At the movie's Los Angeles press conference, Brody spoke about the difficulties of taking on a role based on a real person: "The more well known the character or person you're playing is, the more pressure there is on the actor to embody that and those qualities and do them justice. For me, there was a little bit of leeway because although the history of Leonard Chess and his family and his upbringing, there's a lot of documentation on it, there isn't that much of him out in the media. I think that when a character has to sing and play all the music, there are additional challenges there. In this case it was probably less pressure for me and I would say that a greater pressure fell on Jeffrey [Wright's] shoulders and these guys."
Chess Records was founded by brothers Leonard and Phil, however Phil's role in the company isn't fleshed out in the film. Asked about that aspect of the story, Brody offered his opinion as to why it worked out that way. "It's interesting because a friend of mine is a real fan of the era and of the birth of blues, and he just texted me because I invited him tonight and he's like, 'I'm so excited.' He's under the weather, but he said, 'I'm so excited to see the story about the Chess Brothers.' I said, 'Well, unfortunately poor Phil's history and involvement in the story is limited in this film.' I think, fortunately or unfortunately, it had to be that way to tell this full story, and to tell it from this perspective. It's not necessarily a story on Chess Records, for instance. It's really about the life and time of these artists and the complexity of their characters. So it wasn't that there was material in the script that was omitted, but obviously there's a lot of material that was not integrated into the script."
"Leonard brought Phil into the business and they kind of took over Aristocrat Records and were very successful, especially by having Muddy as their artist," said Brody. "Phil really was out there helping Leonard get other artists and really running the day-to-day operations. They both, until really late, - years into having the label and being very successful with the label - they handled every detail themselves. It's pretty remarkable. They came from impoverished backgrounds. They left Poland at a very young age and their family was impoverished and had nothing. Leonard did have a junkyard. All that is true. He had a seedy little club and he turned that into something. It's pretty remarkable."
Brody says in getting into character he tried to capture the essence of Leonard. "[He] was this guy who was very forceful and a hardened individual, but also he probably had compassion. There is a certain level of manipulation that I believe exists in all of these business relationships between artists and their bosses, in a way, because it's just ripe for that. I think it becomes more complex with the issue of race and the coming out of segregation and the lack of education. Muddy was illiterate so there were all these elements that not only play into the reality of that, but the sensitivity to that, of an individual being manipulated. So all of that was fascinating and that's what I wanted to play, the emotional truth of that dynamic as well as the friendship and trying to go beyond that. That's what was interesting to me."
Brody and writer/director Darnell Martin never discussed it during filming, but the actor has a theory as to why Leonard Chess was so interested in this genre of music. "I believe it was a time when there was a big movement, a big Blues movement," offered Brody. "There were a lot of artists coming up from the South into Chicago, so it was very present in that community. But there is something undeniably soulful, for lack of a better word, about the Blues and what it stands for and the hardships that people are singing about and the truth and what it stems from, the transcending of pain and suffering, which is not uncommon to Jewish people and impoverished people. And I think it's late to say this about hip hop and rap music because it has changed so much and become a worldwide phenomenon and more of a fashioning thing, it's been adopted by so many cultures, but initially with the birth of hip hop it symbolized something very similar for urban youth. It was an empowerment. It was a very empowering form of music that inner city kids, white, Black, Hispanic, adopted. I felt a similar connection to that music as well. I think it was just something that touched him. He had an appreciation for it. It happened. It just kind of evolved from that."
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Cadillac Records hits theaters on December 5, 2008 and is rated R for pervasive language and some sexuality.
