Celebrity True or False: Mahershala Ali Talks Game of Thrones, Moonlight & More

The last time Mahershala Ali sat down on The Rich Eisen Show, it was 10 years ago and he was promoting Luke Cage. Since then he has won two Academy Awards. Rich has a theory about that.

"We'd like to take credit for things that we have nothing to do with," Rich said, before laying out the logic. "If you're sitting here wondering, you know, two Oscars, it's because you showed up here 10 years ago."

Ali played right along. "Exactly," he said. "Good luck charm for me."

Rich gladly accepted, and then got to the reason for the visit: Your Mother, Your Mother, Your Mother, in select theaters now and nationwide Friday, October 9th. Ali described the film as being about "a recently widowed assassin who is urgently searching for breast milk for his child while also being hunted." The child is allergic to formula, so as Ali put it, "the stakes are really high." It is a story about a man processing death and grief, and it also has what Ali called "some really beautiful action elements."

For Ali, the project checked boxes he had been hunting for as an actor. He wanted writing that challenged him, and he had "a real deep yearning" to do something physical. "You might know I was a former athlete," he said. "Acting can be so intellectual and emotional, but it's rare when projects come along that ask you to bring so many skill sets to the table." He called Bassam Tariq's script "really a dream come true."

Rich admitted it is rare to ask a guest who spends a movie searching for baby formula whether he trained with swords. Ali did, for a year. He had expected to use that training for Blade, which "unfortunately didn't work out," so this film felt "a bit redemptive." He got to pick up where he left off, even with some of the same team members in Atlanta. "It was kind of like riding a bike," he said.

Is it an action film? Not exactly. "It has undeniable fleshed out action elements," Ali said, but people who have seen it struggle to put it in a genre. "It's its own film. It's its own genre. It's like nothing you've ever seen before. It's like nothing I've ever seen before." In an era when audiences have seen every iteration of everything, he believes that matters. "You have to earn people's time and energy now," he said. "I sincerely feel like this is worth people's time."

Rich asked whether people still bring up Luke Cage. Not really, Ali said, because he has been able to do work since that resonated with people. But he appreciates that the character of Cottonmouth holds up, and he has seen people speaking positively about the character and the show online recently. "I loved playing that character cuz it felt so against type," he said. "I think it really stretched me as an actor."

Then came Celebrity True or False, and the first question went straight to Ali's athletic past. True or false: he attended St. Mary's on a basketball scholarship under the name Hershel Gilmore before choosing grad school at NYU for acting. "Almost true," Ali said. His name then was Mahershala Gilmore, and Hershel was the nickname. As for his game, he was "a tweener," a two guard who had to play some point. "I wasn't good enough to be on the court more," he said, but he learned about commitment and "not leaving those things to someone else like a coach to sort of pick you."

An even better follow-up came next. True or false: Ali turned down Santa Clara for St. Mary's, which freed up a scholarship that went to Steve Nash. "Very true," Ali said. "I'm still waiting for my thank you card from Steve." He guarded Nash "all the time," and Nash ran him off picks "like crazy." Did he ever cross Nash over? "No. No. No."

He also confirmed he builds playlists for every character, a "sense memory cheat" he leaned into around the time he first met Rich, when he was playing several parts at once. The music is sonically specific to the character's world, whether the character would like it or not. "It sort of creates an opportunity for your frequency to shift," he said, "which is a lot of how you discover character."

The Game of Thrones question was true, and Ali did not sugarcoat it. He could not remember the character's name, only that the character ended up locked in something like a safe. He had worked out a plan built around using a chair to create a sense of power, then walked into the room to find a stool with no back. "It was a terrible audition," he said. "It was horrible." The guess in the studio was Varys. Ali was not sure.

Moonlight's swimming scene was real too. Ali was actually teaching young Alex R. Hibbert, who did not know how to swim. "I was pretending to be one," Ali said of being a swim instructor. "That kid is special." Ali admitted he gets emotional thinking about that project. "We weren't pretending," he said. "It was really happening."

Rich asked about the night La La Land was announced as Best Picture before Moonlight was. Ali said something felt off while one of the producers, Jordan, was accepting. When he saw someone who looked like security walk onto the stage, he turned to his manager and said, "We won." The celebration that followed was strangely muted. "It was like we had to hold in a sneeze or something," he said. Still, it was "one of the more wonderful surprises" of his life.

They finally found a false one. The story about a 1962 Cadillac DeVille on the Green Book set collapsing under the weight of equipment never happened. What did happen: Viggo Mortensen walked to work in New Orleans one day and showed up in the makeup trailer holding an injured crow he had found on the street. "He has some special connection with crows," Ali said. Rich had no follow-up. "There probably isn't one," Ali said.

Rich closed by asking that they not wait another 10 years. Given the track record, Ali might want to book the next one soon.