This sort of thing is also highly welcome! (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, who was playing Sergeant Carwood Lipton, a man also decorated for his bravery. We'd been yelled at and driven relentlessly on our first say's training out in the field. No concessions were made to us being actors; in fact, the opposite was true, and we were exhausted. It was nighttime, a few minutes before lights out, and I found myself and Donnie in the first moments of peace we'd had since arriving, leaning out of the top-floor windows of our barracks, facing each other across the concrete of the parade ground, discussing the fears and anxieties about doing these men justice in the nine long months ahead of us. The night was still and Donnie said in a calm voice, "I don't know you, but the fact they've asked you to portray this man means you have my respect already." And in that moment I knew. I knew what Dick Winters meant to people.

Oh, Donnie.

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