of came out of nowhere i actually hadn't been acting so much because i'd been so busy directing. some of you did this amazing show when we were releasing conviction with the innocence project and oh if you were one of you is exonerates coming in and the others went and i came so it was right after that i thought having finished that film that i had. i would just want to get back to acting and i just done a play on broadway and then i will blue shonda rhimes called me and said how it's like to play the president united states with kerry washington that sounds and just how did you know her i knew kerry we were kind of you know we're both of us sort of political junkies and are quite active in sort of social advocacy so we had been in washington together just on political stuff i'm advocating for arts education and.

you know different causes so we were very friendly and but i had been such a huge fan of carrie's work or if every time i'd seen a movie i just thought i have to work with this and i think shonda rhimes how did you hook up with her i met shonda because reason i directed the third episode of grey's anatomy and so i did i directed in the first and second season of grey's and we became friendly in you know just huge admirers are you surprised at her success no i'm not shonda that she owns what there's a nice right now she on a b c she's got grey's scandal and how to get away with murder yeah it's no show you know show so you know i'm not surprise you know shonda is a brilliant brilliant woman. who has a very unique. voice as a writer and a producer creator and it just hits the site geist you know and shonda also the thing that's amazing about her is with all of her success and she's just keeps

growing and changing and you know trying to get better so scandal is based on a real woman and what it is and i know how i bet you do i want to hear this message was everyone got a problem you called your niece and have that's right you surprise the scandal success. well yeah i'm always surprised when i spoke think that's acceptable because we you know we as you know we pour our hearts into everything we do and i've been involved in so many projects that i was passionately in love with that for one reason or another just didn't find their audience so when we made scandal we all thought we were part of something very special and i certainly thought it had the potential to be really commercial and that it was you know really original as well as commercial but the way that it became successful was a real surprise you know as the network wasn't quite sure what they had it first so they weren't really pushing it and we did find at the very beginning respectable

reviews you know the ratings were decent but not amazing but we had this rabid fan base and through the advent of social media and we all got on twitter and worked very hard to find our fans in the second season it just exploded on a real grassroots level fan said to the network we love this show and so then the network thought wow we have a ahead here and then it became gets become kind of a sense what's it like to be a president. it's a. it's just a it's a great job without the stress. to pattern that after anyone the people i most studied. world bomb and clinton. very different people very different people but both of whom you know wanted fitz to be a very contemporary president. obviously when i read the script and even with his name there was this sort of kennedy esque. you know vibe about him a lower what obligation although republican yes but the most sort of democratic

republican the other me but. so i but i was the thing that clinton has that's so extraordinary is this ability to connect with people the best and he makes you can hear of a thousand people and he will make you feel like you're just he's just talking to you and when you meet him in person you feel like you know him for ten years and you think oh we're going to go have a beer now you know but. and so i wanted fitz to have that accessible quality and the obama has a similar down to earth in this when you you know meet him and and they're both extraordinary you know orators and. and the thing about obama that i just found so fascinating is his grace under pressure you know he's a her clutch player obviously and he has this calm and strong and i realized that was the key for me about playing the president is that every second of every day the pressure is. monumental when the phone rings is not good news it's never good

news is not and it's everything is life and death would you like to be president for a day no no there will be a phrase edict i resign. to something else i put in the chair. ghost how did you get that and we use and rise that how that will cause i was up to that point i've been acting for about six years i've always worked was working on the theatre and trying to break into films and t.v. had done a bunch of guest stars and television shows a couple of tiny parts and movies but literally couldn't even get auditions for movies at the time despite the goal and name in use yeah that are those that doesn't really help get you all but that's it it's sort of didn't i think at the beginning of a career it actually can be a bit of a hindrance because people it's hard to get will take you seriously or from a showbiz family they're like yeah ok so i i just you know you push and my wife who is a wonderful production designer and at that time her career was on fire way before

