How Mahershala Ali & Viggo Mortensen Bonded Long Before 'Green Book' | Close Up

(funky music)

- Mahershala, Viggo, how do you actually

form that rapport as actors?

- We met over, about a year ago

and about nine months before we started shooting

and we had that moment, funny enough,

not knowing each other, where we were just sort of

both having this introverted moment

at this big luncheon with a bunch of amazing actors around

and we were sort of, found ourselves tucked in a corner

and we spoke for a while but I think that was

the initial conversation that, I think,

sort of peppered the moment for us to meet later

and to begin working and having, at that moment

not knowing we were going to work together on something,

and to connect and then step into a project

we're about to start shooting,

we got to sit down and sort of share and communicate

some of our concerns and fears

and go through the script in a way that--

- Can you tell me one of your fears?

- Don Shirley is just so different from me, physically,

and so when you're dealing with someone who isn't famous,

who does not have a presence in the culture

in the way that, Don Shirley was an accomplished man,

accomplished pianist, but no one really knew who he was.

No one knew what he looked like.

And so I got to see some tape on him,

that he appeared in this documentary call Little Bohemia

and he's in there just in moments

and his voice, the pitch, was quite a bit higher,

it was like up here, you know?

I couldn't go there but I could like dorp it enough

where it wasn't a distraction.

- And refine it. - And the physicality,

you find, you're kind of like tuning in,

get your tuning fork right so that it's not a distraction

to the audience so that they can actually enjoy the story

and not be distracted by a choice

that they don't have anything to root it in.