Anthony mackie i keep having this dream. A Comanche War Party searches the house. It is only a matter of time before they call me up to where their knives gleam. Hes gone. The president . An accidental president , thats what they will say. I urge you to enact president kennedys civil rights bill into law. That aint going to be easy, dr. King. We will have to hold his feet to the fire. We in the Senate Intent to filibuster this bill. If you get in my way, i will crush you. This civil rights bill just killed your election chances. Government does not do what is right, this will no longer be an option. Is that a threat . Everybody wants power. They think it ought to be given out, free of charge like mardi gras beads. Nothing comes free, nothing. Do you think everyone will suddenly start dancing to your tune . All we are asking is to live as decent human beings. Im trying to turn this country around. My people want results. It is time to act. To step down now would be wrong for your country. Nobody is surrendering. We are making history here. You have to decide how you want history to remember you. Charlie i am pleased to have Anthony Mackie back at this table. Anthony thank you for having me. Charlie you turned down an earlier chance to play Martin Luther king. Anthony i did. A few times. I never saw him written the way i grew up knowing him. My dad every year for martin lu 13s birthday, they would luther kings birthday, they would play the king miniseries on television. Paul winfield played dr. King and he was so magnetic. I thought he was dr. King. In the threepart miniseries from the late 1960s, early 1970s. My dad was prolific and specific about how he felt about dr. King, and it influenced my view of him. Charlie how did he feel about him . He always said, anyone could say that they lead men but only a man can lead men. Everything you see about dr. King, he was radical. He was not passive. He was not the type of leader that sat back and waited for the fight to come to him. He led the charge to the fight. Charlie he died fighting for the poor. Anthony he did. I always call dr. King the forgivable socialist. Because nowadays, that word is poison to any politician, but back then, dr. King really believed in a Community Coming together and helping each other. You make a Community Garden to d the neighborhood not feed the neighborhood, not just yourself. That is something that as a community we have gotten away from and now, it is my garden, my yard, my house in this community. Charlie what did you think you kingo do to portray the that you believed him to be . Anthony for me, you see the trailer and cranston looks exactly like lbj, and he portrays him spot on from the lbj that you see and people talk about. Dr. King i felt was a man who was more known by his actions than his looks. For me, it was more about his essence. If you can capture a mans esteem, his essence, the way people felt about him, people will believe you are that man. I felt trying to look like him would be disrespectful to his legacy, so i did not want to do the addons. Charlie when you look back at the research you did, it made you more admiring . Anthony by far. The day and age that we live in with social media, you are not allowed to be a human being. With dr. King, the more i learned of his flaws, the more i admired him as a human, the more i respected him as a man. Charlie flaws and all. Anthony yeah. When you put them on a pedestal, they are not as relatable. Every time there is a chip on that pedestal, every time i step he stepped off that pedestal, i realized how much he was like him i was like him and he was like me. Charlie you read smileys book. Anthony i did. Charlie how did that influence you . Mr. Mackie it shows the nature in which he was a facilitator for the black community into the White Community, and the White Community into the black community. I think the one thing this movie shows that you never really see is dr. King with his core group of advisers, leaders, and friends, and that frustration between stokely and Ralph Abernathy and all those guys, and dr. King having to moderate that, and then going into the world of lbj and having to moderate that. Charlie knowing hoover was after him. Anthony exactly. And he was a phenomenal politician. He played on both sides of the coin. That is why he and lbj got along so well. It was ali frazier. It was a mutual respect. Charlie here is dr. King speaking to a group of protesters about the importance of civil rights. [video clip] but the government cannot legislate what people feel. And hes right. The law cant make white folks love you. But the law can prevent them from lynching you. The law can prevent them from denying you a job and your child an education. The law can ensure that you have the right to vote. Amen am not here today to tell you fine people who to vote for , but come election day, let us be sure to send in the fine senator from arizona and his tender heart back to where he belongs. Charlie i assume that meant barry goldwater. Anthony thats whats so great about dr. King. He never came out for lbj, but came out against barry goldwater. That was the compromise. Charlie you call acting a serious negotiation. What is the negotiation . Anthony you have two actors on a set, and you do not know how the other actor will work. And when or if he is going to respect the craft. You have to find yourself in a neutral position. You never want to get too big that you dont celebrate the joy of acting, but you always want to be humble enough to make sure you are chasing that great feeling. Its like hitting the great shot on the golf course. You are still chasing that one feeling. Charlie you remember how sweet it was. Anthony every single time. Charlie how was Bryan Cranston to work with . Anthony he was phenomenal. It was a careeraffirming experience for me. I feel like this is the only way to sum up cranston. He was doing press for trumbo at the time. It had taken off and caught fire. He was supposed to go to london and to press, and i had to do a scene that was supposed to be between him and i over the phone. I learned he was not going to be there and i would have to do the scene with a pa or somebody. We do