Chiwetel Ejiofor has worked with a truly insane number of people we consider some of the best directors working today. Ejiofor’s role as Solomon Northup in Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave garnered him an Oscar nomination for Best Actor and, probably not surprisingly, Ejiofor lists McQueen as an influence for Ejiofor’s own directorial debut, The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind. Not so much in terms of style, but more the way McQueen handles actors. Or, put simply, his management style. (Talking to Ejiofor, this is an aspect of directing we often overlook and is extremely important.)
I met Ejiofor at his hotel on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. He was very excited to talk about his directorial debut — a true story that debuts today on Netflix — about a young boy, William Kamkwamba, who uses wind power to bring clean drinking water to his Malawian village. (Ejiofor choose to film the movie in Malawi.)
It’s always fun to talk to an actor who is now directing. Think of it this way: try to imagine giving a media interview every time you took a new job and being asked about certain decisions that you, ultimately, were not in charge of. Compare that to talking about a company you started. There’s always an extra spring in his or her step and Ejiofor certainly embodies that here.
You’ve have worked with a murderer’s row of directors: Alfonzo Cuaron, Spike Lee, Ridley Scott, Steve McQueen, Jon Favreau coming up. Now directing yourself, do you find yourself taking bits and parts from them?
I mean, well, yes and no.
Is there any moment where you catch yourself, “Ah, Spike did that same thing”?
I suppose what I felt is that there were moments when I was thinking, “I’ve seen this achieved.” And there were instances that I could look back on that were very specific, about how much we would be able to shoot in, say, a couple of days on Children of Men, for example, which was a very specific reference that I had when I was talking about a couple of things that we were shooting with large numbers of people. So, that kind of practical awareness, which when you’re dealing with shooting your first feature it would be understandable to be quite concerned about large numbers of people and so on, that kind of practical awareness was very useful for me in those kind of circumstances.
You wouldn’t think working on a Roland Emmerich movie might inspire this, but that’s someone who has worked with a lot of people around.
One hundred percent. And Roland is so great. He’s just an economy of shooting – and just how he’s positioning camera, and how he’s getting performances from crowds, and all of this stuff – working on that kind of very functional basis of a set is something that he does brilliantly. So, there were a few people that I could very quickly reference, in terms of things that I’ve worked on and things that I’ve seen. But in terms of one’s personal sort of dynamics in terms of directing, the whole key is that you’ve got to find your own voice. You’ve got to find your own way of doing it.
Was that a lot of pressure to put on yourself for your first movie? Finding your voice right away?
I think that it is skill that’s evolving, but I didn’t necessarily settle on a style and think, “This is absolutely the way that I want to tell all stories that I tell.” But, I think it was that thing of making sure that it wasn’t any borrowed clothes. You know what I mean? That I wasn’t just trying to take on somebody else’s way of making a film or somebody else’s way of engaging.
Well, I wouldn’t think that. I would think you have so many influences over your career that it would all kind of merge together to form its own thing.
Well, I think that’s kind of maybe what part of that is, but I feel like it’s also just trying to make sure that it’s all honest in a way, that it’s all kind of openly your own interpretation of any of those influences.
Is it weird being the boss? You now have to tell actors what to do.
Well, I think that the truth is, I guess what I’m aware of – and I think this is from being an actor for a while – is that every person requires something different in order to get the best out of them. That they require slightly different things. So, having worked with a number of different directors, I think the best directors that I’ve ever worked with are the people who are flexible, who understand.
Who’s best with flexibility that you’ve worked with?
I suppose a great, flexible director, in terms of understanding people, what people need and, therefore, being able to get that, is Steve McQueen. I think he’s exceptional at keying into what a person might need in order to really access that other space, and then sort of working within that. But I would say that Ridley Scott is great at that as well, at being able to communicate ideas to people and lift ideas. I mean they’re very different, but it’s that kind of qualities. But what I was trying to bring was a sense of really trying to understand how I could help in the best ways possible, and to keep myself quite flexible in that journey.
Especially with your first time directing a film, how important is it to you when you choose a cinematographer? Because you have Dick Pope, who has worked with Mike Leigh numerous times, he’s one of the best in the business.
What he brings to a project like this is the whole package, because he’s so invested and so engaged with what’s happening and every stage of it, that he’s an incredible collaborator. So, we were out in Malawi talking through all of the locations, working on absolutely everything and just really sitting and discussing it, and the feel of it, and the look of it, and what we were trying to bring out in the performances and in the landscape and in the movement of the camera.
I always wonder, especially being your first directed film, do you ever have to just say, “How does this work?” I watched an older interview with Harold Ramis recently where he said on Caddyshack, his first film, he had to that a few times.
Yeah, I mean, I guess that there were times when I would say or I would do… I’m just trying to think. I mean, there were a million and one moments where I would rely on his experience. And even if that’s the amount I was attempting to shoot in a day, or something like that.
So logistics-wise, he just kind of knows it in his head like, “No, this might be easier if we do it this way.”
Exactly. This is very practical advice about what and how achievable things are. But then he would also interpret what I was going for and then try and compute that into his advice about how to achieve it. So, it’s just a very sort of collaborative energy of, “I want you to get what you want to get out of this, and I’m taking the responsibility of figuring out the practicalities of doing that and delivering that.”
Can the directing club be cliquish to actors directing?
Well, I don’t know. I mean, I haven’t experienced any of that. I was showing the film to directors that I had worked with. Stephen Frears came into the edit room and Steve McQueen came into the edit room. And, once the film was completed, on different occasions you know, just to talk to them about it and to speak through certain choices and decisions and it felt like a totally engaged type of experience. I think that the films hopefully speak for themselves and they reflect you and your engagement with the material and how you have seen this as a kind of visual representation of the story. So, I think that if people are slightly cliquey about that, then that’s a slightly childish perspective. Because, really, it’s so deeply challenging and complicated, going through that process is enough of a learning curve.
Is directing what you want to do now? Did you enjoy the experience? You never hear anyone say, “That just wasn’t for me.”
Oh no, no, I enjoyed it! It was challenging, but in a really rich way. It was probably the richest artistic experience of my life, in a sort of overall capacity and is overall engagement and the amount of different things that you’re involved in and you’re doing. To realize a story that I have obviously sat with for so long, because I read the book in 2009, so just that process of all of the different strands and the elements of that coming together. And then the decisions to shoot in Malawi and the logistics of that and all of those dynamics sort of arriving, was such a rich journey for me.
You’ve also got The Lion King coming up. You’re Scar. I think people are excited for this one.
Time will stop.
I think it might. People can’t wait.
I’m proud of it. I am so excited about that. So, I’m exactly in the groove. I’m in the front of the line. I’m like right there.
‘The Boy Who Harnessed The Wind’ debuts Friday, March 1 on Netflix. You can contact Mike Ryan directly on Twitter.
