Green Book, which also stars Viggo Mortensen, plays out as a road movie. You think about the Michael Jacksons of the world, the Princes, people so exceptional and extraordinary they almost have alien status.” “He still couldn’t get away from his isolated existence, because he was sort of a man beyond his time. “The more he had, the more he attained,” Ali says.
Shirley rose to prominence in New York in the 1960s, becoming such a fixture at Carnegie Hall that he ended up living in a grand apartment above the main auditorium. Central to the appeal of playing Don Shirley in Green Book was that here was a historical figure all out of whack, a man blessed with enormous musical talent but with no clear place in the world he inhabited. Photograph: Rex/ShutterstockĪli talks a lot about balance. “You get to the point where you think: ‘If I were to accept the next thing I’d be throwing off the balance of my family.’”Īt the Golden Globes on 6 January with his wife Amatus Sami-Karim. The couple hit the tuning fork – and the tuning fork said it was blatantly her turn. His wife needed time for her own career as an artist. And after that? Ali says he just stopped saying yes to jobs. After that, he was straight on to a 10-month shoot on True Detective Ali’s wife and daughter travelled from the family home in Los Angeles to the set in Arkansas as often as possible. Green Book was based in New Orleans, where during filming the young Ali family were able to snatch some life together between days on set. Every now and then we had to hit a tuning fork, to make sure we were in sync.” It took a lot of listening to each other. And as soon as we felt like we’d figured it out, it changed. Ali says that having the baby and the Oscar “was like a jigsaw puzzle which my wife and I had to try to put together. Combined with today’s outfit – a navy blue kimono-like gown, buttoned to the throat – it projects a potent sense of spiritual calm.
The actor is an observant Muslim, a thoughtful guy who speaks in long, unhurried sentences. But first, I’m curious to know what happened next in the Ali family home, when a newborn and an Oscar came home within hours of each other. I want to talk to Ali about Green Book, a rich and affecting film which last week won best comedy or musical at the Golden Globes Ali picked up the award for best supporting actor. Ali’s wife, the artist Amatus Sami-Karim, gave birth to their daughter, Bari, that February, and 100 frazzled hours later Ali was on stage at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, looking blinky and delighted, and bringing an audience of grandees to their feet when he croaked: “I just wanna thank my wife.”Īli in Green Book as the pianist Don Shirley. Taking home a newborn, like taking home an Oscar, turns life on its head. There’s a lot of build-up and then things go crazy all at once. He knows that however exciting or worked-for an industry prize – Ali won his best supporting actor award that year for a standout performance in the coming-of-age drama Moonlight – nothing compares to the graft of bearing an actual child. “It’s something we still joke about,” says the 44-year-old American, sitting in a London hotel, smiling at the memory. E xactly two years ago, in early 2017, the actor Mahershala Ali and his wife were about to give birth – one after the other.