The Star-Studded Cast
The film stars Kingsley Ben-Adir as Malcolm X, Eli Goree as Cassius Clay, Aldis Hodge as Jim Brown, and Leslie Odom Jr. as Sam Cooke — need I say more? The actors are so committed to their roles, you almost feel as if you're watching an actual documentary and not a movie based on the stage play by Kemp Powers.
To prepare for his role as Brown, Hodge told Variety that he studied the NFL icon's interviews from the '60s to see how Brown spoke about "the power of Black economics" and to get an idea of how he became "so forward-thinking in that particular time." Goree did the same, and he even got a dialect coach, a boxing coach, and a personal trainer. "I totally immersed myself in trying to understand why he became who he was and where he was coming from and all the things that went in to him that allowed him to overcome everything that he overcame," Goree explained to Entertainment Tonight.
As for Ben-Adir, he immediately found himself attracted to the script when he first read it. "You read this script and you just go, 'This is Malcolm in a whole new light. This is an opportunity to investigate him on a particular night,'" he explained to Variety. "I didn't know as much as I do now at the time, but the more and more you dig into where Malcom was at psychologically, politically, [and] emotionally at that time, like facts, the more this script just bounces out."
On the other hand, Odom Jr. was initially hesitant to take on the role of Cooke. "They had to chase me a little bit, only because I didn't see what they saw in myself. I did not see Sam Cooke in me," he told Entertainment Weekly. However, that all changed once he received a call from both his manager and agent asking him to reconsider. "I gave the script a second look, and I saw beyond that. I saw beyond my fear, and I really saw what Kemp was doing in that script. He was having a very private conversation publicly . . . These are the kinds of conversations we've been having for a very long time, but it was the first time that I had seen it in a script, and certainly, the first time that I was being offered the opportunity to be that raw and to be that honest. So I was going to have to find my way there through my fear. I had to, because Sam was having the conversation. It wasn't me, but I saw the value in it, and I was willing to take the leap."