How Kingsley Ben-Adir Secretly Prepped for Bob Marley Biopic on Barbie Set! (Exc

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00:00 I heard you had a station set up while you were shooting Barbie, like a Bob station.

00:04 Explain the Bob area.

00:05 The Bob station. Who called it the Bob? Did I call it the Bob station?

00:08 It was a little, it felt like a station just because there was a little desk there and

00:13 put my drink there and my laptop there and my guitar was there.

00:15 Ziggy said, "We want you to do it," as I was starting Barbie.

00:19 And I just wanted to get going, you know, because I was like, I'm on this for three and a half months.

00:24 And I can't waste any time, you know, I have to start now.

00:27 You know, especially with the guitar and the language, you know, it's going to be a slow

00:31 process and it's going to be, you know, you've got to get the foundational steps in.

00:35 So, you know, on film sets there's a lot of time, you know, there's a lot of time, downtime.

00:40 So, you know, when they called cut, you know, I'm just kind of whatever we were doing, it

00:44 just made sense to go and listen to Bob and start trying to understand the language and

00:49 learn the guitar.

00:50 You can't separate the music and the message.

00:53 'Cause every day we pay the price.

00:55 It's not just the message.

00:57 Peace.

00:58 How has this whirlwind been so far?

01:01 How are you handling all the stuff and the obligations?

01:04 It's great, man.

01:05 Yeah?

01:06 It's so nice to be celebrating Bob and I didn't, I forgot, you know, talking about Bob is,

01:11 it's very easy for me.

01:12 You have to shut me up, you know.

01:13 I've been with him for two years.

01:15 I'm really enjoying it and I feel very, lucky is not the right word.

01:19 Privilege is not the right word.

01:20 It just feels like a really special moment.

01:23 And I think that's because the family are here, you know, the family are with us and

01:27 being with them at this moment, you know.

01:29 I thought yesterday, I was talking to someone and I was like, I started speaking about Ziggy

01:37 and you know, the family who were on set.

01:39 And I remembered so many moments where we were filming the shooting and the hospital

01:44 scenes and I was like, this happened to them.

01:47 This is their life, you know.

01:50 Ziggy nearly lost his parents that night and he, you know, and the trauma of that and it

01:55 made me feel emotional because I was like, yeah, this is about him and it's about Bob.

02:00 It's so, it's so amazing because Bob is so powerful and he's, the love that people have

02:08 for him all around the world is what I'm feeling now and that feels great.

02:15 Miss Rita was very emotional at the screening and you know, watching her life.

02:20 What advice did you get when you were on set because so many people that lived this were

02:24 there.

02:25 Do you remember a moment on set where someone gave you advice?

02:27 Neville was there.

02:28 I mean, every day, Neville was there every day and he helped me and coached me through

02:35 a lot of moments because he was in the room with Bob.

02:38 You know, when Bob was writing those songs, Neville was there doing the pen to paper stuff

02:42 for Bob so he didn't have to do it.

02:45 So that was incredible.

02:47 I'd say the thing, it wasn't one person in particular.

02:50 It was everyone in Jamaica who I spoke to in some way, some way, shape or form in their

02:56 own way told me, remember Bob Nassaf.

03:03 Remember that.

03:05 So trying to find the tough gong and the skip and the general at the same time as remembering

03:13 he was a beautiful human being.

03:15 He was gentle, he was humble, he was a poet, he was kind and he suffered and felt too.

03:21 Making sure we nuanced and found all of those colors.

03:25 He's not one or the other.

03:26 He was complex and he lived a rich life.

03:31 So the instruction from Jamaica and Jamaicans was always that and that stayed with me.

03:38 My life is not important to me.

03:44 My life is for people.

03:47 Do you really think this world will make it?

03:50 Yes.

03:51 When he's in the studio, it's tough gong.

03:53 You know, when he's behind the room, it's more general.

03:58 That's what made Bob probably one of the greatest parts you could ever hope to play because

04:02 it's such a rich complexity.

04:04 I sat with someone from the Prime Minister's office and literally she sat down in the seat

04:09 and she was like, "Let me focus in and watch this."

04:12 And you started talking and she said, "Hey, hey, he did it."

04:18 What was that like getting the language down to sound like Bob?

04:23 It was a journey.

04:24 It was a journey, man.

04:26 I remember it started on March the 12th.

04:28 I started listening to Bob and I had to have a very honest conversation with myself and

04:33 go, "You know, I understand a lot, but not everything."

04:40 And so I recruited all of the Jamaicans that I know here.

04:45 That was the first stage.

04:46 They'd help me understand and some things they couldn't know.

04:48 There were these few pieces that I really wanted to make sure I understood and I'd listened

04:53 hundreds of times and still couldn't work it out.

04:55 I was at Stephen Marley's house and I was like, "Guys, I've got to play you.

04:58 I've got to play you some of these bits because I need to know what your dad's saying.

05:01 I wanted to know everything Bob's saying.

05:03 I can't play him unless I understand everything he's saying."

05:05 And Stephen went, "You don't know what I'm saying."

05:10 Sometimes Bob just talks the way he talks and you don't know what he's saying.

05:12 So that made me feel relaxed.

05:14 Normally, you have one dialect coach on set.

05:17 We had a team of eight or nine.

05:19 We had a whole squad.

05:20 Ziggy and me said, "Authenticity and language and how Bob spoke is the most important thing.

