‘Nuremberg’ star Rami Malek felt ‘claustrophobia’ starring in intense prison scenes with Russell Crowe

Trials & some tribulation

Oscar winners Russell Crowe and Rami Malek star in “Nuremberg,” a Sony Pictures Classic thriller about the trials that prosecuted the Nazi high command’s World War II war crimes.

Malek plays Douglas Kelley, the psychiatrist analyzing the mentality of Hitler’s second-in-command, Hermann Göring. Nuremberg was November 1945. Malek was born in 1981. My bracelets are older.

“What’s that mean,” he asked me. “Like I’m not supposed to understand history?

“The location is exact. We didn’t use personal perspectives. The area was devastating. Exact replica. No beltway seats, no cardboard walls, no toilet. Same style elevator, lights. Scary. It was exactly what happened — trying to keep them alive so we could kill them.

“Kelley had an ambitious side. He was geared toward proving his worth. Confident in his strengths and capabilities, he wanted appreciation for them. He was an obsessive to match Hermann Göring’s narcissist.

“I watched the real existing footage five times. So emotional I had to leave when I saw the first actual newsreel.

“Listen, it was me who brought this movie to fruition. I found the book. I read it. I chased down the author. I asked everyone to take a meeting. I could not let it go — it was emotional for me.”

The real Kelley recognized the opportunity presented in his assignment to analyze the Nazi prisoners; perhaps even before he recognized the task itself.

“It’s a situation he knows is historic,” said Malek. “Needing to rise to the occasion, he’s also infatuated with the charisma and charm of Hermann Göring. He can’t help trying to befriend him.

“It will be tricky to grapple with how audiences feel about Göring because of how charismatic Russell Crowe is. Shooting in the cell with him, it felt like there was no escape. We had to face each other and deliver this sense of claustrophobia hanging over us.”

The screening was in the ultra polished Museum of Modern Art followed by a Japanese dinner presided over by the Cinema Society’s Andrew Saffir.

A lil’ bit of everything

Be aware, people are now involved in a stage play about Rodney Dangerfield . . . Also, if you have a spare million, now in the works are 22 Aman residences in Asia where very real monkeys flap around very private pools. Bananas are extra . . . Also, for about $15,000 there’s the original sketchbook from “The Wiz.” It’s being auctioned in the “Behind the Curtain: The Tony Walton Collection.” What that is, I don’t know. Wait. There’s more. Every musician nails some movie somehow. Springsteen, Elton, McCartney — soon comes a harmonica player. McCartney’s “Man on the Run” will be on Amazon in February. Old and new footage. He says things like “The Beatles have broken up and what do I do now? How could I ever end up doing anything as good? I had to look and find myself. A puzzle I had to unravel.”

Some odds & ends

Already types are angling for Rep. Jerry Nadler’s old seat — a big, large seat. Two miniature ponies were up for grabs at a Sojourn Social — whatever that is — and angling for Nadler’s old, large, very commodious seat . . . Also, just voted were the USA’s best museums: Old Barracks in New Jersey, Mystic Seaport in Connecticut, and — of course — NYC’s the Met.

From the desk of Cindy Wadsworth Longfellow: “Babies haven’t any hair/Old men’s heads are just as bare/Between the cradle and the grave/Lies a haircut and a knave.

Ugh, only in this new mayor’s new New York, kids, only in this mayor’s new New York.