“I was smoking a lot of weed” to get over ‘Beasts of No Nation’s’ dark character role; – Idris Elba

Idris Elba speaking to Entertainment Weekly recounted how he had to smoke ‘weed’ in order to get over the character role he played in ‘Beasts of No Nation’.

‘Beasts of No Nation’ is a 2015 movie which featured Idris Elba as the commandant who surrounded himself with young soldiers. Agu (Abraham Attah), a young West African kid, is lured into being a child soldier by the Commandant’s hypnotic, watchful eye in the film Beasts of No Nation.

“Essentially, this was a fictional West African country. I went for a West African General. But it was definitely influenced by where my parents are from. The Commandant is a very twisted, conflicted human being. He would have these commands he would use to almost hypnotize those young soldiers. The story is loosely based around the civil war of Sierra Leone and Liberia,” Idris Elba tells EW.

“I’m one of these actors who I absorb my character, I absorb their experiences, so I can understand a little bit. I had to watch hours and read stuff that was just so disturbing. My nightmares were varied. It was either me in these nightmares or it was the Commandant, and it was all this vivid imagery that I was exposed to,” He added.

Speaking about how the role affected him and how he dealt with it, the actor asked’ “Can I be honest?” and then continued to say, “I was smoking a lot of weed at that time and that would get me out of that.”

‘Beasts of No Nation’, is a civil war drama film, written and directed by Cary Joji Fukunaga.