Playing a public enemy

Toby Jones, Karl Rove in the film W, explains his character’s relationship with President Bush

Condoleezza Rice’s teeth lie discarded beside her bottle of water. Colin Powell’s wig needs adjustment. Across the table, Scott Glenn removes Donald Rumsfeld’s steel-rimmed spectacles and continues his description of the seven months he spent in the Philippines shooting Apocalypse Now. Behind him a video monitor tees up background footage for the next take: weapons inspectors trudging through the desert, zooming backwards and forwards until they are paused flickering at a trench.

We are shooting the longest scene in Oliver Stone’s film, W (released in the UK on 7 November), perhaps the longest scene I have ever read in a script. The hours wear on and the debate ricochets across the long oak table occasionally coming to a stand still as we turn towards the President. The truth is that I shouldn’t even be here. In between takes, the diminutive ex-admiral, advising Oliver on government protocol (she it was who escorted Bush from the kindergarten to the control bunker on 9/11), strolls over to me and asks, ‘I’m not sure what Rove is doing in here?’

‘Just keeping an eye on things,’ I joke.