MOVIE NEWS – Two years ago, when the film about Bob Marley began to take shape, not only was there no final title, but neither was the main character. Paramount Pictures searched for the right actor for a year, before the choice fell on the British Kingsley Ben-Adir. By then, the film had a title: Bob Marley One Love.

Many factors had to come together for the crew to declare: Ben-Adir is the actor who can play the legendary figure of reggae. It wasn’t enough that he looked like the musician, he also had to be ready to learn to sing, play the guitar and authentically master the Jamaican dialect, the patois, which is spoken by only a few million people as their mother tongue, but known worldwide at least by ear through reggae.

It was also strongly in favor of Ben-Adir that he had already played historical figures with great success: Malcolm X, the leader of the radical Black Panther movement in the

em>One Night in Miami and Barack Obama in the series The Comey Rule. The filmmakers hoped that Ben-Adir, by impersonating famous people, would get used to the enormous pressure that is natural in such cases.

“The audience sits in the auditorium with high expectations for such a biographical film, as they already have some knowledge of the famous person they see on the screen – explained Ziggy Marley, the musician’s eldest son , one of the film’s producers, in an interview with Entertainment Weekly. – That is why we had to find an actor who presents his own vision in the skin of a famous person, but does not necessarily destroy the image that has been formed of him. That is, you have to be able to dance on a razor’s edge, and Kingsley has it in his blood.”

Ben-Adir‘s talent, experience and physical appearance spoke for him, but there was one more factor that put a lot of pressure on him. “There’s an inner voice that always guides me to the truth,” Ziggy told Variety. “You have to pay attention to what that voice is saying, and now it’s saying that Kingsley is our man.”

The Marley family regards the film about the musician as a matter of their heart, as the cast list reveals. In addition to Ziggy, his sister, Cedalla Marley, and their mother, Rita, are also producers of the film, and Ziggy’s wife, Orly, is the executive producer.

(Bob Marley One Love – domestic premiere: February 22, 2024)

Source: UIP