Don Cheadle’s trip over the top
“Black Monday” takes loony to another level.
Don Cheadle knows something about period pieces – “Boogie Nights,” “The Rat Pack,” “Devil in a Blue Dress“– and high-flying financial operators, like the brilliant, unscrupulous consultant Marty Kaan from Showtime’s 2012-16 comedy “House of Lies.”
But Maurice “Mo the Marauder” Monroe, the coke-snorting, expletivespewing trader at the center of Showtime’s “Black Monday” (premiering Sunday, 10 EST/PST), is a new level of crazy, past or present, for Cheadle.
Even Kaan would shake his head at Monroe’s tactics: “I think Marty would rightly believe that Maurice was insane and probably wouldn’t want to have anything to do with him,” Cheadle says.
In the dark comedy, Monroe is an unpredictable Wall Street wild man who runs an outsider firm that includes a razor-sharp trader (Regina Hall) and an innocent with a state-of the-art algorithm (Andrew Rannells). The tonguein-cheek opening titles suggest they’re responsible for the 1987 market crash.
Cheadle, 54, an Oscar nominee for 2004’s “Hotel Rwanda,” chatted with USA TODAY about “Black Monday” and the future of his “Avengers” character, James Rhodes/War Machine.
Question: How do the events of “Black Monday” in 1987 relate to today’s world?
Don Cheadle: It feels like the more things change, the more they stay the same. We’re still dealing with questions about deregulation and skirting of rules that certain players seem to always be able to get away with. ... These kinds of things recur, also in the housing crash and the credit crash. It’s always centered around people who can get away with skirting the issue, and nobody seems to be held accountable.
Q: What ’80s props, clothing and styles stood out the most to you?
Cheadle: The excess of the ’ 80s is in every frame of the show. There’s the Lamborghini limousine, (which) has neither the comfort of a limo nor the speed of a Lamborghini. Mo thinks he’s crushing in that Adidas track suit with the dookie chains. I love that Mo wears Adidas (sneakers) with suits, because he never knows when he may have to stomp somebody out or kick a door open or run. It’s functional wear. (As for ancient cellphone he carries), it was just a cumbersome brick, (but) everyone thought they were cool when they had one. Now, it looks like the most ridiculous thing, like you’re the Wichita lineman.
Q: Do you think today’s viewers will be startled by all the crude references to sex and drugs and the racial and ethnic comments and slurs?
Cheadle: I think they will probably find it on some level kind of refreshing and get to live vicariously through char- acters who have no filter, because clearly everything is up for attack nowadays. I’m not fond of people saying they hate (political correctness), because I think P.C. is mostly about not being (jerks), and I’m completely good with that, but I think a lot of people are walking around on eggshells about everything. And these characters have no filter – they say whatever pops into their head.
It was a bit of a balancing act, because you are depicting an era that was rife with that, but we are in a time where everyone is incredibly cautious. Every day on set, we’d try a joke and I’d look at (executive producers David Caspe and Jordan Cahan) and we’d inhale. And I’d be like, “I don’t know about that one.”
Q: Does a younger Donald Trump factor into “Black Monday”?
Cheadle: That was definitely something we discussed in the creation of the show: Is he someone we feature prominently? Is he someone who is in the margins? Or do we just completely ignore him … in an area and a time where a lot of it was all about him, especially in New York? I’m not saying which way it went, but that was absolutely the discussion we had.
Q: Marvel’s “Avengers: Endgame” is coming up in April. Looking beyond, would you be open to James Rhodes/ War Machine getting his own series?
Cheadle: That would be interesting. One of the fun things is that these characters can go on and we can find different origin stories or they can cross-pollinate. ... It’s nothing we’ve specifically talked about, but it’s something we have all generally kicked around.
Q: What inspired you to become an activist about genocide and climate change?
Cheadle: I became active on genocide during “Hotel Rwanda,” which opened my eyes to a lot of things happening around the world. ... I was invited to go with a congressional delegation to Chad, to Darfur, to Sudan. Once I saw what was happening, I (had) to use whatever I had, celebrity, to try to shift the focus toward people who were suffering and issues not getting any sort of traction. … Climate change is something I just became aware of as many people have. The cameras get turned on and people want to know what we think. If we’re doing that, let’s talk about things that are pressing for everyone.