scandal probably was directing myself and affection for washington. and what you see here and it can make it and be like ok to work i got here because it's all next on larry king now. welcome to larry king our special guest tony goldwyn one of my favorite people getting back to director for d.c. he's known for the post or two brief divergent the walk on the moon and conviction he is the executive producer co-creator of we did these first original script is it was the divide that premieres on wednesday just steamed the nine eastern he appears as warren jeffs in lifetime's outlaw prophet and his act on your screens as president fitzgerald and in the fourth season of a.b.c.'s runaway scandal god you're everywhere it's a really exciting time creatively you know cnblue

a rebirth as an actor it kind of you know it is second. this huge second when they just kind of came out of nowhere actually hadn't been acting so much because i've been so busy. summer you did this amazing show when we were releasing conviction with the innocence project and lo you were one of your exonerates coming in and hilary swank and i came so it was right after that i thought having first film that i had. i was twenty and said how it's like to play a president united states with kerry washington that sounds and just how did you know her donkey's and are quite active in sort of social advocacy sort of washington together just on political stuff i'm advocating arts education and. you know different causes so we were very family and but i had been such a huge fan of carrie's work or if it every time i'd seen a movie i have to work with this and i think shonda rhimes how did you i met shonda because reason i directed grey's anatomy and so i did i directed in the first and

second huge admirer. shonda that she owns what there's this new show you know show so i'm not surprise you know shonda is a brilliant woman. who has a very unique. voice as a writer and a producer creator and it just hits you know and shonda also the thing that's amazing about her is with all of her success she was just keeps growing and changing and going to get better so scandal has got a real woman and what is it i know that you do i mean a curious person. you had a problem you called your niece and have her how you surprised this scandal success . well yeah i'm always surprised. 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 would actually 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 a really old as well as commercial but the way that it became successful was a real surprise and it was the network wasn't quite sure what they had at first so they were 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 the network thought wow we have a ahead here and then it became gets become kind of a sense of what's it like to be a president. i didn't have to anyone the people i most

studied. world bomb a. very different people very different but both of whom you know wanted fitz to be a very contemporary president. obviously when i. you know vibe about him although or what i don't look at all the republican yes but the most sort of become public in the other meat 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 excess quality in the obama has a similar down to earth in this when you you know meet him and they both extraordinary you know orators. and thing about obama that i understand so fascinating is his

grace under pressure you know he's a 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 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 that's in the chair. ghost how did you get that and we use and rise that how that took off i was up to that point i've been acting for about six years i've always worked i was working on the theater 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 and yeah i thought that doesn't really help get you know the door but that's it it sort of did i think at the beginning of

a career it actually can be a bit of a hindrance because people it's hard to give or 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 i'd read the script it's a great script and she said they had a cast that parity no you should get it and i couldn't get an audition so i just browbeat my agents into getting me and i dish and nothing happened and about three months later. i was doing rehearsing a play in the york and i got a call from my agent who i get on the phone myself saying they want to scream at you for this movie ghost and i flew out to l.a. and action screen test and another miraculously got they do find something to look at i guess you have to like to have you play right into for him to like in him was

his and that was the key to the part from is you know you read that script that he was the bad guy and i know how to do this everybody else is going to play him like this season guy and i said no you have fun loves this character the audience needs to want to hear from. so they feel doubly betrayed so i played in a very sympathetic way and the way i looked at that was just that he's the guy who was a really great guy but he made one moral mistake and then had to consecrate his tracks and wait and did awful things so that divided premier's on july sixteenth was about how to get involved well you know i produced and directed this movie conviction where a busy and curator a true story about a case. convicted of wrongfully convicted for murder and spent eighteen years in prison for murder he didn't commit and his sister had become a spoiler who was an educated became a lawyer to try to get up and. hilary swank about more than sam my father and he was a great yeah he was wonderful and but the the organization that helped her do this

was the construct which you know pioneered the use of so anyway i after making that movie i was fast with this world and wanted to support shine a light on their efforts and my friend which of the robin is and i had wanted to work together and we started talking about trying to find a television in that world so this we decided to center out of a prosecutor who maybe gets it wrong we just we're. the first african-american delphia made his career on a highly charged. murder a brutal murder a black wealthy black family of murdered for 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 stopped by the 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 carries

a whole season and you find out where they innocent were they guilty who did what i'm going to explore all of the gray areas in our justice and in many weeks we did eight episodes we're studying is the impact of a violent crime and all the people surrounding it and the kind of issues and struggles and. because that's true every time you know a person does this people thing to another human being if either someone gets put in jail if they're going to see the guilty party got away and you know it impacts the prosecutors the answers the victims the families all of that you are not friend to have a smiley show i share that 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. disposition to being uncomfortable with with our with our otherness and. yet i

think we all have this innate goodness like wants to see our oneness in our sameness in our community communal you know human experience and we are far more of the same than we are different but i'm fast moving now and it's something we really explore in the divide you know with president accession to to power to the white house you know broke the mold we were in supposedly a post racial world but people's racial prejudices and discomforts and anger and all of rage when that happens when you make a big move forward all of a sudden all of us and ourselves comes out as well so one of the things that divide expects you know one of our protagonist the da that i mentioned played by the group . you know is determined as a politician to live in the world his father played by clark peters if you remember in the wire a tremendous such a 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. want to believe we're beyond him we just are not and it's important to talk about it there's no involvement as puzzle me all my life why pigment skin should make a difference i need to i don't i don't i don't just didn't just like religious differences not only i didn't understand it we also have this innate. fear impulse with that which is different from us and i think that the solution to that the antidote is knowledge and familiarity from president to profit after this. i marinate join a. book to get impartial and about financial reporting carry on for news and much

much. only on the bus and on the. flowers.

