00:14I see a war that will never end.
00:27But the idea of this man, can you talk about bringing out the different facets, but what you use as
00:34your basis?
00:35Obviously, you have John's aspect, but what other things did you pull from to sort of create this milieu of
00:43this man?
00:47It was, I mean, without going into too much detail or history, but this actually, when it came across my
00:56reps and me to read for the role, I was actually very hesitant and just, I actually turned it down
01:02a few times.
01:04And part of it was because I think that there was just a lot of fear and responsibility in portraying
01:12such a larger than life person that everybody is so aware of and he's been so much in the public
01:23eye.
01:23But for me personally, like I grew up in Kuwait and I was in Kuwait when the Iraqi invasion of
01:30Kuwait happened and I was 18 years old and it really kind of shaped my adulthood.
01:38It kind of catapulted me into this sense of responsibility and the state of war.
01:45And so there's some trauma related to it, personal trauma.
01:52And then, you know, also it was just that responsibility of like, how do you portray this character without making
02:04it a caricature and without feeding into, you know, people's perceptions of him, good or bad.
02:16So, yeah, it was finally like an actor that I was working with, put me on tape and I think
02:25the advice that she gave me was, don't feel compelled to play Saddam, but just play the scenes.
02:36And then, you know, we had another call with the director and producer and there was some more material.
02:46And so it just kind of grew, it grew with it, but that fear always remained there.
02:54And it was, it was something I had to really push through every day.
03:01It was not an easy shoot for me or for anybody, really.
03:04It was actually a very, very difficult production.
03:08But that's, that's kind of some, some background about my personal relationship with, with Saddam.
03:19I'm about to interrogate the man who invaded Kuwait, fought against Iran, terrorized Iraq for 23 years.
03:28Saddam Hussein, high value target number one.
03:34Your mission, find Saddam.
03:37Why is it you have to go?
03:39Nobody knows this guy better than me.
03:41I should be there.
03:42You have no field training, John.
03:46Hey, John Nixon.
03:47So you want in?
03:48You're up.
03:50I heard, I did know that you were there in your formative years in Kuwait when that happened.
03:55Yeah.
03:55You know, the perspective of looking at him when you saw him on the news there and obviously all that,
04:02you know, obviously that comes back in memory, you know.
04:05And what did it take, what did it take to sort of separate any, because the man was a tyrant,
04:11but you do play him, there's a sense of empathy, there's a sense of charm, there's a sense of directness,
04:17but there's also the evil lurking underneath.
04:21Yeah, so part of the fear with playing this role was that there was very little time to prepare.
04:29When I was cast, I think there was about a month before we started filming.
04:34And so within that month, I just was scrambling.
04:38It was kind of like, you know, cramming for an exam.
04:41I was reading, like, five different books at the same time just to get different viewpoints.
04:52And, you know, a couple things stuck in that reading and that just studying that I was doing was the
05:02first book I started reading really went into his childhood.
05:05And that really stuck with me.
05:08And, you know, there was a documentary, I think, that I watched that Peter Dinklage narrated, and he was talking
05:14about the dictators.
05:17And, you know, Saddam was the one who had the worst childhood from all the dictators, from Stalin and from
05:24Mussolini and Hitler and everybody.
05:28And that book really went into depth about his childhood.
05:32He was, you know, his mother tried to kill him when he was in her womb, like she was, I
05:39think, I forget how many months pregnant she was, but she tried to, as she was leaving the hospital where
05:47her older son was dead, was from some disease.
05:54She felt that the cause of her son's death and her husband had disappeared on some voyage that he was
06:05going on for, anyway.
06:10Her husband was gone, and her older son was killed, and she was like, I think it's the devil inside
06:16me that did this.
06:18She also had a reputation of being a clairvoyant.
06:22And so he grew up in this household where his mother was an outcast who wanted him dead before he
06:30was born.
06:31And then his father was not there.
06:37I think from my recollection, because this was a while ago when we filmed this and when I read it.
06:43Understood.
06:43She basically, like, married her husband's brother, because it was about, you know, within the culture, it's like his responsibility
06:54to care for his brother's family.
06:57Welcome to Baghdad.
07:01One of the biggest manhunts in modern history.
07:05I'm missing something.
07:06John, is it true Saddam built a network of tunnels under Baghdad?
07:11Hey, hey, hey!
07:17That's him.
07:19We're the WMDs.
07:21Who are you?
07:22You are nothing.
07:24Everybody's watching.
07:25I know the stakes.
07:27I'm an angle.
07:28All those Rockies out there fighting, nobody's fighting for you.
07:32But he was always bullied in school for not having a father and for having a mother who was kind
07:36of loony.
07:39So he was bullied.
07:40And his stepfather used to beat him with a metal rod and basically told him, if anybody comes close and
07:51wants to harm you, this is what you should do.
07:54You should beat them.
07:55So he would go to school with a metal rod and I think he was about 10 years old where
08:01he actually pulled a gun on one of his teachers.
08:04So he literally lived in an environment of kill or be killed.
08:09He was about 10 years old, the survival of the fittest, literally.
08:13Not like other characters that are portrayed where, you know, they're gangsters.
08:21So that, and then, you know, I saw a picture of him as a child.
08:26And I think he was about 10 years old and that picture was something that I always referenced.
08:32And the look of fear, pain, and just sorrow was, you know, was something that I saw.
08:46So that was one of the things that really stuck.
08:49And the other thing was, you know, you have to understand the Iraq that Saddam was born into in order
08:56to understand him.
08:57And that piece of land, the most fertile place on earth for, you know, centuries has been the most contested
09:07over piece of land for eons, from the Mongols, the Phoenicians, the Ottomans, the, you know, in every empire and
09:18civilization.
09:18And so it was a land filled with murder and with atrocities that are beyond our belief.
09:31And so he grew, you know, he was born into that world.
09:34And then, so he, so, so I developed a level of empathy for, for the child, the, the child within
09:43that was never given the opportunity to, to really have a normal life where all he knew was this was
09:54the way to, to advance, to lead, to, to, to help his country, which was his rationale.
10:02And I do believe it was genuine, but it was in a very kind of contorted view of the world.
10:14So, so, so yeah, so that, that, that, that's what kind of helped me kind of get to the human
10:21being behind the, the image that we've all seen.
10:25It's because you don't have any power anymore.
10:27Fix him stand there.
10:28We will fight for every street before we submit to your occupation.
10:38You think the game's over when you take the king?
