My long night in Mandela's prison cell: How Idris Elba was trapped and terrified in Robben Island prison

PUBLISHED: 22:00, 30 November 2013 | UPDATED: 22:00, 30 November 2013

The star begged to be locked up in solitary on Robben Island to better understand Mandela, the man he plays in Long Walk To Freedom. But when the door clanked shut, things got really ‘weird’...

Mandela: Long Walk To Freedom has taken 17 long years to get to the screen

When the steel bars locked on a tiny cell in the bowels of Robben Island, Idris Elba lay down on a two-centimetre thick mat, his ‘bed’ for the next 12 hours, and began to contemplate the true challenge of playing Nelson Mandela, one of the most inspirational figures of the 20th century.

Elba begged the authorities that run the notorious former prison, where Mandela spent 18 of his 27 years in captivity, to let him spend a night there. At first, they refused.

‘But I persisted, it was important,’ Elba tells me.

‘Robben Island is a museum now – no one had spent a night in there since the 1980s.

'So they took me to one of the punishment cells.

'It was exactly the same dimensions as Mandela’s cell [8ft x 7ft] with a concrete floor and a bucket in the corner.

‘Spending the night in there gave me a little taste of what it was like to be locked up in Robben Island for all those years,’ says Elba.

‘And it’s funny, because of insurance they insisted that I take a phone in case I needed to get out.

‘They said, “If you need to, just call. The security guard is about a quarter of a mile away and he will come and open the gates.” So the guy locked the door and I watched him walk away.

'He locked a second door, a third door, and then a fourth. And then he was gone and it was eerily quiet.

‘There was a single lightbulb on in the cell but outside in the walkways it was very dark. It dawned on me that I wasn’t getting out any time soon.

'And then I glanced at my phone and there was no signal!’

The real Nelson and Winnie Mandela on their wedding day in 1958 (left); Idris Elba with Naomie Harris (Winnie Mandela) in Mandela: Long Walk To Freedom (right)

It was a long night. Elba admits that there were times when he was seriously spooked.

‘It was really unsettling and I swear that place is haunted. It’s dead quiet – quieter than you can imagine – and every so often I’d hear a clang or something knocking against the bars down the corridor. And there was no one else but me there.

‘I was woken by a shaft of really cold air and I thought, ‘Someone is coming in.’ I thought it was coming from the window but it was tiny.

'And at the same time this really big flock of seagulls started flying right above the cell. It was a weird experience.

'It helped me understand a little of the mindset of a man who was incarcerated for so long.’

Mandela: Long Walk To Freedom is based on the autobiography of the same name, and as well as covering his 27 years in prison examines his decision to advocate violence, against the wishes of the elders who controlled the ANC (African National Congress), making him one of the most wanted men in the country. There are harrowing scenes of his imprisonment on Robben Island.

It also reveals how Mandela, a ladies’ man, fell madly in love with Winnie Madikizela, 18 years his junior (played by Naomie Harris).

Idris Elba is one of the most highly regarded actors in the world after his portrayal of drug dealer Stringer Bell in The Wire and a maverick cop in Luther. Neverthless, playing a living legend gave him pause for thought

Watch Idris Elba's incredible performance as Nelson Mandela

The film has taken 17 long years to get to the screen and along the way some of the biggest names in Hollywood have been in the frame to play the lead, including Morgan Freeman, Denzel Washington and Will Smith.

Veteran South African producer and anti-apartheid campaigner Anant Singh has been a close friend of Mandela’s since he was released in 1990, and he was the driving force behind the film.

‘I first wrote to him while he was still in prison, in 1988, and said that I was interested in making a film about him,’ recalls Singh.

‘And he said, “Would anyone really want to see a film about my life?” He is a very modest man – and a remarkable man.

'I had meetings with a lot of big Hollywood stars down the years and they’d say, “I want to do it, but I’m not sure I can.”

‘Every actor is intrigued and they think, “Great, I can win an Oscar”, but it’s hugely daunting.’

British actor Elba wasn’t sure himself if he was up to it when Singh and director, Justin Chadwick, who directed The Other Boleyn Girl, first approached him.

'Spending the night in there gave me a little taste of what it was like to be locked up in Robben Island for all those years,' said Idris Elba (pictured with director Justin Chadwick on the Robben Island set)

Nelson Mandela in his confinement cell where he had been incarcerated for twenty seven years

He’s one of the most highly regarded actors in the world after his portrayal of drug dealer Stringer Bell in The Wire, a maverick cop in the BBC series Luther, and roles in films such as American Gangster and Prometheus. Neverthless, playing a living legend gave him pause for thought.

One early concern was that he didn’t resemble Mandela.

‘The fact I look nothing like him was huge,’ he says.

‘I relied on costume and we had to be really detailed about how he looked, the way he wore his hair.

'It was a long time in the make-up chair, up to four hours every morning, before I’d go on set.

'Playing him at different ages was also a challenge – he had a different voice, a different energy as a younger man, and by the time he came out of prison his voice had changed.’

Event was given exclusive access to see Elba in action and speak to the filmmakers on set.

Winnie (Naomie Harris) outside the court after Nelson Mandela has been sentenced to life in prison

Mandela: Long Walk To Freedom is based on the autobiography of the same name, and as well as covering his 27 years in prison examines his decision to advocate violence

We watched as he delivered a speech to young ANC supporters in a rundown township in Johannesburg, from the back of a truck.

The extras, in late 1940s period costumes, were all locals.

‘We told them, “This is your story,” and they embraced that,’ says Chadwick. ‘But with some of the riot scenes they got caught up in it.

'In one scene we filmed some burning cars and I think a couple of cars were on fire that weren’t meant to be burned.

‘When we were finished there was black smoke everywhere. It’s a very raw country and there are some very raw feelings there, particularly in the townships.

'That history we are recreating is very present and for a lot of those people it brought it back.

‘We took all these images from his life, which had been part of our research, and he knew exactly where he was at the time, who he was with, what had happened on a given day. His memory is incredibly sharp.’

'Playing him (Mandela) at different ages was also a challenge - he had a different voice, a different energy as a younger man, and by the time he came out of prison his voice had changed,' said Idris Elba

Elba hoped to meet his subject, but in the end Mandela’s health prevented it.

‘I’m glad I didn’t,’ says Elba, ‘because I wanted to understand him from a different perspective.

'We had a great script, I’d read and re-read his autobiography, watched documentaries, done the research, but at the end of the day I had to do my performance. And I didn’t want to do an imitation.’

Elba and Harris met Winnie Mandela, though, as well as their two daughters, Zenani and Zindzi.

‘They said: “He’s a great man but he’s also our dad!”

‘Winnie said: “He was a freedom fighter but he is a man, too, flesh and blood, and he has flaws.”

‘She encouraged me to be courageous. She said it felt like the first portrayal of her family that she had seen that meant something.’

‘Mandela: Long Walk To Freedom’ is released on January 3

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Saturday, 30 November 2013