‘This is an actor’s piece, dialogue is the star’
One Night In Miami imagines the night spent together by Malcolm X, Cassius Clay, Sam Cooke and Jim Brown. Laura Harding meets the director and cast
ON February 25 1964, the boxer then known as Cassius Clay surprisingly defeated Sonny Liston to win the championship title. He celebrated his win with his friends, the activist Malcolm X, singer Sam Cooke and NFL star Jim Brown, in Malcolm’s small, unglamorous motel room.
One Night In Miami, the directorial debut of the Oscar-winning actress Regina King, takes us into the room with these young, famous men, imagining the conversations they had, the music they played and the arguments they fought as they debated their roles in the civil rights movement and their approach to black leadership and freedom.
The film was shot last year, some of it before the world shut down due to coronavirus, but the rest later on, after Black Lives Matter protests had been held all over the world, following the death of unarmed black man George Floyd.
“The things that we were talking about in this film are things that have been prescient for black people far before 1964,” says King over Zoom.
“And I think it was one of those things, a nod from the universe, because there were really powder keg moments that were happening in ’64, ’63, ’62, and then we come full circle, to this powder keg moment in 2020.
“So I think as a team we felt like this story was always going to be relevant, but now there are even more people whose minds are fertile and ready and more open to receive the message.”
The film is based on a play by Kemp Powers, who recently co-directed the Pixar movie Soul, and King describes his script as a “punch” to her.
“This is an actor’s piece, it truly is, and the dialogue is the star, and to be an actor that relishes in the moment of receiving content where the dialogue just makes you swoon upon reading, that was attractive to me.
“I thought ‘Oh my god I would love to play any of these men’.”
British actor Kingsley BenAdir, who plays Malcolm X, also felt nervous to take on his part, but was determined that King would never know.
“I wanted to present her with my own version of fearlessness,” he says, “because I didn’t want her to feel at any stage that the person she was employing to play Malcolm X was cautious or unsure, even though the Malcolm in this film required such a huge vulnerability.
“Even if I was frightened, I was fronting to Regina that I was super-confident. I don’t know how much of that was a defence mechanism, trying to block out how significant the pressure was.
“I think one of the most interesting things about this project was understanding in the research that the changes that were going on for Malcolm at this time were huge, there was a real sense that his life was in danger and his religious and political thinking was about to undergo a huge shift.”
Indeed the film is set shortly before Malcolm X split publicly with Nation Of Islam leader Elijah
Muhammad. A year later he would be dead.
Also on the brink of a precipice was Clay, who would soon announce his commitment to his new faith and take a new name, Muhammad Ali, and Riverdale actor Eli Goree transformed his body for the part.
But it was the protests of last summer that were more transformative for him than any physical training.
“As a black man in this world, this has always been a high intensity interaction with society, it’s been heightened stakes my whole life, but definitely things had a huge seismic shift after Covid (when production shut down), in terms of the public outcry and it made a big difference for me in my performance.
“I had a scene with Leslie where I’m talking about what black people really want is to be free and to make our own choices and to be treated as human beings.
“And that scene was very difficult for me in the audition process, I remember really searching to connect to the words, to make them real.
“It’s sometimes hard to express that as an artist in a way that isn’t cliche, and just to say it and to have it be what it is and be real and connect, without trying to make anything up.”
Straight Outta Compton actor Aldis Hodge had wrapped filming by the time the protests happened but is hopeful they have changed how the film will be viewed.
“I didn’t count on how the rest of the world would engage with the importance of the subject matter in the months that were to come,” he says.
“So when we shot it I knew how important it was but after all the things happened and when we finally debuted, I said ‘Wow this is so much more powerful now because we have the eyes and the ears of the world upon us’, and when I say that, I mean upon us black people and understanding what our struggle actually is.
“So I feel like this film is just a powerful tool to really help people understand and realise the necessity to deal with this, when it comes to fairness and equity for black people.”