Simon Baker Never Doubted His Decision to Play the Romantic Lead in “Something New:” “No, there was only self-doubt that I had in the sense of when I read it, I had a pretty clear idea of how I wanted to play the character. I wanted to play the character in a way where he was just literally like…I loved his honesty with her, his straightforwardness...and I wanted to make that just real, just straight up. Like, ‘What’s the story? What is with all the beige?’ And he’s questioning and challenging and wanting to know and interested. I wanted to make that just very cool and casual, and not like any sort of agenda like he’s trying to wind her up in any way.
My fear, I think, going into it when I first started rehearsals, because I didn’t really know Sanaa [Lathan], I don’t really know [director] Sanaa Hamri, I’ve met with them and auditioned but what do you gauge from that? I felt comfortable with Sanaa and that sort of helped us work together and develop chemistry on the screen. But I was nervous because I was thinking, ‘I just hope they don’t make this too broad. I don’t want to be a cliché.’ And I don’t want it to be cliché and I don’t want this to become too much like ghetto kind of or suddenly everyone becomes a cliché, because if there’s an honesty and truth to it, then it has the potential to break through into an area that, like Alfre said to me, opens up conversation.”
Simon Baker on What He Learned From Starring in “Something New:” “…I think I understand where racism stems from individually within people. I think there are some people that it’s just there, but I think a lot of it comes from pride as a sin, and lack of self-confidence in a lot of ways, which forces you to judge and be afraid. You understand what I mean? It’s like I believe that pride in yourself is very important. I think pride in your race is very important. But then there’s got to be something more and that is tolerance.
I think we live in a time, and I want to take this outside of African American culture, Caucasian culture. I’m talking about in our world now, because we’re going through so many issues related to, ‘Oh, they do things very differently to us. They have this and we judge that and they judge us.’ It’s like there’s a point where it all has to give and we all have to just open up a little bit and be a bit more accepting of each other and look at what the benefits of multi-culturalism are.
I just went back to Australia and I really do see Australia is a very multi-cultural society. We have the indigenous culture is there and there’s still that. I have friends, Aboriginals, one of them, [David], he’s a full blood Aboriginal, still lives in the bush. And he comes in and he acts and he travels all around in the dance troupe and is still very traditional. Then there’s a lot of Aboriginals that are integrated into our society, very well educated, et cetera. We have a lot of Italian immigrants that came over from the Second World War and the influence of that on our society is amazing. There’s coffee shops and the food and the restaurants and stuff all over the place.
…I get excited about learning about someone else’s culture. I spent Passover at a Jewish friend’s house, gefilte fish and all these rituals. I’m like, ‘This is cool because I’ve never been through it. I’ve never experienced it.’ That sort of attitude is going to help us a lot. My daughter’s obsessed with learning about different religions and different cultures. I’m not a religious person at all. I was raised a Catholic but I’m not a practicing Catholic, but my daughter has a thirst to understand different things and see different things. Hopefully future generations will be more like that, more accepting of that.”
