Idris Elba has opened up about spending a night in prison to prepare for his role as Nelson Mandela in the 2013 film, Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom.
During a recent interview with The Sunday Times, the 52-year-old actor detailed the extremes he went to while working on the biopic, which documents Mandela’s 27 years in prison in South Africa.
Elba said that before filming started, he “spent the night” in a prison cell on Robben Island, which is the same prison Mandela was in from 1964 to 1982.
“I’d been given the incredible honour to portray this great man and up until that night, I hadn’t quite grasped the significance of having over 20 years of life stolen from him,” he told the publication. “I had to persuade the authorities to let me stay there, and they finally agreed.”
He went on to acknowledge that the prison “holds a lot of bad memories” and claimed that “it’s definitely haunted.”
“I heard strange noises throughout the night but I was the only person there. I had a bucket, a thin mattress and a blanket; they kept the lights on because that’s what they used to do and I didn’t sleep much,” Elba continued.
However, he still took value from his night in the prison, adding: “It was a scary experience, but it definitely gave me a stronger connection to Mandela.”
Mandela first went to Robben Island Prison in May 1963, after being sentenced the previous October to five years for sabotage, as he led a campaign against the apartheid government in South Africa. After another trial in Pretoria, this time for treason, he returned to the island in June 1964 and remained there until March 1982, when he was moved to the mainland.
He was released from prison in 1990, four years before he served as the first Black president of South Africa from 1994 to 1999. Mandela died in 2013 at the age of 95.
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Following the release of Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom in 2013, Elba first shared how he spent a night at the South African prison. Speaking to Oprah Winfrey in December 2013, he said that while he first visited Robben Island as a “tourist,” that wasn’t the case during his second visit. shortly after the movie was released.
Ebla has also recounted the experience of spending a night in the infamous prison to Oprah Winfrey shortly after the movie was released.
His first trip to Robben Island was as a “tourist.” he explained, but his second experience “was awful. Awful.” “When I started to understand the history of the island, the fact that it was a leprosy colony,” he added.
He noted that when he asked the prison if he could spend a night in Mandela’s cell, he was initially told no. After asking again “several times,” he was permitted to stay in the prison for a night, just not Mandela’s cell. He said he was offered a cell in the C Wing, which was a “punishment cell.”
“I said, ‘I want it exactly as Madiba had it. Whatever facilities he had that night, on his first night,’” he recalled to Winfrey, referring to Mandela’s famous nickname.
“I just heard this series of locks,” he continued, reflecting on going into the prison cell. “And I had the most amazing sense of loss. I was like, ‘Wow.’ And it just put it into perspective about what Madiba had gone through. Just perspective and context. I could never say I had gone through what he’d gone through.”
He also claimed that in the cell, he was “definitely visited by spirits,” which he knew through the “energy” and “temperature changes” he felt.
