Kingsley Ben-Adir | Explain This
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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]