The SoulBounce Q&A: Don Cheadle Opens Up About Becoming Miles Davis & Bringing His Story To The Big Screen In 'Miles Ahead'

SoulBounce: You are amazing as Miles Davis.

Don Cheadle: Thank you, thank you so much.

SB: No, thank you. What a performance in Miles Ahead!

DC: Thank you.

SB: What can you tell us about your inspiration for portraying this particular point in Miles Davis’ life?

DC: When you’re doing the research and you bump into this five-year period where one of the most prolific artists of the 20th Century stopped playing, as a storyteller for me, I’m like, okay, what’s that about? How did that happen? What’s going on in there? Does he come out of it? What does he do when he does come out of it? What does he say? So, there was just all kinds of intrigue for that.

Also, for the narrative that we were creating, it gave us the opportunity to have the storyteller in our movie being Miles Davis himself. It shows you the externalization of an internal process, instead of showing a man sitting at a keyboard or blowing a chord and writing something and tearing it up and throwing it away, which is inherently nondramatic. We wanted to create something that felt like Miles Davis. The whole mood, I wanted you to feel like you were walking around inside of Miles Davis’ brain. It’s a Miles Davis experience.

Bobby Pen: What about the subject did you connect with most?

DC: The music, you know. I love that Miles, though he’s done an autobiography and interviews has said many, many times, if you want to know who I am, go listen to my music. That’s what I’ve connected to with Miles Davis my whole life. It is something l was listening to probably earlier than I remember listening to it. But, once I became aware of it, I was always into it. I played sax growing up. So, my way into Miles was always kind of via Cannonball Adderley and the sax players and Wayne Shorter, but…and Coltrane of course, but just seeing all of the different genres that he touched and all of the different leaders that he created. Everybody who played with Miles went on to play with their own bands and create a whole different…he’s the tree trunk and all of these branches that extend from him are just copious and creative and expansive. That to me was really my strongest connection with Miles Davis.

SB: What songs of Miles Davis’ did you attach to embody the jazz icon?

DC: I think he would take exception if I used the word jazz.

SB: True. [laughter]

DC: It’s just music.

It depends on the mood I’m in. It depends on where I’m at. I tried to put examples of all of it in the movie. You hear rock, you hear funk, and you hear fusion, R&B, hip hop. You hear pure jazz, hard-bops, straight ahead, modal. I put all of these expression so his music in there. Really, it’s all so cinematic. There are so many albums of his where you can needle drop. Oh, that’s a car chase, that’s a love scene or a fight scene, that’s the creative process. You hear all of these different things in his music.