The role Morgan Freeman knew he was “destined” to play: “I was the chosen one”
Whenever an actor says they were born, pre-ordained, or destined to play a particular role, it can often come across as pretentious, arsey, and actorly behaviour. However, since Morgan Freeman ended up playing the role that he was recommended for by the highest possible authority, you can let it slide.
Thanks to the gravitas that’s been leaking out of his ears for decades, cinema’s favourite wizened sage has made a lot of money playing important people. He’s been cast as judges, presidents, high-ranking military and government officials, not to mention that he played God twice and nobody batted an eyelid.
The Academy Award winner is also one of the most transparent stars in the industry, having made no bones about the multitude of movies he’s only made for the money. Passion projects are few and far between for Freeman, and ironically, the one he’s been developing since 1985 still hasn’t been made yet.
He also dreamed of starring as legendary lawman Bass Reeves in a biopic, but that ship sailed long ago, since he passed away in 1910 at the age of 71, and Freeman is much closer to 90 and slowing down his heavyweight dramatic fare in favour of supporting roles in genre thrillers and the occasional TV outing.
As one of the most important figures of the 20th century in any walk of life, it was inevitable that Nelson Mandela would become the subject of at least one biographical drama. Sure enough, the former South African president had been played by Sidney Poitier, Danny Glover, and Dennis Haysbert onscreen, but when the time came for a full-blown prestige picture, ‘Madiba’ only had eyes for one performer.
They’d already met a handful of times and discussed a potential biopic, and as blatantly obvious as the casting was, nobody could deny that Freeman was the outstanding candidate. He was the first person involved with Invictus alongside his producing partner, Lori McCreary, and he got an added bonus when his Unforgiven and Million Dollar Baby director, Clint Eastwood, signed on to take the reins.
“I felt destined to do something about Mandela,” he explained to Black Film. “I don’t know whether you know that, in 1992, when he published his autobiography, he was asked who he would want to play him if the book ever became a movie. And he named me. So, I was sort of the chosen one, as it were. Therefore, I expected that eventually I would play him, but we always thought it would be in a movie version of Long Walk to Freedom. It didn’t turn out that way, however.”
Instead, Freeman and Eastwood’s Invictus was inspired by John Carlin’s nonfiction book, Playing the Enemy: Nelson Mandela and the Game that Made a Nation, with the focus falling on the 1995 Rugby World Cup. Five years later, Idris Elba played Mandela in the Long Walk to Freedom adaptation, which didn’t fare anywhere near as well as its spiritual predecessor from either a critical or commercial perspective.
Still, Freeman had known for a long time that he’d end up embodying Mandela eventually, and his Oscar-nominated performance, which ranks as one of his best, didn’t show any signs of pressure.
