Q: Denzel, were you hesitant about playing another dark character?

DENZEL: I wasn't hesitant at all. A good story is a good story. I just think that before "Training Day," I hadn't really been offered that kind of role. After "Training Day," that was all I was offered. No, that's not true, but I was offered more of that kind of thing. But it just comes down to good material, great actor to work with and a great filmmaker. It wasn't that complicated.

Q: You two had worked together in “Virtuosity.” Did you ever talk about working together again?

RUSSELL: We didn't talk about it at all. Brian [Grazer] was talking to me about it and saying there was a chance we could put it back together if we got X amount of people interested in it, so that's how the pursuit was begun, and I heard that Denzel was happy with the idea of doing it with me, and obviously I was happy that I was doing it with him, so we didn't talk about it until we were on the set.

Q: Can you two talk about the balance of good and evil that is plays prominently in your two characters?

RUSSELL: Well, I think that's one of the fascinating things about the two characters and about the story itself - that none of it’s clear. There's not a clear singular morality. And when you get the opportunity to play that sort of thing, which is nothing more than reality and the sort of humanity as it exists, it's just a bit of fun. You know, Richie's an honest guy and all that sort of thing, but as his wife pays him out in the court: you're only honest in one area — you try and buy yourself favorites for all the shit that you do. And I just think that's an honest appraisal of who he was at that time. But it also leaks into that area of discussing why people go bad in the first place, or what the process of Frank Lucas was to become a drug dealer. If Frank Lucas had been befriended by somebody else and educated in a different area, he might get in a situation where a university's named after him. He's a very smart guy and he uses things that he's learned to the best of his ability to change his life and change the life of his family at that time. But it just happened to be that Bumpy Johnson was his teacher. Bumpy Johnson, we were joking yesterday about doing his sort of course work on the street. PhD in criminality under Bumpy Johnson.

DENZEL: (laughs) Yeah.

Q: Can you talk about the difference between gangsters in film and in hip-hop? Actors tend to get lauded when they’re in movies like “Scarface” and “American Gangster”, yet gangster themes in hip-hop get criticized and looked down on?

RUSSELL: (To Denzel) I think what [the question is], which is really pretty cool, is that he's saying that a guy comes out and he sings a song about his lot as a gangster or what his experience was saying he puts it on a record, and people get down on him, but you and me, we make a movie about you being a gangster we get praised for it from a creative point of view.

DENZEL: Yeah. Some rappers who have made gangster albums have gotten praise for it too. Some real good ones. Real good ones. “America's Most Wanted” is still one of my favorite albums.

RUSSELL: Is it the criminality that people are getting upset about with the music or is it sort of like is it the criminality that people are getting upset about with the music? Or is it the male-female attitude kind of thing? I mean there's some of that sort of stuff, and you know you're actually literally singing the praises of gun worship, as opposed to a movie that plays out in front of you and a story that's being told and how something actually really happened…

DENZEL: …and the consequences.

RUSSELL: There's definitely a difference there.

Q: How does "American Gangster" fit in with the tradition of New York crime films like "The Godfather" and "Prince of the City"?

DENZEL: Well, all those films you mentioned, there's no black people in any of them. So for one, this is a Harlem story. This is about a guy who was a kingpin, but a different kingpin. I think the situation is basically the same. They were obviously different movies but the business was the same, if it was based on the heroin business. As we were talking earlier, I guess to a degree it's a genre. There are certain things that are similar in those kinds of films, but this one in particular, is dealing with a guy from uptown.

Q: Ridley described Frank as somewhat of a sociopath. Do you agree?

DENZEL: I wouldn’t say that about Frank. I didn't find that to be true. I think that as Russell was saying earlier, he's a man without a formal education and a man who at the age of six witnessed his cousin get murdered by elected officials. That changed his life. From a very young age, he began to steal and he worked his way up the line. He came to New York and the most notorious gangster in Harlem recognized the talent, if you will, in this young kid, and he continued to train him. He was on the wrong side of the tracks, but he was a brilliant student, and became a master of the business that he was in. You know, it's a dirty business. And he's definitely a criminal. He's responsible for the death of many people. So I don't want to just say that he's a product of his environment, but I guess to a degree we all are, and as Russell said, I think had he got a formal education, had he gone in another direction, had he had different influences, I think he still would have been a leader or a very successful man. You know he has a 10 or 12-year-old son now who's brilliant.

RUSSELL: That's a sort of easy one to take head-on because quite frankly, large parts of Frank Lucas's life were very glamorous: the night clubs, hanging out with Wilt Chamberlain, sports figures and celebrities of the time. His public persona as such was the guy that ran this nightclub. Everything else that fell down from that was not known. Wilt Chamberlain or any of these celebrities that were hanging out with him wouldn't have known that frank was turning over a couple of hundred kilos every month in heroin.

Q: With the accolades and the box-office money, what inspires you two to still get up every day and go to work?

DENZEL: Good question. Professionally now, I've sort of started to head in another direction, getting behind the camera and I'm sure that's my new career. But on a more basic level, I was just watching Russell with his little boy upfront and that's part of the reason I had to go to work. There's a lot of joy in that, just watching his face, playing with his son and his son just looking at dad. Acting, for me, is making a living. It's not my life, you know. My children and my family, that's life. The miracle of life. I'll get up every morning, God willing, for that.

RUSSELL: I've always seen it to be a privilege to make movies. It's a really expensive, creative medium and people around me to do it. There are things that I can do as an actor that I couldn't do in any other form of life and I've got a strange personality. But film requires strange people, so I've got a nice comfy home. That's what I do and I'm really happy with that. And when I know I'm getting up to go to work with Ridley and I know the time and effort he would have put into whatever it is that we're about to shoot that day, to me it's just a great privilege, and every day I kind of look around and thank the lord that it's still going on, and I just get to work and do the thing I'm doing that day.