We were living in a tumultuous time, when the world was upside down. Freeman produced a show that was black and white, the good guys versus the bad guys.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I did a play once where a reviewer said, 'Martin Freeman's too nice to play a bad guy.' And I thought: 'Well, bad guys aren't always bad guys, you know?' When I see someone play the obvious villain, I know it's false.
The large ensemble cast and the fact that it was being shot in New York, combined with a lot of strong positive images as far as African Americans are concerned, really turned me on to The Best Man.
When I did 'Good Guys Wear Black,' I had a lot of dialogue in that movie.
The world is not black and white; there are lots of shades of grey. There are good things and bad things in every era, and I think it's kind of very blindfolded to say one era was wonderful, as it was wonderful, but there were a lot of bad things as well.
No human being in history was all good or all bad, or all black or all white.
Washington shows the Negro not only at his best, but also at his worst.
The climate in the '50s and '60s for black performers or black people in the entertainment business was atrocious. It was atrocious.
Martin Freeman is a genius, he really is. He gives you every color of the rainbow in every take and it's wonderful just to play off of him and opposite him.
In every thriller written about Washington, particularly after 9/11, there are good guys and there are bad guys, and there's no gray area at all.
I always figured I would live long enough to see a black president. The movies predicted it. Usually, Morgan Freeman.