The world needs more wholesomeness, and Tom Hanks is here to give it to us.
Hanks portrays the iconic Mister Rogers in the upcoming film, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood . He recently opened up about how he interpreted the lessons Mister Rogers taught all of us, and it’s just…so precious.
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Unbelievably, Tom Hanks wasn’t always going to be Fred Rogers.
He passed on the script when it was first offered to him. It was only after meeting the film’s director, Marielle Heller, that he changed his mind.
“I didn’t pass on you,” he told Heller. “I just passed on a thing.”
To put it simply, the movie changed them all.
They did unusual things while making it, including cutting days short so that everyone on set could be with their kids at night.
A normal day on a film set can go over 16 hours, so you can imagine how revolutionary that was.
They knew something special was happening.
“At one point early on, Tom said to me, ‘I get the feeling none of us are going to be the same after making this movie,” Heller said.
Hanks’ words would prove to be prophetic.
Mister Rogers wasn’t a part of his life.
He and his wife, Rita Wilson hadn’t raised their four children on Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood , so his first time watching the show was when he was preparing to play the man himself.
The show taught him a lot of lessons.
“I almost feel silly talking about it,” he told The Associated Press . “This movie has actually made me think a lot about myself as a man and a father.”
It changed how they argued.
He told Entertainment Tonight :
“When my wife and I are going at it on those rare occasions, when she is letting me know that I’m not really listening to her and I’m trying to establish what the ground rules are…”
They learned to look outside of their arguments.
“…when we’re going at it like that, one of us will say, ‘Well, you know what? You know what, honey? It’s good to talk. It’s good to say the things we feel.
“And I learned that from Mister Rogers”
He quite literally taught himself to listen better.
“There is a thing that I do: W-A-I-T. It stands for ‘Why Am I Talking?” He told The Associated Press . “I wrote that down in a notebook that I keep to remind myself that listening, for me anyway, is a disciplinary art.”
Being a celebrity ruined how he listened to others.
“I have to force myself to listen because I love the sound of my own voice and because I’m a movie star I’ve been infantilized by everybody I come across who says I’m just wonderful.”
He recounted how he felt people spoke to him.
“‘Look at you! You can stand up so good and you can eat with a fork! What a special, special, special movie star you are!'”
He made an effort to not let basic praise go to his head.
Those skills help in his marriage.
He told Entertainment Tonight that he and Rita (who have been married for 30 years) have a shared hobby — cooking!
“We make soup together,” he revealed, detailing how they spend their time off together.
They sure do make a lot of soup.
“Like, if we have a day off and there’s nothing going on…it takes about two to three hours.”
Two to three hours for soup? What the heck kind of soup are they making?
Anyway, I truly feel Tom Hanks playing Mister Rogers is fate.
I mean, one of the nicest men in Hollywood playing another of the nicest men in Hollywood? What else could you possibly ask for?
The universe actually decide to provide one more thing.
He and Mister Rogers are related.
Ancestry.com discovered that Tom Hanks and Fred Rogers are sixth cousins.
See what I mean? The universe works in funny and mysterious ways, my friends. This is the wholesomeness we need in this world.
Tom and Rita were shocked.
“No. Impossible. No, you’re pulling our leg,” Rita said to Access Hollywood upon learning the news.
“It all just comes together, you see,” Hanks said.
Sounds like something Mister Rogers might say.
