Interview: Don Cheadle and Paul Rusesabagina. IGN talks to the star of Hotel Rwanda and the real hero behind the story. US, December 20, 2004 - It would be nice if you could say that events like the genocide that went on in Rwanda in 1994 were behind us. The sad truth is that atrocities like this are still being committed in locations around the globe, much of which we aren't even aware of. The story of Paul Rusesabagina and his incredible and brave struggle to save as many as he could from the massacres in Rwanda is one that many are unfamiliar with. Hotel Rwanda is a film that sets out to spread the story of what went on in Rwanda in 1994 in the hopes that future events of this type can be prevented. Hotel Rwanda is directed by acclaimed director Terry George (In the Name of the Father, The Boxer). It picks up at the start of the bitter battle in the mid-Nineties between the Tutsi and Hutu. Paul Rusesabagina was a diplomat and the former proprietor of the Milles Collines in Rwanda. He came back to the hotel to put some things in order when hell broke out all around him. Rusesabagina quickly gathered his family and brought them to live in the hotel, where things were at least temporarily a little more controlled. Many of the hotel workers took up rooms at the hotel and refugees from throughout Rwanda were soon begging Rusesabagina to take them in at the hotel. He did as much as he could, taking in orphans and as many families as he could fit. As massacres took place all around the hotel, Rusesabagina used his personal charm, his political connections and bribes to help as many people as he could to survive the ordeal. The casting choice of Don Cheadle to portray Rusesabagina on screen is about as perfect a match as one could imagine. In some respects, it's also a refreshing one. While critics have known Cheadle's name for years, he is far from a household name. His work in Hotel Rwanda is exceptional and he is well deserved of all the acclaim he is getting for it. Hopefully this part will give him the boost his career needs so that he can continue to hone his talent in demanding films like this one. At a recent press day in Los Angeles, IGN FilmForce had the unique and enlightening opportunity to speak with both Cheadle and the very man he portrays in Hotel Rwanda, Paul Rusesabagina. Interest in Rusesabagina's story has been brewing almost since the actual events occurred. He wanted to make sure that the story was told properly and done justice before agreeing on a film. "I have been approached by many different moviemakers since 1996. The story of the Milles Collines Hotel interested many different people, especially book writers and filmmakers. They approached me, but we couldn't agree on terms. Some of them wanted to make a movie on the TV, for the cables… Until I met Terry, and then we came to our agreement. I followed the movie right from the beginning. From the time I come to Long Island, I met Terry George and Keir Pearson, we sat together for a couple of days. I told them my story, they wrote a script. We sat down and talked about it, and some things we changed. Until they started filming, I was there, but I never got used [to it], even now. You know, whenever I see the movie, it just reopens the wounds of the genocide." Cheadle as Rusesabagina with Sophie Okonedo as Tatiana. While Cheadle was not necessarily the first choice to play this part, he was the best one. It was just a matter of convincing certain others that that was the case. Cheadle discussed landing the part. "Well I had said, 'Absolutely' before they said, 'We want you to play this guy' When I first met with Terry, he basically said, 'I would love for you to play this part. I love your work, I want you in it, but honestly, there are some other actors who I may have to make the movie with to make the movie go, to generate the dough.' He had been trying to make it for three to five years, something like that. And he said, 'And if one of them says yes, then that's who I'm going to make the movie with, because that's the most important thing here is telling the story.' I was in agreement. I said, 'I hope that it comes to me… I will support you in any way to get this movie made, even if it means me not doing it, because it's an amazing story that too few people knew about…' That's what I like about Terry. He's just a straight shooter. His passion for the piece was clear…" Before shooting the film, Cheadle spent time with Rusesabagina to prepare to play him. Rusesabagina explained, "When Terry agreed with Don Cheadle, Don sent me an email to know who I was, what I like, movies, art, museums, to know in order to know who I was. Before the shooting of the movie, he came to South Africa, to Johannesburg… We sat together for quite some time, we drank together, sharing a glass of wine in the evening and meals. We stayed together for almost a week, and then I went back. So he does what he used to me, to my manners, my behavior, my way of dressing, to know who I was really. And then also, for the shooting time, I was there. I went back to Johannesburg and I stayed for two weeks. And later on, I also went back, so we became closer. His performance is perfect. He did it properly, sometimes in the Hollywood way, but just perfect." "Whenever I take a part, I'm kind of insecure about the work," Cheadle says. "I never just think, 'I'm going to knock this one out of the park.' I'm always concerned that I'm doing the right thing and that the story's being told properly and I'm doing the right thing. There were a lot of challenges with this one. It was a short schedule compared to what we were trying to do. We had a lot of logistical things to deal with given the size of our budget and the size of our cast and the size of the extras and the scope of the story. 17.5 is not a lot of money to make what really is an epic story…" Cheadle wanted to be careful not to get hung up on minute details, but more so to capture the essence of Rusesabagina. "There were things, some specific, but mostly it was just getting a sense of the nature of him and a sense of his spirit and a sense of how he approached the world. Being with him in social settings, being with him one on one, being at a restaurant with him getting drunk… (Laughs) It was just kind of getting a whole picture of who he was, not just the 110 pages of the script or interviews that I'd seen, but really just sitting with him and joking with him and telling stories and him meeting my kids and me meeting his kids, those things, little details would come off of those things…" Since Rusesabagina served as an advisor on the film, that meant that many of the days in which Cheadle was performing his scenes, the real man that he was playing was watching from only a few feet away. "It's not comfortable. At times it was really daunting and I would say, 'Do you have to sit behind the monitor today? Can I come see you in the trailer afterwards?' But, for the most part, knowing that I wasn't trying to do some kind of direct characterization of him. There are definite things about him that I did incorporate, but they were larger things about his comportment and how he dealt with people and how he dealt with his family and what he thought of himself and his place and that situation…" History-based tales from Hollywood are often notorious for taking the reality out of the story, glamorizing and fictionalizing events until they are almost unrecognizable when compared to what actually happened. Hotel Rwanda achieves the rare feet of not only sticking to the basic story, but also in creating an almost exact replication of what went on in Rusesabagina's life during this period. "Well, you can say that 90 percent of the movie is the reality of what took place at the Milles Collines hotel in 1994. Let's say 10 percent is just in hints of the film… There are places, for instance, romantic times when you see Paul and his wife on the roof, enjoying wine. That good time, I didn't have it. I could go and see my wife and children late in the night, around two, around one, around four in the night, but that good time I didn't have it." Cheadle says that Paul's wife also pointed out another amusing, if not greatly important, inaccuracy. "I remember one day on the set, he and Tatiana were there and we were shooting one of the bedroom scenes, and Tatiana said something to Odette in French, and they all laughed. I said, 'What was so funny?' And she said, 'This scene is not right because Paul sleeps in the nude.' Well, this scene probably just won't be right then, because I'm not dropping trou in this one." (Laughs) I never sat him down and tried to grill him on the specifics of what happened to him.