Page 520 - Guildhall Coverage Book 2020-21

AMC’s anthology series
“Soulmates” and as former
President Barack Obama on
Showtime’s take on recent
history, “The Comey Rule.” But
it’s his thought-provoking and
surprisingly vulnerable turn as
Malcolm X in Regina King’s
critically acclaimed “One Night
in Miami,” hitting theaters
Christmas Day and streaming on
Amazon Prime Video starting
Jan. 15, that has everyone
talking.

The film has already been
heralded as one of the year’s
very best. Following its world
premiere at the Venice
International Film Festival,
“Miami” screened at TIFF
(where it was runner-up for the
People’s Choice Award), the BFI
London Film Festival (which
Ben-Adir cites as a “personal
triumph,” considering “it was
around the corner from [his]
house”), and others on this
year’s unorthodox awards
circuit. Based on the 2013 play
by Kemp Powers, who also
wrote the screenplay, the film fictionalizes a real night in the lives of Black icons
Malcolm X, Sam Cooke (Leslie Odom Jr.), Jim Brown (Aldis Hodge), and Cassius Clay
(Eli Goree) as friends and contemporaries hanging out in a Florida hotel room,
unpacking their lives and roles in the civil rights movement of the 1960s.

Ben-Adir’s voice catches the wind when he reflects on his experience making the film.
Though he originally was asked to audition for the role of Clay, “the debate between
Malcolm and Sam was really the conversation that fucking jumped off the page,” he
remembers. “For me, it was the really interesting part of the movie, and I didn’t feel that
I connected with Cass in the same way.” He informed the production team that the
proposed role wasn’t for him, but he also made it clear: “ ‘If for any reason, the part of
Malcolm becomes available, please give me a call, and I’ll do whatever I can to get in
that room and show Regina some stuff.’ Four and a half months later, I got a call saying
that Malcolm had become available and they wanted to see something within 24 hours.”

But the London-born performer, out of respect to King and the material, wanted more
time. Massaging a prior relationship he had with one of the film’s producers, he
negotiated for a full weekend to prepare. With that go-ahead, he locked himself in his
room to watch archival videos of Malcolm X on a loop “and just did a deep dive into the
dialect and sent the tape over to Regina.”