It's a funny thing, because Stephen and Tim - Stephen especially, is quite British. I think it's a valuable film now, about activism, standing up and having courage, and sort of holding true to your beliefs, and the value of humanity.Ĭan you talk to me about your South African accent and your work with a dialect coach?ĭaniel Webber: Yeah. I think this is a really valuable film, period. But maybe I really discovered the types of stories that I would love to continue telling. I don't know what I learned about myself as an actor here. You could literally go and ask him any question you wanted, and you would have an answer in essay form. He'd been on the project for eight years and has such a thorough breadth of knowledge about the escape, about Apartheid, about that whole era. I think he's an exceptional director.įor me, with this project, I was so thoroughly on board with the story and the message - and even more so with Francis himself.

Francis himself, I think, is a director that everybody's going to be knowing about and is going to hear about in a couple of years. We had amazing actors it was a great script. What did your director, Francis Annan, help you discover about yourself or about your acting style while you were working with him?ĭaniel Webber: You know, I just truly loved the experience of being on set with him and with the rest of the group.

There's an order to it all.Įvery director has their own style, and they bring out different things in their actors. Your life is based around prison routine, and you sort of lose that sense of self and that ability to dictate what you want to do and you know how you want to live your life. And we've all seen prison stories and dramas and whatnot, but it never really hit home how much your life is completely observed by other people now. What was the most surprising thing you learned about Tim and Stephen's story while you were doing your research?ĭaniel Webber: I think one of the things was how you basically lose autonomy in prison. We just asked them about their lives and tried to get more of a sense of the other person through Tim or through Steven, depending on who you're talking to. So, we ended up having these wonderful conversations with these guys that we highly respected, who were telling their story with their faces 10 feet tall up on the cinema screen. Dan and I were in rehearsals in this old cinema, and they ended up projecting Tim and Stephen at different times up on the cinema screen. What was really great was that the producers and the director organized for us to meet both of them beforehand. Tim came on the set maybe about three or four weeks into the shoot. Did you get to pick his brain about Stephen at all?ĭaniel Webber: Yeah, we did.

I also read that Tim was actually on set with you guys for a little bit. So, it was basically just trying to understand why he did what he did. If you learn about that sort of stuff and you don't start yelling and screaming at the ceiling for how infuriating and enraging this government was, and how horrific it was, I think you're not human. Just trying to understand why he did that was probably the most important thing in portraying him, and that involves learning about apartheid and the regime there, and what they did to people. But I sort of looked at him through the prism of the decision to give up what I imagine was quite a comfortable middle-class life and join the ANC and go on this mission to fight his government. There was obviously Tim's book, and so I kept going back to that. In this case, there wasn't so much to be found out about Stephen online. It comes down to researching, and if you can, learn about the person as much as you can. So, I don't know what the key is, but I just jump in with everything that I have. You know the friends, family, and even the people themselves are gonna be watching, so it's really up to you to be as close and as accurate to what the truth and reality of their lives and the situation is. There's so much more at stake, in many ways. But I would say it's about responsibility. What's the key to bringing a real life personality to screen?ĭaniel Webber: Honestly, I don't know what the key is. Escape From Pretoria isn't your first time playing a real life character, you also had a notable performances as the lead in The Dirt, the Mötley Crüe story.

Daniel webber iii