Behind-The-Scenes Stories From 'The Green Mile'

In many of his most notable screen performances, Tom Hanks portrays men of deep integrity and profound human warmth. This is very much the case in The Green Mile; his character, warden supervisor Paul Edgecomb, is someone with his own moral compass. What’s especially notable is the extent to which Hanks’s off-screen behavior mirrors his character’s.

As director Frank Darabont noted in an interview on Charlie Rose, Hanks was generous with his time with his fellow actors, particularly Michael Clarke Duncan. During one of the most important scenes, Hanks stood off-camera and gave a powerful performance to ensure his castmate nailed the scene:

He’s delivering an Academy Award performance to Michael Duncan… He is giving him all of the fuel he needs as an actor to shine, to be fantastic, even at the risk of burning himself out. 

Before his premature passing in September 2012, Michael Clarke Duncan was one of Hollywood’s most respected actors, known for his ability to bring out richness and depth even in relatively minor roles. His appearance in The Green Mile as John Coffey, a man on death row with supernatural healing powers, is full of humanity, warmth, and profound empathy. 

Bruce Willis, who had read the book version of what would become the movie, called director Frank Darabont and asserted, "I got the guy who’s gonna be your John Coffey. You gotta read Michael Clarke Duncan.” 

Duncan would go on to be nominated for an Academy Award for his performance. 

Given the complexity of film production, it can be a challenge for directors to get their first choice of actors for given parts. This was not the case with The Green Mile, as director Frank Darabont explained in the documentary Walking the Mile: The Making of the Green Mile: 

I’ve been pretty lucky with my casting… The Green Mile was the singular experience I’ve ever had of every single actor that was my first choice for the movie said yes and did the movie.

Given the obvious chemistry among the cast members, and how completely they inhabited their on-screen characters, it’s almost impossible to think of anyone else appearing in it.

Michael Clarke Duncan brings a powerful intensity to his characterization of John Coffey, an inmate of many hidden depths. However, when he auditioned for The Green Mile, his performance wasn’t quite where it needed to be. “I was almost on the cusp of what they might want to see in John Coffey,” he recalled.

As a result, he went through an exhaustive auditioning process, which involved working with an acting coach, who helped him inhabit the mental and emotional space of his character. “Every audition I went in I got a little bit better," he said. Finally, during a screen test, Duncan was at last able to convey the full range of emotion the director required in the role.

Given the subject matter and setting of The Green Mile, the process of filming could often become wearing for the actors involved. Fortunately, many cast members showed they were able to keep things light when needed. In one notable instance, Tom Hanks played a prank on fellow actor Doug Hutchison, who had challenged the extras to recite his lines. Hanks held up cue cards to give them a leg up. 

“I wouldn’t have caught it if the extras hadn’t been laughing,” Hutchison admitted. Elaborating on why he held the contest in the first place, he said: “It made it like a party instead of this grueling sort of thing.”

Costuming is, of course, a key aspect of any film. In addition to granting authenticity to a movie like The Green Mile - set in the 1930s - subtle changes in what a character is wearing can alter the meaning of a scene. In the film, for example, the presence (or absence) of hats on the guards demonstrates whether they are on duty or not. 

Tom Hanks, who portrays warden supervisor Paul Edgecomb, was adamant about this particular detail, as he related to Entertainment Weekly: 

We had so many discussions about the hats. “Are we gonna wear these hats?” “Oh god, what are we going to do about the hats casting a shadow?” “Can you wear them way back on your head?” But the hats were really important because when they’re on, that means a guard is officially on duty. And when they’re off, things are relaxed a little bit. They were this intangible signal to everybody of when they’ve got to shape up and fly right and when they don’t.

Despite the many difficulties the hats posed, particularly for the film’s cinematographer, they ultimately made it into the final cut.