me and her as she was the production designer of ghost and she said you know that i'd read the scripts of a great script and she said they hadn't cast that part to know you should get it and i couldn't get an audition so i just browbeat my agent into giving me and i got an audition and nothing happened and about three months later. i was doing her sing a play in new york and i got a call from my agent who at that point i could barely get on the phone myself saying they want to screen test you for this movie ghost and i flew out to l.a. and did old fashioned screen test and you know miraculously got they do find something to like i guess you have to like two of the a playwright did you find something to like in him was his and that was the key to the part for me is you know you read that script that he was the bad guy and i said oh i know how to do this everybody else is going to play him like this of celine's and guy and i said no you have fallen. with this character the audience needs to

want to be him to be their friend so they feel doubly betrayed so i played in a very sympathetic way and the way i looked at it was just that he was a guy who was a really great guy but who made one. moral mistake and then had to consecrate his tracks and did awful things so that divided premieres on july sixteenth what is that about how to get involved well as you know i produced and directed this with the conviction where it was only thank you which are true story about a case man who was convicted wrongfully convicted for murder and spent eighteen years in prison for a murder he didn't commit and his sister had become became a lawyer who was an educated became a lawyer to try to find a way to get him out and. hilary swank made up more than sam rockwell played the brother and he was great yeah he was wonderful and but the the organization that helped her do this was the innocence project which you know pioneered the use of d.n.a. testing to exaggerate act and yet barry scheck and peter neufeld so anyway i after

making that movie i was fascinated with this world and wanted to support shine a light on their efforts and my friend the great writer richard the robin is and i had wanted to work together and we started talking about trying to find a television series in that world so this we decided to centered around a prosecutor who maybe gets it wrong who made his career. the first african-american d.a. of philadelphia made his career on a highly charged. murder a brutal murder a black wealthy black family was murdered by supposedly two white guys he put them away and we now meet them twelve years later where one of the guys is about to be executed a young woman who's just out of law school not even a lawyer yet who works that are fictional innocence initiative. uncovers a piece of evidence that pulls a thread on this case and that case you learn a little disease and you find out where they innocent were they guilty who did what

and we explore all of the gray areas in our justice and in many weeks we did eight episodes basically we're studying is the impact of a violent crime on all the people surrounding it and the kind of issues and struggles and you know because that's true every time you know a person does an unspeakable thing to another human being. either someone gets put in jail if they're innocent the guilty party got away and you know it impacts the prosecutors the defense lawyers the victims the families all of that you were friend of a smiley show last year and you said how racial politics fascinates you and why. well you know i'm always fascinated by how much different in this between people whether it's religious differences racial differences socio economic differences divide us. sort of predisposition to being uncomfortable with with our

with our otherness and. yet i think we all have this innate goodness that wants to see our oneness and are saying this in our community communal you know human experience and we are far more the same than we are different but i find fascinating now and it's something we really explore in the divide you know with president obama's accession to to power to the white house you know it broke the mold we were in supposedly a post racial world but people's. racial prejudices and discomforts and anger and all of that bridge when that happens when you make a big move forward all of a sudden all of that ugliness in ourselves comes out as well so one of the things that divide explores is you know one of our protagonist the da that i mentioned played by the great game and upton you know is determined as a politician to live in a post racial world his father played by clark peters if you remember in the wire trim a that such brilliant actor who is the police commissioner of philadelphia you know

they are preparing much part of the power structure that he really sees he came up in the civil rights era and sees it very differently and we. it's just something we want to believe we're beyond and we just are not and it's important to talk about it doesn't know it over and does puzzle me almost all my life why pigment is skin should make a difference and to i don't i don't i just didn't just like religious differences not only i didn't understand it we also have this innate. fear impuls with that which is different from us and i think that the solution to that the antidote is knowledge and familiarity from president to prophet after this. please take or leave very hard to take

a. look here there's a lot that you that are back with that earthquake there please please please. please. please. please. please please please please. please. please look. at the. your friend post a photo from a vacation you can't afford college it's different. the boss

repeats the same old joke of course you like. your ex-girlfriend still tense tear jerking poetry keep tabs norris. post only what really matters at r.t. to your facebook news feed. comment why should the public face i think people. a pleasure to have you with us here on t.v. today i'm sure.

