‘BlacKkKlansman’s’ Topher Grace: Researching David Duke Was ‘Worst Month Of My Life’

I get that. So, talk about playing David Duke. Granted, today he’s still crazy, but he’s a different person than he was in 1979 or 1980 when he interacted with 

Not different enough, right?

True, not that different. How did you research him or did you feel there was any need to?

Oh my god, I did a full month of research. I’ve played [characters] that are based on real people, but I don’t think I’ve ever played someone that the U.S. public knows very well. So, first, it’s just important that you are a good representation of that person, right? You’re doing a good job mimicking them. And then, it’s important that you understand both who they were to America at the time, who they are to the script and what their utility to the story is.  So, I went to town. I mean it was crazy. I got this call from Spike, where he said, “I want you to play this role. It’s a great case in your career.” And then, I went into kind of the worst month of my life. Just this terrible process because in researching him, you have to listen to all of his bullshit ideas. I read “My Awakening,” which is his autobiography, which is like, evidently disguised kind of mind calm for his “Mein Kampf.”  There’s a lot of interviews on film of him from the mid-seventies. He was on “Donahue” in the early eighties a lot.  He was still the Grand Wizard at that time. I spent a lot of time watching him and that was really interesting. Dealing with the crowd. The crowd that doesn’t agree with him and the most depressing thing of all of it is that he is really smart. He’s really good at dealing with people and I think that’s what was so great about the script. And that’s why when I read the script, I was like, “Ooh, I wouldn’t want to play David Duke.”  I wouldn’t want to play David Duke in a normal film. I wanna play David Duke in a film like this which starts with a shot of the Civil War and ends with a shot from 2017. And it’s like drawing kind of a straight line, how we got from there to here and to be inside the film, the film is kind of a representation of that “how we got here.” And this is stuff we talked about in rehearsal that Spike really kind of keyed down in the script, too. The first half is really light on David and it’s sort of focusing on kind of what the idea in 1970 was of a racist. Y’know a beer-belly redneck dude. And, when David enters the film [he’s different].  He only wears three-piece suits.  He’s very well-spoken and well-educated.  Way more dangerous. Reaches way more people, right? I noticed something when I watched that “Donahue” over and over again, it’s that he uses the terms “Make America great, again” and “America First” like, a lot.

And that was in, like the early 1980’s.

Yeah, watching it with 2017 goggles on, watching something from 1983, where someone’s saying those terms over and over again, I was like, “Whoa.”  It made me just understand the movie better.

In your research did you ever find a moment where Duke talked about this incident? 

I think he denied that it happened.  Ron came to our table read.  This must’ve been a crazy experience for him.  Can you imagine going to a table reading of something that happened in your life?  But, he gave a 45-minute talk before we started so we heard his entire experience first-hand from him and at the end, he opened his wallet and he took out his membership card for the KKK.

That’s so crazy.

Yeah. it’s kind of like it had to be based on a true story because it’d be hard to believe.  I mean, I’m looking at the card, and yet David Duke has denied it.

Well, clearly fake news, right?  Before you gotta go I have one last question about “Under the Silver Lake.”  You’re playing a role in that movie where you’re almost unrecognizable.  How did that part even come your way?

Well, I’m just a huge fan of David’s “It Follows” and I thought, “I’ll do anything that this guy does in his next film.” I really thought it was like watching a Kubrick film and, in many ways, “Under the Silver Lake” is like a Kubrick film, too. I just loved that there’s someone who’s trying new things. I had a moment in my career a couple years back where I just decided I was gonna stop doing things that were like what I had done before, which is a really terrible thing to tell – these aren’t my agents, anymore, but my then-agents- that you’re kind of announcing that you don’t want to make money anymore.  If you are an actor to make the big money in Hollywood it’s [usually based on] something that you’ve done before.  So if you do it again they understand how to monetize it and I just didn’t want to do it anymore. And I really love film, cinema from a lot of great filmmakers.  It’s more kind of what you say no to. And then, I kind of found my way after “Interstellar,” that was kind of the first hit that was out of the box. We did “Truth” and I don’t know if you know David Michôd, but I am a huge fan of “Animal Kingdom” so I did “War Machine.”  Basically, if I like you as a filmmaker, I will do anything in your film. I don’t care what size the role is.  I really don’t.  You know, I play a priest in my next film, but I just played the Grand Wizard of the KKK.  I just don’t care. I just want to work with people that really inspire me. I want to be on set with those people and just learning from them, by having that experience with them.

“BlacKkKlansman” opens nationwide on Friday.