Michelle Interviews Chukwudi Iwuji!
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00:00Hi, this is Michelle Bredel from 94.7 The Wave,
00:03sitting here with Chakudi Awuji.
00:05He is starring in the bold new adaptation
00:09of Cyrano de Bergerac at the Pasadena Playhouse
00:12September 4th through the 29th.
00:14Thank you so much for taking the time.
00:17Thank you so much for having me.
00:19Now, I know you spent a lot of time in Britain,
00:22a lot of time in the U.S.,
00:23so I have a really deep, important question to ask you.
00:28Yes.
00:29Are you a tea guy or a coffee guy?
00:31Coffee guy, 100%.
00:33No, no two ways about it.
00:37I think I only drink tea when I'm ill, you know.
00:40Good, good.
00:42You're part of us, part of the coffee team.
00:45Absolutely.
00:45Now, you have such an incredible career,
00:48so much TV, so many movies.
00:52You've done John Wick, The Underground Railroad,
00:55Doctor Who, how fun was that?
00:58Oh my God, takes me back.
01:00That was so much fun.
01:01Matt Smith, and it was,
01:04oh, that was one of my first TV gigs, Doctor Who, actually.
01:07I remember doing an extremely bad American accent
01:10playing the Secret Service Protector of President Nixon.
01:14It was a time travel one.
01:16And I just keep thinking,
01:18I need to work on my American accent on this.
01:20No, we love your accent.
01:23We just want that accent.
01:25That's part of what I love about you,
01:27that accent lends itself so well to Shakespeare,
01:30and you're a huge Shakespeare actor.
01:32You're an associate artist for the Royal Shakespeare Company?
01:36Correct, yes.
01:36You've done Othello, Hamlet, King Lear,
01:39Antony and Cleopatra, it's just amazing.
01:43Thank you so much.
01:44Actually, the King Lear and Antony and Cleopatra,
01:47I did with the Public Theater in New York, you know.
01:51So it's been a lot of stuff with the RSC,
01:55but also New York, I moved to New York
01:57about 12 years ago,
01:58and really getting to do Shakespeare in the Park and stuff.
02:01In fact, the last play before Cyrano
02:05was Shakespeare in the Park, and I did Othello.
02:07So this is my first show in like six years, you know.
02:11Wow, and to be Cyrano.
02:14Yes.
02:15Gosh, Shakespeare in the Park,
02:16what a gorgeous setting to see.
02:18It's magical, it really is.
02:20I mean, I'd heard about, I'd grown up,
02:23when you think of Shakespeare in the US,
02:26for me, you know, Raoul Julius,
02:29and, you know, Chris Walken, and young Denzel,
02:33and Morgan Freeman, and James Earl.
02:35I mean, in the Park, they all did that also.
02:38So for me to come and, you know, do,
02:42first I played Edgar in King Lear,
02:44and it had the amazing John Lithgow was Lear,
02:47and Ed Benning was Gunnaroll, you know.
02:50I mean, just such a cast.
02:52And then to go do again Othello with, you know,
02:56with Corey Stoll as Diago, and just, I mean,
03:00it's just so magical, and that crowd that comes in,
03:03and when it comes nighttime, and you do the scenes at night,
03:06I remember doing, it is the cause,
03:08it is the cause, my soul, you know,
03:10with Othello when he kills Desdemona,
03:12and there's just this big bed on the stage,
03:14and the lights, New York lights, and the crowd,
03:16and it's pretty magical.
03:18You need to experience that, you know.
03:20It's just great, I love it.
03:22Oh, and I saw you do the Brave New Shakespeare challenge,
03:25Romeo's Balcony scene.
03:27Yes, yes, yes, yes.
03:29That was a lot of fun doing that.
03:32Pedro Pascal did that also.
03:33I think that's when we met.
03:34We sort of like, sort of met on, you know,
03:37because he did a version in Spanish.
03:40I did, you know, I did another version,
03:42and then we connected and stuff.
03:43That was really fun, yeah.
03:44I love that speech.
03:46It's really quite beautiful.
03:47It is, and people who love Shakespeare
03:50love, you know, the symphony of it,
03:52love the, just the way that he brings his words.
03:57Did you use that for your iconic character,
04:01the high evolutionary in Guardians of the Galaxy,
04:05that character?
