Kingsley Ben-Adir | Explain This

Esquire

2/9/2024

Transcript

00:00 Favorite line or saying that your Ken had?

00:03 Anyone who wants to beach him off has to beach.

00:07 - Anyone who wants to beach him off

00:09 has to beach me off first.

00:10 - Anyone who wants to beach him off

00:11 has to beach me off too.

00:13 Hi, my name's Kingsley Ben-Edir

00:17 and I'm here with Esquire today to explain some things.

00:21 Which Ken made the other Kens laugh the most?

00:29 It's gotta be Ryan's Ken.

00:31 We got to watch him play all those scenes out,

00:33 you know, like it was so often he was center of the scene.

00:36 There was one when he's on the car,

00:40 when he was on the Jeep and he does the watches.

00:44 I remember we did that all day

00:45 and every time it was just like, what is going on?

00:48 He screams something at Margot when he's on the Jeep

00:51 and I just remember holding all of his,

00:53 holding all of his junk and just having to like,

00:56 "Pen, Ryan, just be like this."

00:57 It's ridiculous.

00:59 Did playing a musical icon way have a thing on you?

01:02 Yeah.

01:05 'Cause I don't sing or play the guitar,

01:08 so I figured I should probably start learning immediately.

01:12 It was more the patois and the representation

01:14 of the culture authentically that was,

01:17 that was the pressure that I felt from the beginning.

01:20 We had to prepare Bob and the way Bob was written

01:22 in a way like, almost as if it was French or Spanish

01:27 that we treated it like it was a different language

01:30 and that was the only way to really look after the culture

01:33 and make sure the culture was represented properly.

01:35 So every line in the film that I spoke

01:38 was some version of something that Bob had said

01:42 or we'd heard.

01:44 That was the bulk of the work, was the patois.

01:46 Were you apprehensive about the role at first?

01:50 No, I thought it was a ridiculous idea

01:52 because of, I thought it was crazy

01:54 because we don't really have anything in common

01:59 like physically or, you know, we're both mixed

02:02 but I originally know and then I found out

02:05 that the family were involved

02:07 and I watched some of Ray's work

02:09 and we spoke and we spoke and I kind of started trusting it

02:13 a little bit more that we could make something work.

02:15 Did you have to work on your soccer skills to play Bob

02:18 or were they already strong?

02:20 Well, Bob's a pretty good footballer.

02:23 I definitely don't play football as well as him

02:25 so like really early on in the process

02:27 I was asking for football coaching.

02:30 So they got someone from Arsenal or Chelsea

02:33 and I just had a football in my house

02:34 and I do kickups and, you know,

02:37 but Bob's definitely a better footballer than me, for sure.

02:40 Which Bob Marley song is the most meaningful to you?

02:43 So J'ai C'est

02:44 'cause it was the last concert performance in Jamaica

02:49 in front of a live audience that I performed

02:52 and it was the last song that I was studying.

02:56 Then there's something about the kind of mantra

02:59 and of repeating the lyrics of that song

03:01 that it's just stunning, the poetry and the clarity

03:05 and it's a beautiful song.

03:10 I don't know why, I just say it's really,

03:12 that song touches me.

03:13 What did your dance prep work look like?

03:16 In Barbie we had dance rehearsals with everyone

03:21 and choreographers who told us the moves

03:24 and we'd practice them.

03:26 And Bob, it was the same, I guess it was

03:28 just hours and hours of like going over stuff.

03:32 So it took a lot of work to try and get underneath that.

03:35 Best character trait for Mike Ken?

03:39 I think it was about holding things.

03:43 I just felt that he should always be holding things

03:48 and if possible, holding things for Ryan.

03:51 And there's something about that energetically

03:53 that I just thought was interesting

03:55 and suited the dynamic.

03:57 And just trying to stand behind Ryan's shoulder

04:01 as much as possible.

04:02 I just thought maybe there's a closeness there.

04:08 Favorite line or saying that your Ken had?

04:11 My favorite line was,

04:13 "Anyone who wants to beach him off has to beach."

04:19 Anyone who wants to beach him off has to beach me off too.

04:21 Anyone who wants to beach him off

04:22 has to beach me off first.

04:24 I think it was that one.

04:25 I was just like, "What is this?"

04:27 And then there was, we were only fighting

04:30 because we didn't know who we were,

04:32 I think he said it like that.