05:29 We're not whitewashing anything."

05:30 And we all went, "Yeah, that's what we're doing.

05:32 Okay, cool.

05:33 So that's what we're doing."

05:34 So I always knew that the attempt, you know, I could only attempt to try and learn a language.

05:42 You know, it's a language and I enjoyed it thoroughly because it's an excuse to just

05:47 listen to Bob all the time.

05:49 What part of that language stuck with you?

05:51 What phrase do you still use or do you slip into it sometimes?

05:54 There's not one, you know.

05:56 I always let, you know, the way Bob would express himself in certain moments, it would

06:01 just come into my head sometimes, you know.

06:03 Me and my wife, we're always doing Bob talk and remembering how he said things.

06:08 But yeah, I spoke to a lot of people who knew Bob and spent time with him and loved him

06:14 in Jamaicans and they said, you know, "Bob, Bob, Bob really talked just like Bob.

06:18 Bob didn't sound like anyone, you know.

06:21 He sounded like him."

06:22 And he picked, Bob picked up words from Europe and he picked up words from America.

06:26 You know, he traveled, you know, and he's from the country.

06:28 And then he grew up in Trenchtown.

06:30 So his, the way Bob speaks is so specific.

06:33 It wasn't just about learning Patois, it was how he spoke in the '60s and '70s.

06:39 And it's so nuanced.

06:41 So we needed a lot of help.

06:42 Plan B was also a part of this along with the Marley family.

06:44 Did you ever get to meet Brad?

06:46 Did Brad ever come around?

06:47 Did he?

06:48 Did you ever meet Brad?

06:49 No, I worked.

06:50 My first job was with Brad Pitt.

06:51 No.

06:52 But he won't remember me.

06:54 It was a couple of lines in World War Z and he was down on the ship and I was over at

06:59 the desk.

07:00 And I was supposed to be there and then they cut my lines.

07:04 They cut my lines.

07:05 I was saying something to him and they cut it and they put me over in a corner and took

07:08 my lines away.

07:09 But yeah, that was years ago.

07:10 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

07:11 I've never met him.

07:12 No, I've never met him.

07:13 I've never met him.

07:18 No, I've never met him.

07:27 When you write that?

07:28 All my life.

07:29 You called LaShonna your rock.

07:32 What was so special about your chemistry with her?

07:35 We had seven months, six, seven months before we started shooting where we got to spend

07:41 time together and get to know each other and really we were talking about Bob and Rita

07:46 and a lot of talks for like how do we find this feeling of unconditional love when you've

07:55 known someone for that long, when you share that much history.

07:59 How can we do it without words?

08:01 And I think, yeah, LaShonna, she just looked out for me and she was looking out for the

08:05 project from the beginning.

08:06 It's our culture.

08:07 It's where she's from and she wanted to represent it properly.

08:10 So she needed to check on me first and go like, "Who are you?

08:15 You good?

08:16 Are you all right?"

08:17 I remember I felt like I was auditioning for her.

08:19 Yeah, because I'm like, I'm coming in to do this.

08:23 I needed her to understand that I was on job and I was ready to go and it's 24 hours a

08:30 day, seven days a week, whatever we need to do to get this right.

08:33 And so we kind of joined forces in that way.

08:36 And so by the time we got to shooting, we'd known each other for a while.

08:39 Because it's such a unique relationship.

08:42 Bob and Rita's relationship was unique and you had to find and define what it was in

08:47 this movie, which wasn't easy.

08:50 Did you two get to that place?

08:51 We got to that place because we had the family and friends and everyone there.

08:56 We had a lot of really honest and difficult conversations at times and a lot of beautiful

09:04 moments, a lot of really tough moments.

09:05 A lot of really, again, it's the respect and understanding that this is Ziggy and his family,

09:13 this is their life, this happened.

09:16 And so it needed a respect and a dignity, but a truth as well.

09:21 It takes a lot of discussion and thought.

09:24 But yeah, everyone, yeah, LaShonna and I had a lot of help again, saying we're surrounded

09:33 by everyone.

09:34 We're surrounded by everyone who knows everything.

09:37 Everybody, I felt for you.

09:38 The night I came on the set, I was like, "Woo, everybody's here."

09:41 I was like, "Yeah."

09:42 By then, I was like, it's just a normal day, just having the family behind the monitor

09:46 and stuff.

09:48 That turned out to be, even though it's a bit nervy on the first day, it turned out

09:54 that actually that was my real rock in a way.

09:57 I was only able to, just knowing that they're there watching and if they don't feel certain

10:03 it's right or if they want something changed, they're going to come tell you.

10:06 Jamaicans, they're going to come tell you straight.

10:08 So I loved that.

10:10 I loved that honesty.

10:11 I loved that.

10:13 That makes me feel relaxed.

10:14 For someone to come up and say, never come up to me sometimes and say, "No, that's

10:18 not it.

10:19 I think it's..."

10:20 And Ziggy would say, "No, no, it is that."

10:22 And then I see them going off trying to figure it out.

10:24 And that made me feel easy.

10:26 On another job, you'd be like, "My character, but out.

10:30 I've got this."

10:32 But with this, it was about, I found Bob through them.

10:36 I found Bob's voice through them.

10:37 It really was a community thing.

10:40 It was a community spirit.

10:42 [Music]

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