04:06Yes, what a character.
04:08Well, I was just saying, there is something,
04:11if you're a comic book fan,
04:13there is something thespian about comic book villains.
04:16Do you know what I mean?
04:17That's what kind of makes them really fun to play.
04:20Something bigger than life,
04:21something they're usually smarter than most people
04:25in the room as the villains.
04:27They usually, they love to hear the sound
04:29of their own voice.
04:30They're usually like dangerously eloquent.
04:32So yes, I would say, I didn't deliberately say,
04:35oh, I'm going to tap into it,
04:36but like we were talking,
04:38you've mentioned some of the shows.
04:39I would say still now,
04:42Shakespeare still constitutes 80% of my career still,
04:47because I've done so much of it.
04:48So it's all classical work in general.
04:51So I can't escape it.
04:53So when someone comes to me with,
04:57when James Gunn came with The High Evolutionary,
05:00I was like, oh, I immediately thought of Henry IV
05:03and his speech about not being able to sleep.
05:05How many thousands of my poorest subjects
05:07are at this moment asleep?
05:09I thought because then I thought,
05:10oh, The High Evolutionary,
05:11he doesn't sleep because he's obsessed.
05:13And so these little nuggets came to me in doing it,
05:16but there is something in my approach to language.
05:20I can't help it.
05:21It's like, as soon as the script is put in front of me,
05:23whether it's a modern piece or classical piece
05:26or TV thing or film thing,
05:27I'm looking for the rhythms in the language
05:29because people, the writers, good writers,
05:31and I've been lucky to predominantly work
05:34with some really good writers,
05:36is that they almost unconsciously are telling you
05:41what they want from the characters
05:42in the rhythms of how the characters speak.
05:46So I'm always looking for it.
05:47So yes, there is inevitably every comment I've heard
05:53or people talking to me,
05:55or I eventually got round to reading the reviews
05:58for the movies because I stay away from reviews
06:00when I'm in any way involved in it.
06:02Do you know what I mean?
06:03And this reference to the thespian background,
06:06I just find it hilarious because I guess it's there,
06:09but I didn't consciously go looking for it, you know?
06:13It's that bravado of a villain.
06:15Yes, it is.
06:16It's the bigger than life, the sort of,
06:20oh, people love someone that's really smart.
06:22Even if you loathe them,
06:23you kind of love someone that's ahead of everyone else.
06:28And a lot of villains,
06:30sometimes you just want them off the screen.
06:32It's like, it's too much.
06:33But everyone I've talked to,
06:35we just cannot take our eyes off of you.
06:36And that purple suit will haunt me forever.
06:39You're a little rocket.
06:42A bit of royal purple.
06:44Thank you so much.
06:45It does, it's been really beautiful and moving
06:50to get the reaction people had to The High Evolutionary
06:52because he's not one of the most known villains,
06:55but the reaction to it has been so heartwarming
06:58and whether it's amongst my peers
07:00or amongst my family or friends
07:02or just perfect strangers and stuff.
07:04So I'm glad, I'm glad we pulled it off.
07:08You were brilliant.
07:09Just brilliant.
07:10And that leads us to Cyrano.
07:13I mean, oh my goodness, what a character and play.
07:16My God, he's been on my bucket list
07:18since I saw the Jose Ferrer 1950 movie
07:21when I was in drama school.
07:23And I just was like, oh my God.
07:25You know, then of course I saw the, you know,
07:27Depardieu movie and I read the play
07:30and I saw Roxanne, Steve Martin.
07:33I've seen, you know, versions of it,
07:35but I've always loved the warrior poet that he is.
07:39You know, he is a warrior poet
07:41and based on a real character.
07:43And everything about the actor
07:47that has been my journey as an actor,
07:50you know, language comes together in this guy.
07:54You know, the use of text, the use of text as a weapon,
07:58as well as being very good with an actual weapon.
08:00I just think it's just such a sexy role, you know?
08:03And this translation by Martin Crimm,
08:07the second show I've done, he's translated.
08:08I did the misanthrope in London.
08:11It's just so brilliant and so rigorous and so fun.
08:14It's just so fun.
08:15It'll make you laugh out loud with the rhyme,
08:17but at the same time, so modern and it's elegant,
08:21but at the same time, dirty.
