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Working with Bernie Mac: Mac’s best known for comedy but he tackled a dramatic role in Pride. Despite the fact Mac normally goes for the laughs, Howard never had to help Mac get into character. “No, you don’t need to help Bernie. (Laughing) See, that’s the thing, to have that comical wit, it means you must be smarter that everyone else around you," explained Howard. "He understands the dramatic pauses and that’s the beautiful thing about him.

You don’t know if he’s playing or if he’s dead serious about what he’s doing, and he can make light of a heavy situation. So, for me, him and Tom Arnold together… I mean wait until you see the DVD outtakes because they would just go on and on and on and off of each other. Bernie did just what was necessary. He brought the film home for us. Me, I’m a drama king. I talk in this mellow, melancholy way, and you know that’s just my nature. Bernie kept it honest. Bernie kept it honest and I love that about him.”

Playing a Very Complicated Character: Ellis is a good person but he’s also got a past and he’s fighting through something just like everybody else is. “Yeah, well that’s what makes him a hero,” explained Howard. “He’s able to lift off of the things that would normally hold us all back and, for the greater good, extend himself and not care about the personal loss because he thought of the mutual gain of everyone. And, to this day, he still smiles. He still wants to get one of his swimmers on the Olympic team.

He’s had a number of them try out on the Olympic trials. But you know he’s always looking to the future and that’s what helps us overcome our faults.

We all make mistakes. Man, I make mistakes every day. He makes mistakes all the time. He’s a divorced man like a lot of us here may be divorced people. But he hasn’t allowed any of those faults to stop him. He’s got a quick temper and he could have gotten a lot further if he’d been nicer to the people inside of City Hall and all of that. But he has a determination to do things his way, which is the right way.”

On Working with Director Sunu Gonera: “Sunu gave me complete autonomy. We started off with 73 pages and a table reading that sucked. I went up to my room and I called my agent and my manager and I said, ‘Get me out of this.’ And they said, ‘We’re exec producers. We can’t get out of it.’ And so I went down to Sunu and I asked him. I said, ‘The only way I’m going to be able to do this is you have to keep the camera on me, keep a camera on the boys going through there, and I’m just going to talk to them honestly.’ The script was an outline. They finished writing another 40 something pages, but most of the stuff we did in there was literally just honest communication and me being Jim Ellis talking to them. I thought it worked. I thought it was a wonderful trip in improvisation.”