So Oliver Stone tapped Thandie Newton to star as our great Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice for the upcoming film "W", which is a biopic of about George W. Bush.
But the question is, just how did British actress Thandie Newton become convinced she could take on the role?
“Oliver woke me up,” she tells Britain's Times Online. "Stone had an 'absolute belief' that I could play this character who was absolutely nothing like me. She didn’t look like me; she’s a couple of decades older than me. And I’m English, for goodness’ sake."
Thandie admits that she didn't even know how to spell Condoleezza when she first discussed the role with Stone.
“I knew she was secretary of state and that was about it.” But the script was on point, she said, which led her to accept the offer. “I decided to close my eyes and leap. I wanted to take the risk.”
Newton said she immediately got to work studying Rice's every move. “That was when it got really f***ing fun,” she says, rubbing her hands with glee. “It was like doing a really involved paper back at Cambridge and my paper was Condoleezza Rice.” She poured through biographies, articles, books on the Bush administration, on Cheney, on torture, Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo. “You name it, I read it,” she says. “I had two things going on: reading about this young woman, and the incredible story of the Bush administration. This gigantic beast, this machine and how it was cranking toward war. I wanted to become drunk with knowledge.”
By the time rehearsals began in Louisiana, Newton said she was beginning to have second thoughts. “I was thinking, ‘F***, have I made a mistake?'" The make-up team told her that prosthetics were out of the question because they would melt in the heat. “That was a bit of a blow,” she said. “They told me they would do a ‘feel-alike’ rather than a lookalike, and I knew that was going to be a real problem for me.”
During the six week rehearsal period in Louisiana, Newton struggled to find a way to accurately portray Rice, finding inspiration in the way she used her own voice to conquer the challenges of playing the ghost-child in "Beloved" ten years ago. “I suddenly realized that I had this weird, very deep voice that I could use,” she said. “I remember Jonathan [Demme, the director]’s face when I started speaking. It was priceless. We didn’t need the voiceover.”
As for the physical transformation into Rice, she consulted with a close friend who happens to be a make-up artist. “I thought we could create something with some clever make-up and shading," said Newton. "We just hadn’t got close to her in rehearsals and they were trusting me to come up with a character under my skin, but the truth is that I needed a lot on my skin. We spent the afternoon experimenting. By the time the kids came home from school I was all Condi’d up, complete with some fantastic false teeth. She nailed it for me. I was still terrified, but now I had the equipment.”