losing. is close to soul search deep sadness and. i will grow up here i will take all of your hands in mine and we will rise up together in glory i do this because i. forgot to tell me. a lot probably the story of warren jeffs the jack mormon as they called him who believed in polygamy and the like and he's in jail for a life sentence is going to be on june twenty eighth get the part about this come to you well i just like time sent me the script. and there was a response from him. provocative piece of material i had been fascinated with the warren jeffs story when it was in the news and you know as as people know it's there's this rather small society of fundamentalist mormons although the mainstream

mormon church wants nothing to do with them and they have a community you know they're spread out of the kind of a community in southern utah on the arizona border called colorado city and. they you know it's a very extreme fundamentalist form of mormonism that you know practices actively polygamy and they believe in a prophet that one of their you know members is speaks with the voice of god as the moment judged as yes absolutely right but in this case absolutely controls every facet of their lives. and. it's of from our perspective it's a very bizarre society and warren jeffs whose father was the prophet. pretty much seized when his father died control and became prophet was the self declared prophet and took an already bizarre. what we would perceive as

a bizarre way of life and just took it to extremes more specifically by marrying of girls of younger and younger ages and his youngest wife was twelve years old he totally believed in me though i think he was a charlatan i think it's a fascinating question i think he convinced himself that he totally believed at the same time as i think he was a charlatan because i think that you know something that happens that we dramatize in the movie that's absolutely true. is when warren was arrested for rape. because there were that's what has made him a life i had made already or recordings of himself having sex with a twelve year old girl and he kerik related these what he called sessions celestial sessions that he called them where there was very ritualistic sexual sessions with these young women who were his wives and. it was all about speaking to god through

sex and there was a twelve year old girl and he had already been arrested for statutory rape and this this sealed the deal but when he went into prison he confessed to his brother and another person that he was that he was a false prophet that he had lied that he had said leave it it was because of the you know weakness of his flesh he had betrayed god and then two weeks later he tried to commit suicide and you know two weeks later he decided no that's not true i really am the profession he reassume been still controls. to the most minute degree from daily lives from jail how does he do that he. has people come visit him many issues edicts he writes ponse and then records sermons and issues very specific edicts of what his followers can and cannot do

what they can eat what they can wear what they can who they can talk to who they can have sex with how often they can have sex who they can bear children with lawyers even prison in he's in new type things he was a prison in texas i can refuse now in texas or in utah i think if you need to are you playing him yeah you find something to like him. no. i don't i like the likely not their marriage there was a shit yanno like is not the right word i found tremendous humanity in him and compassion for him. you know up to the point where he really went off the rails. but look we're all human and we're all flawed and what was extreme in warren jeffs his addictions to power control sex all of it or impulses we all have that i can relate to the human being is a man and so for me it was fascinating to play into somebody who had felt deprived

of power when his father was in on the throne really there once he took it for himself he was a man who just had this tremendous he was a narcissist and i can relate to that as a man as a human being so you just put yourself in those shoes and without judgment it's not about like me or don't like me it's like this is the person i put myself in the shoes without judgment or going the shoes you put in one of the year's biggest hits divergent you play the lead guy do you this is father that's right surely would. well you make of her surely it was something with enormous weight she's of us on the cover of vanity fair this month she's extraordinary she's twenty two i think and the most a she's a brilliant actress but the most grounded down to earth lovely unjaded. young actress i think i've ever met a virgin was a big hit among young people right at the low in the books were sold ten million

copies and i care i may have at the number one but you know the veronica roth series of three novels have just been you know i think two or three of them on the bestseller top of us all of us at the same time you touch success. i mean look at well at the moment larry i'm really grateful for it you know i mean i've been doing this for twenty five years and as you know you know you go through dry periods and periods of success and you go up and down and so right now in a very fertile moment sometimes think of ends is not a science and we have some the social media questions for you very. at t.j. big a one sixty seven how is playing warren jeffs different from other bad guy roles you've had well are you a bad guy yeah i do i think there is that question i think the reason i'm a bad guy really was stem from ghost. and i think what worked about me being a bad guy was i didn't seem like a bad guy as we discussed earlier i want to play that guy's sympathetic as possible

