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Jeff Goldblum plays war reporterFiction collides with current events
Editor's Note: CNN Access is a regular feature on CNN.com providing interviews with newsmakers from around the world.
(CNN) -- In real life, preparing for a possible conflict in Iraq, war correspondents are being moved toward center stage again. Actor Jeff Goldblum is the star of Wednesday night's TV movie "War Stories" on NBC. It is about the life of a war correspondent covering a fictional civil war in Uzbekistan. Goldblum joined CNN anchor Daryn Kagan on Wednesday to discuss the movie. DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: Looking over your career and your resume, you do like to take parts where bad things happen -- aliens, dinosaurs and now war. What is it about those kind of parts that you think's attracting Jeff Goldblum? JEFF GOLDBLUM, ACTOR: I don't know. I know what attracted me about this part. It's an important fact of life, war. These special people -- war correspondents -- are attracted to go to these places. They feel nobly enough that people have to know the facts as closely as possible. Lake Bell, a wonderful actress, plays a young, inexperienced woman who becomes my partner to replace a fellow at the beginning of the show who's been my longtime beloved dear friend who steps on a land mine right in front of me. [My character] is going through kind of a crisis of emotional stability and idealism when she replaces him, and then [my character] falls wildly in love with this other woman. KAGAN: She's not your love interest?
GOLDBLUM: No, there's this other brilliant woman who works for a Newsweek type-of-newspaper-magazine [in the movie], played by Louise Lombard. [My character] finds out my best friend was also in love with her, and had been with her, and now to benefit somehow from his death is also conflicting. At this point, we get thrown into a part of conflict, and [my character] suspects that we're being used as we try to cover it by either side as pawns, or spies or combatants. [My character] is wildly, passionately against that because it wrecks the fragile neutrality that reporters enjoy, and their safety such as it is, fragile as it is. [My character] wants to get to the truth. So [my character] throws himself into this fevered sort of mission to find out the facts. KAGAN: Sounds like drama. It also sounds like issues that we deal with right here at CNN. What about the timing on this, Jeff? Is this just coincidence? War is at the top of our headlines and newscasts. Was this planned? GOLDBLUM: No, no, Daryn. It's coincidental. In fact, this story was written before 9/11 happened. It was originally set in Macedonia, and then they wanted to make it a little more relevant and topical. It's just amazing that this is something of wild interest to me, I know, and to so many people now. KAGAN: Is it a pilot, or is it just a TV movie? GOLDBLUM: It was originally intended as a possible pilot. But I just focused mostly on the chunk of material that it was. It seemed like a great movie to me. You never know even in a movie if it's going to be a sequel or whatever happens, but right now I'm proud of what we produced.
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