Now, expanding upon the idea of authenticity, there’s always a complaint about authenticity in films when casting biopics or period pieces. Bob and his family are Jamaican. They lived and breathe the island. Reinaldo, how did you go about ensuring that the casting represented that and was true to their lives?

RMG: We were looking for the best actor for the role, and we found that in Kingsley Ben-Adir from his very first audition tape–and we went through several hundred. It was a lot. We scoured every island in the Caribbean that we could. And when I saw that tape, I know Ziggy and I, we looked at each other and were like, ‘The foundation is there.’ He just had he had the ability to tap into the essence. And we knew from there it was just the foundation. From there, the real work began. He had to lose weight. The physical transformation of learning to play guitar, learning to sing, learning dialect – all of that had to take place. It was like a boot camp of how he was going to be able to do that. And he did that times ten. He really went deep into the research. He provided an incredible performance as an actor and showed that he is just a real talent, and somebody that was militant in his commitment to honoring that. And that’s what we were looking for– somebody that was committed to going on that journey, you have to be a little like me. You have to be a little crazy to take this on. You can’t fake it. You’ve got to be bold to be able to do that. And Kingsley is bold. He was bold in his performance. He was bold in his choices. I can’t say enough about his commitment to that, to the project. And I think we found the right person for the job.

And to that end, we found Lashana Lynch, who is Jamaican and an incredible performer herself, and just a remarkable actress, was somebody that was willing and able. And the chemistry that those two have together on screen is electric. I can’t wait for the world to see them together for sure.

ZM: I want to add to that by saying that the other actors, the other cast members that we surrounded Kingsley and Lashana with are all Jamaican. And for Kinglsey, he was able to live around a lot of Jamaicans and absorb what it is to be a Jamaican. The rest of the cast and the band members are Jamaicans.

RMG: And we did that on purpose. It was important to surround our leads with authenticity. Not only by having Jamaicans in the roles, but we had real-life offspring of some of the people that are represented in the film. And so so we have real casting members who are real family members of the key people in the film. Bunny Wailer’s son is in the movie. It’s pretty remarkable to have that because you can’t make that up. Those are things that you can’t get in your traditional casting process.

We had tremendous casting directors on this film. from local Jamaican casting to Abby Kaufman in New York who were just really, really tremendous – to the UK casting where we filmed scenes in England. There was no stone left unturned and we made it our mission to try to find the very best that we could to support Kingsley and Lashana in this role.

ZM: I’m Bob’s offspring, and I’m working on the film, but we also some of them on off-screen in the movie. The connection that’s in this film is crazy. We had some of the guys who played some of the extras who were playing the shots on the stage. They were the actual guys that were on that stage with my dad. The One Love live concert, they came in and killed it. It is really connected. It’s a spiritual connection there.

Ziggy Marley

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