Don Cheadle | Interview

Don Cheadle takes my call in Atlanta, on break from shooting the Robert Zemeckis movie Flight. While we’re chatting about the now-routine fact of movie actors getting into television—as he’s doing on Showtime—Cheadle observes, “You could argue that the better writing is actually on TV. You have more opportunities to be creative. In features nowadays—and I’m in one of them—you gotta be green-screened, somebody’s gotta have a suit on. It’s gotta be a sequel.” In the new half-hour comedy House of Lies, the 47-year-old flexes his creativity as ruthless business consultant Marty Kaan.

You’re playing a proud, card-carrying member of the 1 percent.
That’s not how I would define it. I’m playing a management consultant and a con man [who] works with these guys who really are the 1 percent.

Well, he’s making seven figures himself.
Yeah, but he’s drafting the guys that are really crushing it.

The show taps into both our disdain for those who get rich by screwing over everyone else and our fascination with them.
The characters pay the karmic debt in their personal lives. At home Marty has no control, so [that’s] the karmic debt that’s getting paid off for what he’s doing out there in the world, helping these people that are really the 1 percent.

The plot with the son humanizes Marty—the son’s cross-gender behavior, wearing a skirt, trying out for the female lead in the play.
I think it’s good. I’ve never seen this story line dealt with before in this way.

How does that speak to you as a dad?
It’s crushing. It’s painful. I constantly had to go: I can’t do this like Don would do it, I’m playing a character. I consider myself a really good dad.

Your daughters are in their teens. Have you, like Marty, had to negotiate between the right way to respond and what you really feel?
I don’t know that any parent of a teenager thinks they’re dealing with it correctly. You’re always second-guessing yourself: How much do I let them do what they need to do and get on their glide path to being adults, and how much do I micromanage, and how much push-back can I expect and should accept? My mom said to me when I had kids, “Well, your carefree days are over. Not your good days. But carefree? That’s a wrap.” Whenever I’m not working, the next thought in my mind is them.

Any thought in particular these days?
Their college is now on deck: Where are we gonna go? You gonna go far or you gonna stay close? I want them to go to college in the basement, but they’re determined to go other places.

Marty is black, his ex-wife’s white, yet race isn’t mentioned in the first episodes.
Yeah, it didn’t read like traditionally black, whatever that means, the stereotypical way that would be defined in a Hollywood script.

So racial neutrality is still rare in scripts?
Well, I don’t think he’s racially neutral. It becomes an issue in subsequent episodes, and that’s appropriate because it more often than not does come up, especially in this business where you’re mostly talking to white CEOs and people that don’t look like you. I don’t really believe in color-blind casting. I don’t think it’s real. Things don’t have to be centered around race, but in this country, in this world, at some point that always comes into play.

Unlike Marty, then, black characters you see usually are centered around race?
Yeah, if you have a black character usually in a role, there’s a reason he or she was cast. In this it just happened that [Showtime president] David Nevins saw me in the part and went, “I want him.”

Marty’s in essence a gambler. I imagine you understand that as a poker player yourself.
The bluffing, the risk taking, the wanting to be on the edge—yeah. It’s one of those games: a short time to learn it and a lifetime to master it. I’m never gambling an amount of money that’s that dangerous for me. I’m not risking a house or the kids’ college fund. I just like the intrigue of it, trying to manipulate the conditions of the game to happen in the way you want it to happen.

You’ve said acting “has highlighted more neuroses than it’s offered comfort or relief.” Can you unpack that?
Unpack—that’s a management-consultant term. [Laughs] You’re doing something that is nebulous and undefined. You always walk away going, Did I do it? Did I achieve the goal? You’re like, God, I hope they use a take that I’m cool with being on celluloid for the rest of my life.… I like doing domestic stuff. When the porch is dirty and you sweep it and you hose it, you go, That was dirty, now it’s clean, and I know I did that. I often walk away from a set going, I don’t know what the fuck I just did.

House of Lies premieres January 8 at 9pm on Showtime.