notbadforactors (original) (raw)

Apparently Donnie Wahlberg was an even better choice for playing Lipton than anyone knew. This exchange comes from the preface Damian Lewis wrote for Biggest Brother, the Winters biography that's not Beyond Band of Brothers:

I remember, as I arrived at Longmoor Camp for training that first day, I still wasn't fully aware of the enormity of what I was being asked to do. Everyone had been telling me, "You're the guy. He's the main guy." But I hadn't seen all the scripts (they weren't all written yet), and was equally being told it was an ensemble piece. It was. But Winters was the spine.

Two things happened that made me sit up.

I discovered that the actors living in the States (as opposed to those cast out of the UK) had made contact with the veterans they were going to portray and had already formed considerable friendships. They'd had a few whiskies (depends on your definition of a few!), shared many stories, laughed and cried. The actors were ready to tell the vets' stories and ready to do justice to the achievements of their new friends. It was infectious.

The second thing that shook me was ( a conversation I had with Donnie Wahlberg...Collapse )

Oh, Donnie.

Some other interesting tidbits in there too, including the name of the camp where they trained, which I hadn't known before.