(film reel running)
- My intention,
in running for the presidency,
(ominous music)
is preventing America from taking part
in another World War.
(plane engine)
- There are so many who don't trust him.
- Then I'm gonna do my best
to convince them otherwise.
- [Marah] Were you fans
of the original book?
And how did you sort
of come to the project?
- So I didn't--I wasn't aware of the book,
um, when I was sent the script.
I was just aware of the OG David Simon.
Because we had,
studied, yeah, The Wire
at school and stuff,
you know?
It was like part of our, you
know, Drama School education,
to look at The Wire as the pinnacle of TV,
and when I found out he was making this
and I was asked to audition for it,
I was just you know, overjoyed.
Um, and the role I just
thought was just incredible.
- We're both huge Roth-heads.
- Roth-heads.
(laughing)
- Yeah.
- We're Roth-heads.
- We're Roth-heads.
- [Marah] Yeah.
- Roth fans, yes.
- [Marah] (laughs)
- Rothies?
- I worked with him on a book
when I was a young, younger man;
and that he wanted me
to do as a one-man-show
which I performed a few times on book
and then worked with him.
I have to say it was
like sitting in a room
with a human vacuum cleaner.
(laughing)
He just was like, inhaling you.
I mean I've been with a lot
of talented, smart people
but he just, just his eyebrows.
- [Marah] Yeah.
- I have to say.
Just his eyebrows alone,
(laughing)
just be like, he would say
"tell me about yourself."
(laughing)
Hmm, yes.
(laughing)
- Did he--
- You just would feel like--
- You're (mumbles)
- He said uh.
- Tell me, tell me (laughs).
- No he told, he asked me
"do you have children?"
Right? And realize I have one boy.
He goes "Oh. Hmm."
- [Marah] (giggles)
"So it's sort of over for you, isn't it?"
(laughing)
And I was like "whoa."
But he was really, really,
I mean really, really
devilishly smart and really funny.
Really, deeply funny.
And this idea of you know,
"how do you assimilate?"
And so many of Roth's books
are about assimilation
and what people have to do in order to be,
be considered American, you know?
A lot of people don't want to know
that if you were Irish,
and when you came to this country,
you never--were not considered white.
If you were Italian,
you weren't considered
white until the 1950s.
You were "other."
If you were Jewish,
you were just "Jewish."
And that's, that's why those
gates were closed in '24.
There were too many Irish people,
and then there were way too
many Jews, and Italians,
and Polish people.
And so this book just continues that,
and those things that are,
those things that are happening now,
nothing is new.
Nothing, unfortunately, is new.
- This is how it starts.
(ominous music)
Since everywhere he goes,
Hitler beats down and shoots the Jews.
There may be a time when he comes here,
to America.
To beat down and shoot us.
What will our president do then?
- The Nazi Party was
pretty strong in America.
- Yeah.
- There were 25,000
people in New York City,
who had the big rally in
Madison Square Garden.
You know what I mean?
- Yeah, it's interesting.
- It is.
- You talk about that like,
stripping, sort of,
the humanness of someone
and just calling them
"the Irish," "the Jew," whatever it is.
- Yeah.
- You know it's like,
it's what Lindbergh does in these speeches
in this he talks about you know,
"the Jewish problem," "the Other."
You know?
- Yeah.
- Well--
- It begins with language.
- Just (mumbles) you know,
what is the junk science about a race?
- [Marah] Eugenics.
- Oh, eugenics.
- Yeah, it's all eugenics,
was taught into almost the '30s and but,
it was (mumbles) the big thing,
that's the reason they
passed those laws in '24.
And it was taught at all
the Ivy League institutions.
So the eugenics movement,
which was around the world,
and a lot of the people
who were writing about it
were Americans,
actually influenced the
National Socialists in Germany.
There's a book called The
Passing of the Great Race.
- I read--
- Which you were talking
about Madison Grant,
he, I think he was involved
with the (mumbles),
the Museum of Natural History.
That book was one of
Hitler's favorite books.
He was an American,
and it was used as a defense
in the Nuremberg trials.
- [Marah] Yeah.
- Okay?
So this is all connected,
it's not good-guy, bad-guy.
It's all connected.
- And it's also like ever-revolving,
I mean they, there was a case in New York,
like ten years, where they,
where a doctor was, a woman doctor,
was sterilizing young
black women who were,
who were not, maybe a danger,
and then she, it was discovered
that she had been going
to all these Third-World
countries and just,
and without telling them,
although it came out because
one of the girls died,
because it, she had
Sickle cell, something,
but it's just like.
These things that you think are,
I remember I was, I got,
I had this little time where
I was really interested
in Constitutional Law
and I think it was like
the eugenics thing was Holmes, or like--
- Well it was huge.
- It was huge.
- It was big.
- And I, it's shocking
reading it but it's,
and then to think that it's still...
- Well they, they reclassified
anyone who was like a,
for example like people
like Dante and Raphael,
and you know Da Vinci,
they said they were Nordics,
the eugenics movement,
they said they were not Italians,
they were Nordic people
because you could tell
by the shape of their bone structure--
- Wow.
- And their head.
So even that,
they assumed to Nordic superiority.
It wasn't true (laughs) but,
this is what was accepted.
- Charles Lindbergh is a hero!
(intense music)
- [Voiceover] This is not an evil man.
Not in any way.
(intense music)
(click)
- Tell me,
is that beginning to address your fears?
(intense music)