this scene and we come back for the second half of the day, and lo and behold, cranston walked in. Everybody was like, what are you doing here . He said, i have a scene with anthony, so i changed my flight so i could do offcamera with him. Charlie offcamera . Anthony so he can sit off camera and do his lines and make my performance better. You dont have that experience with actors that have a tenth of his career. An eight of his resume. For him to do that, it was careeraffirming. Charlie take a look at this. Discussing the Civil Rights Act with Bryan Cranston playing lyndon johnson. [video clip] i need to go back to my people and tell them that this president is committed to civil rights, and that this bill, even without voting rights, will still be a strong bill with no further change. If i cannot do that, i will lose their faith. And in their despair, i do not know what will happen. Is that a threat . I dont want riots anymore than you do. But, in order to avoid that type of situation, i need to be able to deliver meaningful reform. Anthony its a really good movie. I am proud of it. Charlie will this film give people an insight into the fact that there can be, if there is a will, for people who want to work together, but represent different constituencies, king on the one hand representing the africanamerican constituency as his role as the civil rights leader. And for johnson, leader of the country, but understanding that progress was as essential. Anthony definitely. I mean, if you look at it dr. King and lbj were both great bipartisan listeners and leaders. I think the best message to come out of this movie is compromise. You cannot win everything if you do not give up anything. Lbj, in the four years and few months he was president , got so much accomplished because he had that my partisan kinship. Bipartisan kinship. He could go on either side of the aisle and talk to whoever he needed to. Charlie take a moment to think of this. On the one hand, there is this , all the way about johnson and king. There is also captain america civil war. Is this just two things that an actor can do in the full spectrum of a career . Anthony yeah. I would like to hope so. I think the goal of an actor is to string together a bunch of jobs to make a career. When i first got into this business, there were actors that i admired and appreciated and i wanted their careers. I did not want their jobs, i wanted their careers. Every time i see Stanley Tucci and don cheadle and Bryan Cranston, theres those are the guys that i look at and i know every time i see them on a poster, it will be a good one. Charlie they put talent to work in different places in different roles. Anthony exactly. You know you will see a performance and not someone just reciting lines. I want to be known for my resume, just like anybody else in any other business. If you put your resume out there, you let it speak for itself, so i always try to put myself in a position to have my resume speak for itself. Charlie do you think, because of all this controversy at the time of the Academy Awards, where people who did not get nominated thought they should have been nominated. And that happened throughout the Academy Award nominations. Has the impact and the focus on that had some change potential . Anthony i think so. We are in a very interesting place right now as far as entertainment. We, as a group of entertainers, have not figured out how to utilize our assets. No one knows where the internet market is going. No one knows how to utilize that best yet. We are trying to figure out how to turn this cable thing with all of these great shows and great actors and directors and writers going to Cable Television how to change that back into film, but at the same time utilize the internet. There is a plethora of possibilities and a huge reward for the person who figures out where the internet plays its part into film. I think we shouldnt limit ourselves to the moniker of being in the movie theater. We have so many outlets. Use those outlets. And i think those outlets have garnered the recognition. Charlie you also represent the idea that you do not have to live in los angeles to be in the film business. Anthony right. Charlie new orleans is a perfectly good place. Anthony the best city in the world. I cant see myself living anywhere else. I love los angeles. I adore new york city. But there is a magic in new orleans that you cannot find anywhere else in the world. There is an appreciation of life. There is a fervent love of neighbors and community that you cannot find anywhere else in the world. And, we are in the middle of festival season. Charlie are you playing Johnny Cochran in the film . Anthony i am. Early Johnny Cochran, when he made a name for himself. This is a case that basically Johnny Cochran redefined civil justice. He brought the theatrical show to the courtroom. Everybody recognizes that no one can do it, not the way he did. You saw that prime display with the oj case. What he was able to do or what mr. Cochran was able to do early in his career was outstanding. We want to show where he was at the beginning of his career and how it blossomed if you need a lawyer, the only lawyer you can get is Johnny Cochran. Charlie the lawyer you want to get is Johnny Cochran. Anthony [laughs] charlie thank you for being with us. Back in a moment. Stay with us. Charlie julie chen is here. She joined cbs news almost 20 years ago as a reporter and an wcbs television in new york. Moderates the talk. It has five female hosts. She is part of the writing team. It won its first daytime emmy for outstanding writing. She is also the host for big brother. That program will begin its 18th season on june 22. I am pleased to have julie chen at the table. Welcome. Julie thank you, charlie. Im tired of listening to that 18 seasons i am the old person on big brother. Charlie but this has to be the best of lifetimes for you. Everything you touch is successful. You have a son brilliantly named charlie. And you married a good man. Julie i have always been a late bloomer in life. I did not realize that until about a year ago. And then you go through all of the milestones. I got married late. I got married when i