04:34 We tried it in loads of different styles,

04:38 loads of different accents.

04:39 We did like a Shakespearean one,

04:40 a Laurence Olivier one, we did like an American one,

04:43 we did like a gangster one,

04:44 we did like a London Shrew one, you know?

04:47 And then I think we landed on the like serious American.

04:50 How did you feel when you found out the fate

04:52 of your Peaky Blinders character?

04:54 I was [beep] pissed.

04:55 I was so annoyed.

04:56 I'd been waiting for months and months and months

04:58 for the scripts.

05:00 And then I got a call before they came

05:02 from a producer saying that they were gonna kill him.

05:06 And I was like, "Great, thank you.

05:08 "Thank you very much."

05:10 But I was fine.

05:11 You know, I had a great time on that final season

05:14 because there was a couple of scenes with Killian

05:16 and a few scenes with some of the leading cast,

05:19 so that was cool.

05:20 You have amazing chemistry with Zoe Kravitz

05:23 and High Fidelity.

05:24 What kind of music did you both listen to on set?

05:28 I don't know if we, I don't have any memories of us

05:31 listening to music on set.

05:33 But there was a High Fidelity playlist

05:35 that I remember Zoe was making at the time

05:37 and there's loads of music on that playlist

05:40 and it's a whole range of songs from Fleetwood Mac

05:43 to rock bands that I'd never heard of

05:46 and hip hop.

05:47 Yeah, so I've played that playlist since we wrapped.

05:52 You played Kareem in the second season of The OA.

05:54 What would we have discovered about Kareem?

05:57 I don't really know because the final scene,

06:02 I only got it the night before.

06:04 So I only found out what that end was

06:05 as we were making it.

06:06 You know, it was all pretty secretive

06:08 and they kept it close to them.

06:10 Have you seen the fan videos doing the movements

06:12 in "Blessed"?

06:13 I never learned it, I didn't need to.

06:15 But I remember watching the first season

06:16 before I got the job and I remember when they

06:19 all break into that dance at the end,

06:21 I was like, how is this moving?

06:25 Like it was so powerful.

06:27 I think when the show got canceled,

06:29 a bunch of people went out down to Netflix

06:31 to do the dance outside.

06:33 And I was like, wow, people are crazy.

06:35 Explain your action choice in "Secret Invasion."

06:39 It was a process of elimination, really.

06:40 I was like, I don't wanna make him,

06:42 no, actually one of the first scripts I read,

06:44 it said that he was from London.

06:46 And I just had this feeling that I didn't wanna

06:48 talk like me in that part.

06:51 I was thinking kind of about communities in the UK

06:55 where there are like, you know, mixed race communities

06:59 and looking at Birmingham and I was like,

07:01 Peaky Blinders have done that.

07:03 I think I was thinking about some sort of Scottish accent

07:07 and Marvel said no.

07:08 Newcastle, I was like, it's gonna be.

07:12 So I was just going through the regions

07:14 and then I found Butte Town in Cardiff

07:17 and I started looking into the history

07:18 of that part of Wales.

07:21 And I was like, oh, wow, there's a huge,

07:24 like a black history there that was so interesting

07:27 and a mixed race community there

07:28 that goes back a long, long, long, long time.

07:30 So yeah, just went with that.

07:33 Yeah, just made it more interesting for me,

07:35 basically, to do an accent.

07:36 Did playing Malcolm X change you as an actor?

07:40 And what did you learn from Regina King

07:42 as both a director and an actor?

07:44 Yes, definitely.

07:46 One Night in Miami was a job that when I finished that movie

07:51 I definitely felt like I'd learned so much

07:55 and it's more just the experience of going on a journey

08:00 of playing a part like Malcolm

08:03 and having the support of someone as talented as Regina.

08:08 It was just an experience.

08:11 It was such a creative experience.

08:13 It was so collaborative and I guess Regina,

08:17 she allowed us to play and figure the scenes out

08:22 as we were going, so it really suited me

08:24 in terms of style of work.

08:25 And so it was just a really,

08:28 it was just an all-round incredible experience

08:31 and that's what it's about, innit?

08:33 Do you know what I mean?

08:34 You wanna have those, it was like that kind of experience

08:38 is what I want more of moving forwards.

08:41 And that's a wrap.

08:42 Thank you.

08:43 [BLANK_AUDIO]

Kingsley Ben-Adir | Explain This

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