“The best things you learn from the character that you are vicariously living these crazy things through is the cautionary tale of what not to do,” reveals Don Cheadle about his work on “Black Monday.” He continues, “How to be a better human, and of course, it’s a comedy, so we are laughing at these guys and trying to punch up and not punch down. That’s really what these characters teach us, what to stay away from.” Watch our video above from before nominations were announced.
The Golden Globe-winning and Oscar-nominated actor just received a Best Comedy Actor Emmy nomination for the Showtime program. It marks the 10th of his career without a win so far. On “Black Monday,” he plays Maurice “Mo” Monroe, a 1980s stock broker. He admits, “it’s easier to talk about what I haven’t done on the show. We attempt to push the boundaries and see what we can get away with and take advantage of the time period. It’s just a lot of fun.”
He explains, “Anytime all of the cast are together and we are bouncing off on top of each other is the most fun, like the Halloween episode where everybody is in costume. Everybody’s flying in and out. Also, the boardroom scene when Mo returned; everybody had a lot to do. That’s when it’s really chugging, when we all get to bounce off each other, it feels very kinetic and very alive.”
The show explores the excesses and greed of Wall Street in the wake of the Black Monday crash of 1987 and mixes comedy with mystery, action and drama. Cheadle says, “Finding the balance between all those different genres would be a lot trickier if we did not have the cast, writers or producers that we have. I don’t have any problems moving between all those different things. I think the show is very facile at pulling off all those different facets of these storylines.”
He also confesses, “It would not be possible without the crew that we have and their creativity. They are not meant to show up and be just meat robots. We want people to be a part of the process and they get to be. They save us many times. When we are in corners and the set dec says ‘why don’t we do this?’ or the camera operator will go ‘if you just move it over here,’ Whenever we get any accolades to not thank them we would be incredibly remiss.”
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