John Malkovich on politics, COVID, and Zelensky’s acting background

Today’s “After Tomorrow“ interview is with actor, director and producer John Malkovich. We talked about politics, the experience of playing villains, Ukrainian President’s Volodymyr Zelensky acting background, and the COVID-19 pandemic. For Russian voiceover please follow the link: 00:00 John Malkovich, American actor, director and producer, Emmy Award winner, Oscar and Golden Globe nominee. Right now, John Malkovich is playing in “The Loneliness of Cotton Countryside“ staged by Timofey Kulyabin in Riga, along with actress Ingeborga Dapkunaite. 01:21 Did the war affect the attitude towards the performance and the play? 02:20 Why did John Malkovich receiv the award of Ukrainian Order of merit, the show on the Maidan Square with conductor Riccardo Muti based on Aaron Copland’s piece about Abraham Lincoln. 03:30 What is happening now in Ukraine is a tragedy. “ I come from a country that gives us a war just about every year”. 04:15 Why John Malkovich considers himself not political 05:17 Can the acting skills of President Zelensky help during the war 07:07 Roles of villains like Harvey Weinstein. Would John Malkovich play Vladimir Putin or Stalin? 00:11 Russians are either villains, or gangsters, or oligarchs. The role in the “Billions” drama series 12:51 “Russian culture is made up of many things. And most of them don’t particularly have a lot to do with the political leadership at this point in time.” 14:28 “History is the sum total of all the things they’re not telling us” 15:57 “Burn after reading”: the world is ruled mostly by chaos, and a lot of stupidity and greed. And a lot of incompetence. 18:18 Will the ongoing war change art and cinema? The West is too self-contained. 19:24 How the media work so that something else can replace COVID. 22:25 The pranksters called George Bush the other day, and he said, “we weren’t going to ask the Ukraine to be NATO, but things changed” 23:12 What becomes history: what happened at Katyn Forest. 24:20 The quality of information as a big problem for today’s world is a consequence of social networks 25:12 How eight people next to Stalin disappeared from the photo 27:12 Can people’s values ​​change? Values ​​are influenced by jokes: humor helps us deal with tragedy 30:45 Should theater be bold and provocative? Should artists provoke and should they offend some part of the audience? How a play about the meeting between Freud and Dali can be both an investigation of sexual abuse and a trigger for people. 33:32 Theater is something that should upset you rather. 35:14 Project with Robert Rodriguez: a film that will be released in a hundred years