was 34. And when i got married, i said this is my first, only, and last marriage. Charlie have you had said before, im not getting married. Im going to be a 60 minutes correspondent. Julie i did not have time for marriage or being a mother. It was my dream since junior high to be a broadcaster. And as you get older and your tastes get more sophisticated, i thought wow, every sunday night that is what i want my life to be like. And then things change. When you are young, you think you have your life figured out. And in life happens. Charlie so what happened first . Julie what happened first was, i was surprised to get plucked away from local news here in new york city for the network. I would have been happy being a field reporter. Because in a big city, you get sent to the big stories. Happened, at the , i got plucked to do a reality show. What was at the rio what was the reality show . It was at the beginning of this wave to do big brother. Charlie did you have a sense that when i go to do a reality show, i am taking a different career path than i intended . Julie yes, i felt it in my bones. When they asked me to do both morning news at the network at cbs and every week for 13 weeks to go on a plane to do big brother, i asked the head of cbs news at the time, andrew heyward, i had only been working for him for less than eight months i said, be real with me. If i take this assignment, am i permanently closing the door to ever being a 60 minutes correspondent . And to his credit, without blinking, he said yes, probably. So, i went into it with my eyes open. That being said, well, i kind of in hism his answer office right there, i said i dont want to do it. And he said to me we could technically assign you this job at big brother because you work for the network. If you say no, it could be a sign of insubordination. I was 29 years old. I thought i have not even been here for a year and im getting a file. Charlie that was 18 years ago. Talk about growing up in queens. Julie i loved it. I grew up seeing the best of both worlds. Growing up in queens made me a child of two immigrants who came here in the 1950s to get married and have a better life for their kids. Every summer, every other summer, i would go back to singapore where my mothers family was. I grew up seeing it all. Queens was like real life. I lived in a good, workingclass neighborhood, upper middle class. My dad was a hard worker and my mom was a homemaker. And then, every other summer i was going to singapore and see a glamorous life that my cousins in the far east lived. It kind of opened my eyes to everything. But growing up in queens made me real. Kept me grounded. Gave me a little bit of a gritty edge, which sometimes you need being a woman trying to get ahead in any business. We joke about it. If i need to get queens on someone, including my husband, i will. Charlie meeting the grit is there. Julie the grit is there. You have to be able to stand up for yourself. Going to public school, there were metal detectors in my junior high school. You learn how to survive. Charlie tell me about your mother. She seems to have had significant influence on you. Julie my mother is the wisest person i know. She grew up very privileged in the daughter of the most successful man in the country. When i was growing up, she described her father as the donald trump of burma. I dont know if she would say that today. She fell in love. Came to america. Charlie with a man from singapore or a man from burma . Julie no, my father was born in beijing. And during the war, while my father and his mom and his five siblings were fleeing the communists, because my dads father was part of the chain kaishek government. And for a twoweek timeframe when my father was 17 and my mother was 15, my dads family was holed up in my moms home in rangoon, burma. So he is seeing this beautiful 15yearold empress. My mom was very ladida. They wrote love letters for 10 years, and he made sure to get her an application to the university of tennessee in knoxville. Because my dad was studying for his masters at the university of florida. And he said, here is a program. Its about an 11 hour drive from where i am. You could get into the program here and we could be together in the same country. ,o 10 years of letter writing she comes over. He brings her to tennessee, and she never went back. Charlie she wanted you to be on the air. Julie she planted the seed in my head. In the 1970s, my mom is cooking dinner, and we are watching the local news, and i see an asian face. Kaity tong. And my mother and my father, anytime there was anyone asian on television, you would hear [speaking foreign language] hurry up, hurry up, there is an asian face on the television. We all ran into the living room and there she was. She looks like me. She does not sound like my mom. She sounds like me. I dont have a chinese accent. I am an american. And my mother said if this woman can do this in this day and age in this country, my daughter can. Charlie your daughter goes to sell off goes to southern california, though. Not a nearby college. Julie i was dying to grow up. I was the mother of three girls, everyone bossing everyone around. When it was my turn, my mom gave us a rule, to all three girls. She said, girls, first of all, you will go to college. Second of all, it will not be living under my roof. You need to go somewhere that is truly a way to learn how to become an independent woman. And you will have a career. You will make a life for yourself. When i chose southern cal, my two other sisters were in massachusetts. My mother was locked was like, i think you took this a little too far. And i said, i really need to get out from under you, dad, and my sisters and demaio person. Charlie when you fell in love with your husband what did they say . Julie my mom set their like a there like a tiger mom. She wanted to know if he was good enough for her daughter. What are your intentions . My father was pretty much on bended knee. My father was so happy. Charlie so happy that you were settling down to an honorable man. Julie to a captain of industry. Not just anybody. Julie yeah. Pick my daughter. My mother was like, easy. Charlie she wanted to make su