IN the following interview, Forest Whitaker,
who won best actor in the Oscar awards, talks about his most
important role to date, Ugandan dictator Idi Amin, in Fox
Searchlight’s critically acclaimed thriller "The Last King of
Scotland." The film is showing exclusively at Ayala Malls
Cinemas (Glorietta 4 and Greenbelt 3).
In the film, in an incredible twist of fate,
a Scottish doctor (James McAvoy) on a Ugandan medical mission
becomes irreversibly entangled with one of the world’s most
barbaric figures: Idi Amin. Impressed by Dr. Garrigan’s brazen
attitude in a moment of crisis, the newly self-appointed Ugandan
President Amin handpicks him as his personal physician and
closest confidante. Though Garrigan is at first flattered and
fascinated by his new position, he soon awakens to Amin’s
savagery - and his own complicity in it. Horror and betrayal
ensue as Garrigan tries to right his wrongs and escape Uganda
alive.
Question: What goes through your head when
asked to play Idi Amin, especially given his reputation?
Forest Whitaker: First I was, like,
"Whoa." I had only very dark images of this man: a big angry
black man, who was a maniac or something. So, I read the book
then as I started to do more and more research, I began to have
a different understanding of Idi Amin. It was a challenge for me
as an actor. I thought that the script was written really well,
and I wanted to get the chance to play a really interesting,
complete character. Not just a stereotyped image of Idi Amin.
Q: So, how did you and the film present him?
Whitaker: I think it is the journey of
these two people as told from Garrigan’s eyes, his doctor. But
it is about people becoming corrupted by power and that is kind
of a metaphor that we are playing. Yes, he is very complicated,
but he does have, in his mind, reasons. He does want to build
more schools and create hospitals and fix roads, the way he was
trying to do it sometimes was just not practical. We are showing
that and the side of him that becomes extremely paranoid and
starts to see that he is losing power and starts to become a
darker figure.
Q: Was there any self-examination with him, a
realisation of what he was up to?
Whitaker: I think that he understood.
Some of the things that happened I don’t think he was completely
aware of, he gave power, when you see interviews and when he was
talking to his cabinet and he would say, "Look, if someone is
doing something wrong, you take care of it. If they are like a
traitor, you deal with them and tell me later." You can see it
on film, him saying that. I think he was a little too relaxed
about certain things and it backfired on him. There were things
that he did, and he dealt with. He had to care about what his
friends were doing because it was about betrayal. Whether it was
his wife, who betrayed him, or his closest friend.
When he rose up to power, he saw the other side. And he had
feelings – pride, a love for his children. I went to his village
and talked to his brother and sister and they would tell me
about how he was with his friends and he was a good man. You
read some of the reports and biographies about when he was a
soldier and people liked him. They really liked him. He was a
person who was very loyal to his friends and cared about his
friends. People look on him like he was a non-intelligent person
but he spoke, like, ten languages, English was not his first
language so you can’t judge him by the way he talks. He held the
country in his power for like eight years.
