When it comes to the Kingsley Ben-Adir-led biopic, Bob Marley: One Love, the only opinion Ziggy Marley thinks matters is the one of his late father, Bob Marley.
The musician gave ET’s Kevin Frazier a personal tour of the Bob Marley Museum in Kingston, Jamaica, and opened up about the upcoming film his family produced with the aim of celebrating the life and music of “an icon who inspired generations through his message of love and unity.” One Love highlights Bob’s powerful story of overcoming adversity and the journey behind his revolutionary music.
“For me, in this film, I think one thing that it made me think about is what my father and my mother went through that we didn’t see. Like the emotional [turmoil], and that’s what the film is really. It’s really exploring stuff,” Ziggy explains. “The Bob Marley that’s in the TV and that you seen in the videos — that’s not the Bob Marley we’re really exploring. We’re exploring the Bob Marley you don’t know. It made me think about, as a human being, what emotional things he must have been going through after [the assassination attempt].”
Ziggy adds that the film’s desire for authenticity led to his musings on his father’s “vulnerability,” which is usually forgotten beneath the glare of spotlights and his rock star persona.
“A lot of people see my father as like a rock star, you know, tough. But he have feelings, right? He have emotions,” Ziggy notes. “He suffered, [and] at the end of all of this, he came to that heavy decision that his life was not for him, you know?”
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With that in mind, the reggae musician believes his father “would have liked” the film helmed by Reinaldo Marcus Green. “We’re representing the right way, and again, the important thing… I told the cast and the crew this is not a vanity project. We’re not doing this for vanity, we’re doing it with a purpose. And so I think [with] that as a foundation, he would be happy that at least if it’s one thing we get right it’s that the intention is right and the message right.”
“The studio agreed, I agreed [and] the directors agreed, if we’re not doing this right, we’re not gonna do it,” he adds vehemently. “If we’re in the middle of this and it’s not working, scrap it. ‘Cause we’re not gonna put something out about Bob that’s not right, you know? So we think it’s right.”
Produced in partnership with the Marley family, One Love stars Ben-Adir as the reggae superstar alongside Lashana Lynch, James Norton, Tosin Cole, Anthony Welsh, Michael Gandolfini, Umi Myers and Nadine Marshall.
Ziggy serves as a producer on the film alongside Rita Marley, Cedella Marley, Robert Teitel, Brad Pitt, Jeremy Kleiner and Dede Gardner, and executive producers Richard Hewitt, Orly Marley and Matt Solodky.
Ben-Adir previously told ET that portraying Bob took an enormous level of dedication and hard work. So much hard work, in fact, the 37-year-old actor was working on getting into character while filming his scenes for Barbie.
Looking back at the early days of developing and preparing for One Love, Ben-Adir explained that he and the producers agreed that “authenticity and language and how Bob spoke [were] the most important thing, and [we’re] not white-washing anything.”
This meant that Ben-Adir took it upon himself to get Bob’s voice and cadence down perfectly — as well as his musicality. “I enjoyed it thoroughly,” Ben-Adir shared of listening to Bob’s music and audio of him speaking. “Because it was an excuse to listen to Bob all the time.”
Paramount
Ben-Adir admitted he was even listening to Bob while shooting Barbie, in which he played one of the many Kens, alongside Ryan Gosling, Simu Liu, Ncuti Gatwa and Scott Evans.
“I just wanted to get going, because I was like, ‘I’m on this for three and a half months and I can’t waste any time. I have to start now!'” Ben-Adir explained. “Especially with the guitar and the language, you know? That’s gonna be a slow process and you’ve got to get the foundational steps in.”
“On film sets, there’s a lot of downtime… it just made sense to go and listen to Bob and try to understand the language and learn the guitar,” he added.
Despite practicing and working to find Bob’s voice between shooting scenes for Barbie, Ben-Adir admitted that he didn’t really share his journey with anyone, explaining, “My process was private for as long as possible — until I needed help.”
Ziggy tells ET he has no regrets in casting Ben-Adir for the role, sharing that he and production did “a whole search” to find the right actor.
“Kingsley wasn’t the first choice. We tried to find somebody from Jamaica [who] speaks the language and knows the thing,” Ziggy admits. “But I remember when I saw Kingsley’s audition, he was the one where I could be like, I’m watching this guy [and] the other guys were like, eh. But this guy, I didn’t go eh. I was like, ‘OK, I see something.’ And so that’s when we knew it was him, it was easy.”
He adds that he and his family didn’t share concerns that Ben-Adir being British would ruin his portrayal. “We were looking for someone that could have the magnetism to hold the attention, so he was the one who had my attention and I’m Bob’s son. He even got my attention, my sister’s attention [and] my brother’s attention. We can work with so everything else.”
In the end, Ziggy emphasizes that the film isn’t solely about his father’s story, but also about the message he wanted to send the world. “It’s not about immortalizing him, even though that might be a by-product,” he explains. “The priority is immortalizing the message so that the message can reach new generations and continue to flourish through time. So I think this movie is that; that is really one of the things I’m most happy about it. It’s immortalizing that message of one love. It’s putting it into a different space so that it can extend its reach and life.”
Bob Marley: One Love hits theaters on Feb. 14.
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