Exclusive: Djimon Hounsou Talks “The Legend Of Tarzan”Posted by Wilson Morales
June 29, 2016
Coming out this week in is “The Legend Of Tarzan,” a new take on Edgar Rice Burroughs’ jungle hero stars Alexander Skarsgård in the title role alongside a cast that also includes Margot Robbie, Samuel L. Jackson, Christoph Waltz and Djimon Hounsou.
The film begins years after the man once known as Tarzan (Skarsgård) left the jungles of Africa behind for a gentrified life as John Clayton III, Lord Greystoke, with his beloved wife, Jane (Robbie) at his side. Now, he has been invited back to the Congo to serve as a trade emissary of Parliament, unaware that he is a pawn in a deadly convergence of greed and revenge, masterminded by the Belgian, Captain Leon Rom (Waltz). But those behind the murderous plot have no idea what they are about to unleash.
For Hounsou, who plays Chief Mbonga, a rival of Tarzan, he took the role due to his desire to work with director David Yates. Last seen in the sci-fi movie Air, the two-time Oscar nominee is best known for his roles in Amistad, Gladiator, In America, Blood Diamond, and Guardians of the Galaxy.
Blackfilm.com recently spoke with Hounsou on his role and working on the film.
How would you describe Chief Mbonga?
Djimon Hounsou: Chief Mbonga one time had a obviously some kind of interaction with Tarzan and over time that interaction turned a bit tragic at some point, where it would appear that my son killed Tarzan’s gorilla mom. Therefore, my character was eager to, with any means, to get him back to Africa so I could resolve that issue with him, come to term with that issue.
What attracted you to the film?
Djimon Hounsou: David Yates the director. It’s not so much the character at first, it was mostly, well certainly I didn’t see the character at first, but it was David Yates and his vision and certainly wanting to work with a director because I’d love the way he directed many of the Harry Potter film and all that. I just loved his vision and so when I got the call from David Yates, I was like, “Oh, that could be interesting.” Then got me over the phone to explain his understanding of the character, what he was trying to bring out with this character.
It really plays out more with this tragic loss. That was the strong theme that we’re explaining to try to develop this character. That we would understand this character much later, how he’s the way he is. But certainly they, Chief Mbonga and Tarzan obviously had a history and want to assume that they certainly had a very collaborative connection that they had before, before this tragic moment where I lost my son and he lost his gorilla mother.
What’s your experience with Tarzan, did you watch it growing up in any form?
Djimon Hounsou:My only Tarzan, that I first came to knowing Tarzan, was in France when I was getting my education there. The Tarzan that I remember seeing then was a very remarkable Tarzan that really had an amazing impact on me at that time, was the Christopher Lambert’s Tarzan, “Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes” and I thought that was electrifying, and he was electrifying. But it’s an interesting iconic fairy tale that’s been told so many times and we still love to remember. Certainly this approach, the way we approach this one, it was definitely more mature and more socially conscious approach to it.
Someone might go, “There’s this movie coming out, Tarzan, why should I go see it? I saw the ones growing up, what’s going to be different?” As an actor, what do you tell people?
Djimon Hounsou: What is different here is this something I stated before. It’s the social impact messages that all resonates in this that are relevant to what’s going on now in our world, the state of our world today. When you look at King Leopold, nobody knew how devilish this king was. Nobody knew how this king was severing limbs of Africans for refusing to collect his glue or whatever… His tire, what made tire at the time. But anyway, there were a lot of addressing some of our struggles. Socially interacting with one another these days, and it’s certainly the political indoctrination of the continent back then. The economic indoctrination of the continent is so much more then we could ever fucking dream. This is actually a complete nightmare. It’s the devil you can’t fucking see. It’s hating us every day.
We see how much Alexander did to get in shape for the role. What about yourself? Everybody is always like, “You’re always in shape?” I don’t think I’ve ever seen you with a gut in any of your films.
Djimon Hounsou: I try not to, because I’m trying to wonder, “Who’s going to employ me if I have a gut?” No, there’s a great amount of training that went into it by the time I got to London to see, and saw Alexander in that shape and training, and the nutritional dedication that he was going through, and it was absolutely powerful. It was very inspiring. Like, I want to fight him.
How was working out that fight sequence?
Djimon Hounsou: Again, I have so many years of martial art, boxing and mixed martial art. The choreography wasn’t that big of a deal. It’s the setting of it, the environment in which we were shooting that fight scene, it was only in the water with supposedly black sand. The black sand was literally glass chipped in tiny fragment to look like sand. That shit, if you step on it, it goes into your skin.
What did you pick up from Yates as a director that’s different from other directors you’ve worked with in the past?
Djimon Hounsou: I think his sense of story telling, his sensibility with story and trying to keep that organic. Organic in a sense that has to be a certain connection to the way we live today. The need for sensibility with animals, humanity. When you speak of humanity, you speak of all that. That is part of humanity. Humans wouldn’t exist necessarily, without all the animals that we seem to love or hate, including the ones we hate.
What goes into what you’re looking for now? Is it people coming to you or you look for certain roles that you want to do?
Djimon Hounsou: People coming to you is nice. What I’m really looking for, to accomplishing, to get into working hard at getting to that, for another (Oscar) nomination, basically. Hopefully, take one home.
You once were once in the Marvel film, and Marvel has cast other like Chris Evans and now Michael B. Jordan in other Marvel films. If you were to ask, “Hey, would you want to take another role in the new Black Panther film?” Would you want to go in there?
Djimon Hounsou: I would do it because there’s a great need for us to have a great hero, a hero that we can relate to. Instead of relating to the white hero always. Where I can’t see myself or my son can’t even see himself, because he says to me, “One day Dad, it would be nice if I could, I want to climb walls like Spiderman, if I were white, I would be able to do that.” That notion, that he wanted to be white so that he would be able to climb walls like Spiderman. But people were climbing walls way before white Spiderman. We have black Spidermens, we do, are you kidding me?
