Don Cheadle on "Captain America: Civil War" and avoiding fights on the internet
Don Cheadle knows the most important thing to being on Twitter is counting to 10. The "House of Lies" star -- who reprises his role as James Rhodes/War Machine in "Captain America: Civil War" -- is an active user of social media to promote his projects and interact with his fans. But as he tells CBSNews.com, sometimes those chats can get out of hand.
You've been in the Marvel universe for a while, but with each movie they keep crowding in more characters.
It's very insolent. It's insolent and disrespectful to gobble up screen time in that way. (laughs) No, it's great. I think that's one of the things about this series, these movies, that make them so interesting -- the different ways, different iterations and groupings of characters that they can all inform and invade -- in a good way -- each other's storylines.
With the debate at the heart of this film, they do a very good job of not siding with one more than the other.
Well, I can't wait to see how it all comes together. I still haven't seen the finished movie yet. But that is sort of the central argument, I think -- who gets to decide and at what cost is protection? What's the point if innocents are dying as a result of your protection? I guess that's the bigger question, to whom is it up to to do the "right thing"? And what is the right thing? I think when you have characters who are all powerful, that becomes a question that is not easy to answer.
I know we're dealing with comic book characters, but there are real world applications for these questions. Do you have your own personal view on this topic?
I don't think that any power should be unchecked. Hopefully there should always be checks and balances, in the interconnectedness of all of us now, that's clearly something that should be a plurality of voices in deciding what exactly that should look like.
At the end of "Age of Ultron" and the beginning of this movie, almost quietly and without fanfare Marvel gives us an Avengers where there's just one white guy.
Yeah, they've done a good job of that. Also, series like "Fast and Furious," they clearly look more like the world than not like the world. I think, obviously, you're doing better when your cast looks like the universe, especially when you're talking about a universe of movies. Hats off to Marvel for looking to do that and developing more characters and continuing to do that.
Just maybe don't read too many of the comments online in response to stuff like that -- or to the recent "Rogue One" trailer.
Yeah, I know. You like to check into who's making those comments, and their feed is usually pretty telling. I want to know who those people are and what they think. I think it's important that people state clearly, without any smokescreen between us and them, who and what they are.
You're very active on social media. How do you find that interaction with fans?
I think it's great. I really do sometimes get into spirited things with people and it is always interesting to me where people come at it from. If you have an ability to just listen before you try to get in it, you know, there's usually a story behind it, usually something subtextual under the comment and reaction. Now look, I'm not going to sit there for an hour, but if I get into some exchange with somebody, that kind of thing is fun to see how something sometimes starts contentious, at the end of it turns into, "Oh, well we didn't understand each other."
It could very easily become time-consuming.
Yeah, I just stop. I mean, it's not mandatory, the only people I have to talk to are my kids and my wife. Other than that, I'm like, "I'm... done."
There are lot of actors who are hesitant about how much that's part of the job now.
Yeah, I understand it because you can get burnt doing it pretty easily, and people can run away with a narrative that you never intended. That can be taken out of your hands pretty quickly, and the more you try to fend off and put the s**t back in the bowl, it looks like you really mean what you said and now you're scrambling. So, it's always good to write it and put it down, get a glass of water, get a snack maybe, look at it again and go, "OK, that's what I wanted." My friend says -- and he's really smart -- "If it feels good, don't do it."