to make him most interesting so and i always approach bad guys like that like where's the humanity. so but the different thing about warren jeffs is he was a real person is a real person still to it living in prison and so. it was as i said earlier i don't judge it was very hard sometimes not to judge him because some of these things you'll see me do in the film were very difficult to do . the way he treats people and the sexual issues these young girls and but again you can't judge as an actor so you just put yourself in a situation and let the audience juggle a him bad people don't look in the mirror and say i'm bad that's exactly right we all believe we're doing something for important reasons and the about twenty nine will you be directing any more episodes of scandal yes i'm going to be directing i've done one this past year in the year before announcing for i will direct i

think the eleventh episode and damn hunt what do you enjoy more acting or directing in the mix if i had to the best thing is both to be able to do all of it. the one makes me better at the other if i had to choose i suppose it would be directing because you just get to the role you control and you're the central storyteller and you get to work with every single department play a little game of if you only knew this is ok remember the first girl you have a kiss yes was it was a game of spin the bottle when i was ten years old when i was of the party it was a sort of a party was at my house and my older brother and his friends over and she was in seventh grade and i was ten and she was beautiful i was like i've never and they're playing spin the bottle and i was the young kid to my brother let me sit in the circle and this girl. you know just moments like this you know. not even like following them around the home like what are we going to do that again we're going to get the we can play don't really read it again and never think like many of them

are still addition i do i was in high school i was a freshman in high school and i auditioned for the i was first high school playing here at the wynn and my only got my brother was playing the lead in it and i sat down and i read a scene with the theater teacher and i was just like i know how to do this and we just i remember it was intoxicating he was one of the witnesses his name was howard and one of the young boy witnesses on the other hand laid down you may play darrow and then i didn't get the part i got my brother one line in the show but i was hooked drama comedy or thriller oh gosh all of it all as it goes all plays both which superpower would you like to have a light superhero you'd like to play. while i think batman who is most similar to that character on scandal i would say. none of us you know as thing about playing the president no matter what the

situation is that the scene is every time you walk into a room you just have this power this power this aura the way people deal with you know you bring so much to represent just because you got that title miss going to call you by a name you know they don't they're not what time period would you like to travel back to. i've always wished i could have been an actor. in one nine hundred forty s. of the lot was born too late for my role in the great bedroom our days of the theater and say well yeah not just hollywood that but also when the broadway theater when there are hundreds of shows on broadway eyes sales oh my god yeah yeah and b. those are the rolling stones that's a tough one. it gives hope to the beatles but i love both three things you'd take with you on a desert island. beatles on my brother. and my wife most

embarrassing moment on set and so that's why i go and have a crack up yeah all the time the most embarrassing moment on the set of scandal probably was directing myself in a sex scene with kerry washington and what do you know running around in a good neighborhood and be like ok you know what god we have to keep him they must marcel the great marcello monster only told me once and that the least turned on scenes to do our sex scenes is true because his eighty people standing around watching and you've got to figure all away for the camera angles you never get turned up it's sort of true it's so true. biggest prankster on scandal joshua muna space traveler time travel. definitely time travel would you rather run twenty miles or swim twenty miles run twenty miles is there a subject or a project you love to develop and do a film i would love to do

a film about the oregon trail the pioneers of love to be part of something to tell that story of. the women in the people who are the stage companies the covered wagons of what that was and i drive this you'd love to work with so many i have seen meryl streep. thank you thanks for a great want to thank my guests tony goldwyn make sure you watch him in outlaw prophet warren jeffs on june twenty eighth eight pm on lifetime his new series the divide from his july sixteenth at nine pm on we t.v. you also see him this fall thursday nights on a.b.c. scandal i mean that he has nothing to do and then we can find me on twitter with kings things i'll see the stuff.

i know c.n.n. m s n b c news have taken some knocks lightly but the fact is i admire their commitment to cover all sides of the story just in case one of them happens to be accurate. that was funny but it's close and for the truth from the might think. it's because one call attention and the mainstream media works side by side the joke is actually on your good company. and our team we have a different bright. good because the news of the world just is not this funny i'm not laughing dammit i'm not how. you guys talk to the jokes i will hand over the stuff that i've got to.