losing. his close associates sadness and. i will grab his hand i will take all of your hands in mine and we will rise up together in glory but do this because i love you. god yeah tell me. a lot probably a story of warren jeffs the jack mormon as they called him who believed in polygamy and the like and he's in jail for life sentence is going to be on june twenty eighth get the part how did this come to you well i just lifetime sent me this script. and it was it's really provocative piece of material i had been fascinated with the warren jeffs story when i was in news and you know as people

know it's there's this rather small society of fundamentalist mormons or the mainstream mormon church and something to do with them and they have a community you know they're spread out of the country their 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 one of their you know members is speaks with the voice of god as the mormon judged yes yes absolutely right but in the end it's some of the 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 a sort of clarity 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 off girls of younger and younger ages 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 is absolutely true is when warren was arrested for rape. because there were that's why his name a life i had made already or recordings of himself having sex with your girl and he kerik related these what he called sessions a celestial session he called them where there was very ritualistic sexual sessions with this young man for 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 hits and it was and because of the you know weakness of his flesh he had betrayed god and then two weeks later part of a suicide in it you know two weeks later he decided no that's not true i really am frightened reassumed and still controls. to my you degree from daily lives from jail how does he do that he. has people come visit him many issues edicts he writes ponce and then records sermons and issues very specific it's about 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 prison in he's in new type things he was a prison in texas i can which is not texas or in utah but i think it's you need you are you playing him yeah you find something to like him. no. i don't i like i do you like the way not the characterization yeah no like is not the right word i found tremendous humanity and compassion for him. you know up to the point where he worked hard and what was extreme in warren jeffs his addictions to control sex all of that are impossible to have when i can relate to the human being and as a man and so for me it was fascinating to play into somebody who had felt deprived of power when his thoughts in on the throne really they 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 the person i put myself in shoes without judgment or condition you pick one of the year's biggest hits divergent you play the lead do you respond. well you make of her surely just a little miss when she's a b.s. on the cover of vanity fair this month she's extra she's twenty two i think and the . young actress i think i've ever met it's copies and i care i've made two or three of them on the bestseller tops all of this at the same time you touch success. i mean look at well at the moment larry i'm not 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 drawbridge and periods of success and you go up and down and right now in a very fertile moment on think about is not a science seven how was playing warren yeah i did i think there is that guy was i

didn't seem like a bad guy discussed earlier i want to play that guy's sympathetic 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 make a living and 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 to do in the film were very difficult to do. it the way he treats people and the sexual relations of these young girls and. again you can't judge as an actor so just put yourself in a situation and let the audience just literally him people don't look in the mirror and say i'm bad that's exactly right we all reasons aaron about twenty nine will you be directing any missiles 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 you know and damn hunt what do you enjoy more acting or directing. the mix if i had to the best thing is both be able to do all of it and that one makes me better at the other issues i suppose would be directing because you just roll and you're the central storyteller and you get to work with everything apartment play a little game of if you only knew this is like ok first girl you have a kiss yes. once it was a game of spin the bottle when i was ten years old with a party it was a sort of a party was at my house and my older brother had his friends over and she was in seventh grade and i was ten and she beautiful i was like i'd never in mere playing spin the bottle i was the young kid in my brother let me sit in the circle and this girl you know just moved like this you know. he was like following them around the home like what are we going to do that again we can play again or we can play again i was really really really good and my brother i think like many of them were still

addition to i was in high school i was a freshman in high school and i auditioned for the his first high school play and here at the wynn and 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 don't have to do this and we just i remember it was intoxicating he was the witness is his name is howard and one of the young boy witnesses on the day darrell you may play darrow and then i didn't get the part i got out of the one line in the show but i was hooked drama comedy a thriller oh gosh all of it all musicals of plays both which superpower would you like to have light still hero you'd like to play and i think batman who is most none of us you know as things the president no matter what the situation is the scene is every time you walk into

a room you just have this because you've got that title miss going on for you but you need you know they don't really know what time period you like to travel but. i've always wished i put an actor in the 1940's her beloved prince philip from all the great red green our days of the theater robin taylor not just hollywood dot but also when the broadway theater when there were the shows on broadway sales home i got yeah yeah and he does all the rolling stones that's a tough one i guess up to the beatles but i love both three things you'd take with you on a desert island. beatles are my brothers. and my life most embarrassing moment on set on set i'm like oh and you 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 kerry washington and what do you know really i mean it can make it and be like ok now we've got we have it and they must marcel the great marcello mastroianni 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 got to figure all the way for camera angles you never get turned out it's sort of true structure . biggest prankster on seattle joshua molina space traveler time travel. definitely time travel would you rather run twenty miles or swim twenty miles run twenty miles is there a subject good project you'd love to develop it. i would love to do a film about oregon trail the pioneers i'd love to be part of something to tell that story of and i drive this you'd love to work with so many i think streep. and you don't think it's very good see if i want to thank my guests on the goal to

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 the t.v. you also see him this fall thursday nights on a.b.c. scandal of another years. and then we get find me on twitter at cain's things i'll see you next on. the switchboard washington well it's a mess to speak to that scary list there's a. question mark there's actually doesn't do too much for our revenue line tax because the giant takes on a seventy six year old american farmer in the studio. going to the greek for this.

do you think this is what the brain has a lot just to but it's also the large debtor nation. breaking news that is mostly about targeting the status quo i want to get your points working for the american dream the next they were justified it's time for americans and lawmakers in washington to wake up and surprising about the real crisis.

well when you're with your home army wife and they maintain your holiday just like you know.