Variety magazine named Abdi as an Oscar front-runner, and his performance has attracted effusive praise from many other quarters. "They understand how desperate these guys are, and what they are doing is wrong."īut Abdi said he and his friends know a lot of people in Minneapolis, and they hope they will appreciate the film. "Everybody knows the story of what happened," he said. The community has dealt with a lot of bad news in recent years, and he doesn't want to add to the discomfort with the story of the Somali pirates. He don't want to show that he gives up because he can't."Ībdi said there is great excitement over the film in the Somali community in Minneapolis, but he admits to a certain amount of wariness. "Everything is against him, but he just don't wanna let go. "He's almost given up, but he can't," Abdi said. It's at that point that Abdi allowed more of the human side of Muse to come through, showing the desperation which causes a man in an impoverished, lawless country to become a pirate. The life and death struggle for control rumbles under the whole of "Captain Phillips." As the story progresses, the pirates realize they will have to deal with the might of the U.S. "So I just became the character, as much as I can, and that's when the line came out - 'I'm the Captain now.'" "Paul came to me and said, 'you have to own the scene you have to take control,' " Abdi recalled. Greengrass wanted to maintain the distance and tension between the combatants.Ībdi said he was nervous going in, but Greengrass calmed him down. And you know it's really powerful and I like it."Ī small downside of the style was that the Minneapolis actors did not get to meet Tom Hanks until months later when they were shooting the intense confrontation in the wheel house. The technique works very well in "Captain Phillips," the harrowing story of what the real life Capt. He also directed two of the Bourne films and is known for using an almost documentary style, which adds an intense reality to action sequences. Greengrass makes action thrillers, among them the film United 93, which told the story of passengers who battled one group of hijackers involved in the Sept. They were thrilled to be working with Hanks, but when Abdi discovered more about the work of director Paul Greengrass, he grew more excited. "I was talking to them," he said, "and when she told him to go in, she looked at me and said 'Go in too.'"Ībdi captured the role of Muse, and three other young men he knew - Mahat Ali, Faysal Ahmed, and Barkhad Abdirahman - also won parts in the film. He was about to leave when he saw a guy chatting to one of the talent scouts. Abdi said he soon realized it was unlikely the number he'd received from the talent scouts would ever come up. In November, 2011, he was one of more than 700 people at an open audition the Brian Coyle Center in Minneapolis. It's a chilling scene which hinges on the cold intensity blazing out of Muse's eyes - one Abdi nearly missed a chance to audition for. Image courtesy Columbia Pictures, photo by Hopper Stone
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