The green mile of the title is a euphemism for death row itself, and several executions take place during the course of the film. This leads up to the moment in which John Coffey's life ends in the electric chair. These scenes are some of the film’s most traumatic - both for the viewer and for members of the cast, as revealed by Michael Jeter, who plays executed inmate Eduard Delacroix:

It’s difficult to die in a film, especially if you feel close to the people you’re working with. You form emotional bonds with people. 

The emotional resonance of these moments help to reinforce the film’s enduring power. 

The Green Mile wasn’t director Frank Darabont’s first encounter with the works of Stephen King. In fact, Darabont received significant acclaim for writing and directing 1994's The Shawshank Redemption. He was somewhat hesitant to take on the job of directing The Green Mile, however.

When he spoke with King on the phone, he expressed significant reservations, not wishing to be pigeonholed as a director of only prison films. As Darabont shared in an interview on Charlie Rose: 

He told me this idea, and I was intrigued enough that I said, “Oh, well OK, you’re right, I’m not gonna wanna do it, but give me first crack at it if you ever write the thing.” 

As it turned out, Darabont was so impressed by the final product - in particular, King’s attention to the human aspect of the story - that he decided to overcome his reluctance.

Although The Green Mile is very much grounded in the real world, it also has notes of magical realism, particularly surrounding John Coffey’s healing powers. In particular, he heals a mouse which, it turns out, is also blessed with a very long life. The production used actual mice, and there was an entire “mouse unit” committed to training the rodents used in the production. 

As one assistant director remarked, “Our trainers went upstairs and they’ve gotten the mouse to groom himself just like Percy - Doug, the actor in the scene - is combing his hair.” As a result of the exhaustive attention to detail, it took the mouse unit a month to get all the footage they needed.

Part of the magic of the movies has always been their ability to transport the viewer into another world. Although this is often one in which the viewer would rather live, in some cases, as in The Green Mile, the environment is one of darkness and sinister power. In large part, this is due to how exacting the production team was in recreating the dreary environment of a prison. 

Actor Barry Pepper, who portrays correctional officer Dean Stanton, had this to say about the experience of inhabiting the soundstage, whose creators employed rigorous attention to detail, right down to the paint:

It was really quite breathtaking to walk down the mile for the first time and see what an incredible job they’d done of recreating this death-row e-block penitentiary.

One of the most magical and remarkable things about narrative film is its ability to efface the labor of its own construction. For this reason, it's all the more fascinating when actors reveal what it was like to work on a given production. Although Tom Hanks had mostly positive things to say about the effort involved, he did note how tedious it became: 

If there was anything that got hard after a while, it was that there was a mind-numbing sameness to showing up to the same dimly lit place every day and putting on these same uniforms. 

Such revelations help bring home to viewers the effort involved in creating such a film, demonstrating the commitment actors have to their craft. 

Throughout his career, Tom Hanks has appeared in a wide variety of genres, from romantic comedies to war films. In many cases, he has been known to undergo extensive preparation for his roles; for Saving Private Ryan, for example, he endured a version of boot camp. He eschewed such an immersive experience for The Green Mile, however, ultimately deciding not to visit a real prison. 

In large part, his reluctance stemmed from his fear of how such an experience would impact his ability to believe in the script. "I’m not sure I would’ve had the same confidence in the screenplay that I had if I had gone off and seen things the way they really are,” he revealed in an interview with Entertainment Weekly. As he went on to say, going to an actual prison would have highlighted the historical inaccuracies that made their way into the film. 

The Green Mile is something of an embarrassment of riches when it comes to its cast. In addition to Tom Hanks and Michael Clarke Duncan, it also stars Sam Rockwell as William “Wild Bill” Wharton, one of the prison’s most toxic inmates, a man willing and able to heap abuse on John Coffey whenever he gets the chance. The character’s reprehensible nature led Rockwell to soften his stance about wearing fake teeth during filming. 

During an interview for the Santa Barbara International Film Festival, he explained: "I was not wanting to do the fake teeth [...] I need a disguise because, you know, this guy is gonna be around for a little bit.” It’s a reminder of how such a performance, and such a character, can come to overshadow an actor’s career.