Kingsley Ben-Adir says Bob Marley was impossible to embody in “One Love” biopic: 'No one can play him'

"This was a process of trying to find a little bit of Bob’s spirit, because he’s too big."

Kingsley Ben-Adir is no stranger to portraying legendary men — but nothing could prepare him for the challenge of becoming Bob Marley.

The British actor broke through in 2020 as Malcolm X in One Night in Miami, and that same year played Barack Obama in the Showtime miniseries The Comey Rule. But even putting aside his ever-important role as Basketball Ken in Barbie, only a biopic about the reggae icon presented Ben-Adir with a truly impossible task.

During a recent Q&A at a special screening of Bob Marley: One Love, held at Dotdash Meredith Headquarters in NYC in celebration of Life magazine's Bob Marley issue, Ben-Adir shook his head when asked if there ever came a moment where he knew he had nailed down his portrayal of Marley.

“Never,” he admitted. “I felt like this was a process of trying to find a little bit of Bob’s spirit because he’s too big. You can’t play him. No one can play him. Bob’s legit one of those characters where you go, ‘Who can play Bob?’”

Opening up about his approach to the challenging role, he said, “I feel like I just turned the volume down on the icon thing. With Malcolm, it was the same thing. It’s like, you can’t play that. You just know it.”

He continued, “That Bob’s an icon, and that he meant so much to so many people, and that his music carries a heavy vibration, and that he was a genius, and no one’s achieved anything close to what Bob did in that 10-year period that’s all kind of like… I can’t play that."

Instead of focusing on Marley as a musical megastar, Ben-Adir looked to the person beneath the legacy and worked to "find out what made Bob human, and what he was going through at that time."

Lashana Lynch, who stars as Marley’s wife Rita, admitted that Ben-Adir was not alone in his struggle to portray a real-life person, but says their partnership was particularly helpful.

“One thing that made me feel at my core most is being with Kingsley,” she said. “When we got on set it felt like we just automatically had that… I want to say ‘bond,’ but it’s more that it was a vibrational, energetic thing where we had an understanding of what our personal mission was in telling the mission of the Marleys.”

Turning to Ben-Adir with a smile, she added, “And there were genuine moments where I felt like I was your wife. I was like, ‘Calm down. Drink some water. Chill out.’ And I love that he didn’t take that disrespectfully. He was like ‘Nah, yeah, I need to calm down. I need to drink some water. I may need to get some sleep.’ We had an understanding and we knew that at our core we had something.”

Directed by King Richard’s Reinaldo Marcus Green, One Love offers an intimate portrait of Marley’s life and fame. Unlike most biopics, which span a lifetime, the film traces Marley’s career across a specific stretch of time — from the assassination attempt against him in December 1976 to his historic performance at the One Love Peace Concert in Kingston, Jamaica, in April 1978.

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