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How Kingsley Ben-Adir Secretly Prepped for Bob Marley Biopic on Barbie Set! (Exc
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2/5/2024
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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