Tom Hanks and the untrained Somali actors

Tom Hanks

Los Angeles – “They really scared me!” revealed Tom Hanks of the untrained Somali actors who were hired to be the pirates in the Paul Greengrass movie, “Captain Phillips,” which is a biopic of merchant mariner Captain Richard Phillips, who was taken hostage by Somali pirates during the MV Maersk Alabama hijacking in 2009.

The first time Tom met them was on their first scene together when the Somali pirates hijacked Capt. Phillips’ boat.

“Look at me. I am the captain now!” declared Barkhad Abdi, as Muse or “Skinny,” when he hijacked the boat. That was spontaneous and an ad-lib by Barkhad, according to director Paul Greengrass. “Barkhad made that up and we put it in the film,” he said.

“After that first scene, I said, ‘Where did you guys come from?’ They were really good!” Tom exclaimed. “Barkhad is obviously the leader of the group,” he said. “He is so talented. He is an artist. He makes his own music and is a very creative guy.”

As for the other Somali actors like Faysal Ahmed (who portrayed Najee) and Mahat M. Ali (Elmi), Tom said, “They all knew each other from the Somali community. Faysal is actually an American. His parents are Somali but he is grown up in that community. He speaks the language, and if you look at him, you can actually see in his body because he is bigger. He is got like musculature. He’s grown up eating a diet.

Barkhad Abdi, Mahat M. Ali and Faysal Ahmed were some of the Somalis who appeared in the ‘Captain Phillips’ film (Photo by Ruben V. Nepales)

“The other one, whom we call Little B because he’s a kid, is Mahat. He is probably the most hilarious human being I have ever met. They were just dedicated guys who once they got the hang of things, they slugged away every day.”

The award-winning actor said, “When we were in the actual lifeboat, in which we were spending time every day that you could chat about a couple of other things, I sometimes had a hard time getting a word in edgewise, because as soon as the camera stopped rolling, they all start arguing or laughing in Somali. I would say, ‘What? What is it? What did you guys say?’ And from there, I would get a little bit of information. But I will tell you this, the one thing that they all just universally love is living in Minneapolis! But I say, ‘Isn’t it cold?’ Nobody said if I could move to Orlando. No one said anything like that.”

Working In Cramped Spaces

As for working in confined spaces especially when they were in a small lifeboat, Tom explained how he dealt with that. “I actually like it,” he confessed. “I like the coziness of it all. I actually do. I have to sit in a pretty cozy seat in the lifeboat that actually we had to move it forward. The actual seat he was in was one back. We had to do that so we could get the angles of looking at him.

“Physically, I like it because I use it for the environmental aspect of the movie making process. Like ‘Apollo 13;’ that was a very small space. I guess I have been in some small spaces in a couple of other things but it ends up being very, very actual, if that is a word. You are inside there and the space itself is doing an awful lot of work for you. I will say there was one day that we were shooting on the open sea in Malta. We were getting a couple of shots in the actual lifeboat. That was miserable for everybody. Horrible.”

Tom narrated, “The camera operator vomited. The guy who was in the back, the sound guy, vomited. The only reason I did not was because I have to sit in my seat with my eyes closed. But if I had to actually work and do stuff like the one they have to do, I would have puked all over the floor of that thing. That was a very, very tough day. We got a couple of shots that even Paul said, ‘Oh no. I think we can get this some other place now’ because we were hitting the law of diminishing returns, but other than that, I don’t mind being in tight places.”

Email the writer at janetrnepales@gmail.com for your comments or questions. Follow her on Twitter at https://twitter.com/@jrnepales.

Tom Hanks and the untrained Somali actors

Source: Mb.com.ph (October 13, 2013 at 10:00PM)

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