08:23It's like, it's beautiful, but at the same time, sexy.
08:26Do you know what I mean?
08:27It's got its-
08:28It's life.
08:29It's life, it's real.
08:30It's LA, actually.
08:31It's New York, it's London, you know?
08:33So it's such a gift.
08:36When I got the call from my agent saying
08:40Mike had offered it, it was like, yes, let's make this work,
08:43you know, because it's been on the list.
08:45And I never necessarily thought I'd get a chance to do it,
08:48you know, for obvious reasons.
08:49So I'm really glad Mike, who had seen me do Hamlet
08:54like 10 years ago at The Public,
08:57remembered that and wanted to work with me on this, you know?
09:01Oh, how fabulous.
09:01Because, you know, we do know the movies,
09:04but rarely have I seen the show on stage.
09:09I mean, available.
09:10I've never seen it on stage myself,
09:12but I never see it anywhere.
09:15Yes.
09:16So this is fabulous that it's going to be
09:18at the Pasadena Playhouse.
09:19Yeah, and what a space this is.
09:22It's my first time at a playhouse
09:23and it's such a gorgeous theater, you know?
09:25It fits, it fits this play very nicely.
09:28Yeah.
09:28Very intimate.
09:29Yes.
09:30Very back and forth.
09:31I mean, it's-
09:33The audience seems part of it.
09:34Yeah, we really want to bring people,
09:37because one of the dangers of Cyrano
09:39is that it's such a beautiful fairy tale
09:43that sometimes it's a bit just blighty.
09:46It sort of lives on a, up in the air somewhere.
09:50But this is really a production
09:51that stems from the translation,
09:53that we want to ground them in real people,
09:55real things we worry about, insecurity,
09:59fear of the other, vulgarity,
10:03all those things that we're very aware of in real life
10:06to make sure that these are people we understand.
10:10We know what it's like to look in the mirror
10:12and see something else
10:13from what the rest of the world sees.
10:15We know what it's like to be your own worst enemy.
10:19We know what it's like to have unrequited love.
10:22It's really important that we're making these people
10:25all real and not just, you know, fairy tale characters.
10:29I think certainly if people have seen other productions,
10:32this will feel like a very, for all it's fun,
10:35and there's a lot of that.
10:37Mike knows how to stage a show.
10:38It's very grounded in the real
10:44insecurities of these people, you know?
10:47We all feel that fear of rejection.
10:49We all feel those emotions.
10:53Now, is it set at a different time, per se?
10:57You're going to see a modern day production,
11:00and that serves the text very well
11:02because although it's still, you know,
11:04rhyming couplets and rhyme and, you know, verse lines
11:09and verse, sometimes prose, mostly verse,
11:12it's still very modern.
11:13So it fits the modern production
11:15that we're going to be doing, yeah.
11:17And the whole cast looks amazing.
11:20I mean, do you guys just love being on stage
11:22every day together?
11:24These are proper actors.
11:25These are like, I don't know what I mean by that,
11:27proper actors in the sense that these are actors
11:30that love the stage, that love theater.
11:35They all have a background in theater and they want to,
11:38they wanted to do this play.
11:39You know, as actors, as many of your viewers
11:41or listeners will know is that you sometimes
11:44take the job that comes, you know what I mean?
11:47But these are people that want to be part of this show
11:50and you can feel that with the energy,
11:52because it's a very, it's an easy show to do.
11:56It's an extremely difficult show to get right, you know?
11:59And so we all want to get it right.
12:02So there's a lot of hard work going into it.
12:04It's very rigorous, but I felt when,
12:06as Mike was telling me the people getting involved in it,
12:09I was like, oh God, you know, this is amazing.
12:12This is Kim, Rosa, you know, Will, you know,
12:17just like class actors, you know.
12:20Well, I, for one, cannot wait to see this.
12:24I'm so excited and I want everyone to get tickets.
12:27Pasadena Playhouse, Cerro Nuevo de Bergerac,
12:29September 4th through 29th.
12:32You get your tickets at pasadenaplayhouse.org.
12:36Chuck, thank you so much for taking the time to be with us.
12:39Thank you so much for having me.
12:40I wish you all the best.
12:42Thank you so much and I hope to see you here.
12:43I'll definitely be there.
12:44Thank you, bye-bye.
12:46Take care, bye-bye.