From KCRW in Santa Monica, this is The Treatment.

Welcome to The Treatment. I'm Elvis Mitchell, which you can hear at the treatment at KCRW.com.

My guest, Forrest Whitaker, is in New York.

After a career of amazing performances of the directors, such as Martin Scorsese and Neil

Jordan, Forrest, is now getting acclaim for his work with a first-time dramatic director.

He's starring as Ediamine in The Last King of Scotland, and it's an interesting performance

for him.

Forrest, thanks for doing the show, first of all.

Yeah, it's good to be here.

I've got to ask you, if you could, to describe the movie a bit for the audience, people who haven't seen the picture yet.

Okay, this movie is about a Scottish doctor who recently graduated from college and decides that he wants to go off and explore the world to, like, bring excitement in his life. And he decides to go to Uganda

where he meets the Ugandan president, Idi Amin. By a fluke, on a road, he's able, he does something

to help Ediamin who's injured. And then Idi Amin makes him his personal doctor and he becomes his

advisor. And it's about their relationship and about sort of this corruption of power that happens with this young man and also with Ediamine and the sort of betrayals and the breakup of their relationship.

Now, you were telling me when I spoke to you earlier that you weren't entirely sure the director thought that you could play the Volcano Granges that demanded by this part.

Yeah, I think that was the concern was the size, the grandeur,

and the sort of outward external behavior.

I think he was worried.

I don't think it was about the internal life,

other than possibly a question about the levels of anger that I might be able to display as an actor and madness that happened in the latter part of the character's reign.

So I think those were his initial concerns.

And how did you find a way to switch to play those rages?

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