ONTD

In life and in work, Don Cheadle is one of those actors with a marked preference for avoiding the showy side of things—a quality that makes the fact that he's suddenly everywhere all the more striking. Already this year Cheadle has had one big movie (spring's Reign Over Me with Adam Sandler), and an even bigger one (Ocean's Thirteen) will have just reached theaters as this issue hits the stands. And still on the horizon is Talk to Me (due out later this month), the real-life story of Washington, D.C., radio personality Ralph Waldo "Petey" Greene (Cheadle), whose straight talk gave voice to the black community in the 1960s. But film is not the only place Cheadle has been channeling his energy of late, and in May he and human rights activist John Prendergast published Not on Our Watch: The Mission to End Genocide in Darfur and Beyond (Hyperion), a project born in part from his experience filming Hotel Rwanda (2004). We asked Cheadle's friend Matt Damon to get the scoop on the journey from actor to activist.




MATT DAMON: Everything good there?

DON CHEADLE: Yeah, just getting ready to go on this book tour.

MD: Then that's where we'll start our big interview. Tell me about the book, or rather, tell everybody else about the book [laughs]—I know about it.

DC: Well, John Prendergast and I traveled to Darfur a couple of years ago with Nightline, and now we've co-authored a book. In addition to describing our path into this actor-vism and activism, the book talks about ways that individuals can get involved and how we can address the problem in Darfur. Hopefully it will help to create a grassroots, and eventually a global, effort to prevent this and other crises like it in the future.

MD: What are some of the suggestions?

DC: We want people to get in touch with their state representatives, write letters, call the White House, form groups, get involved with religious groups that have been active in this—the Jewish community has been very involved given the obvious parallels between this conflict and the Holocaust. We want people to start networking, because when our leaders hear it's important to us that they do something, things start to change.

MD: So ultimately you think the solution will come from the bottom up—that we can't expect our leaders to take us there?

DC: They're not going to be motivated unless they believe there's going to be some political cost for their inaction. When our leaders make decisions that we don't support and they don't hear from us, they tend to maintain the status quo. Now we have a scenario where five of the candidates who are running for president—Barack Obama, Senator Clinton, Senator Biden, Sam Brownback, John McCain— have all spoken about the region; in some way they've all made solving the problem a part of their platform and their agenda if they become president. So while they're in that decision-making process, we want to say in a very loud and clear voice that they have to speak to this and give it more than lip service or they will see results at the polls. It's the same thing that's happening in Sudan— when Bashir [Omar Hassan al-Bashir, President of Sudan] doesn't feel any international outrage for what he's doing, he just goes on with his agenda.

MD: Can this situation be resolved?

MD: Can this situation be resolved?

DC: The stories coming out of Africa tend to be the kind of depressing ones that make it look as if the entire continent is beyond help, but when you really look, there are many examples of regions that have come out of horrible conflict. Sierra Leone, Mozambique, Rwanda, all of these places have had terrible civil wars, but with diplomacy and with our government getting involved in negotiations, things get hammered out. I believe the situation in Darfur will be hammered out eventually, too, but what will be the cost before it is? We have to support the International Criminal Court and give them the information we have so that they can do what they need to. If the people responsible don't feel that that's going to be the result, then it will be business as usual.


To read the complete interview with Don Cheadle, pick up the July issue today.

Interview Magazine