Kingsley Ben-Adir says watching ‘Stop Making Sense’ prepared him for Bob Marley role
"I found the dancing and the guitar and the singing so much fun once you get over the embarrassment of looking like an idiot."
Kingsley Ben-Adir has explained how watching Talking Heads‘ legendary concert film Stop Making Sense inspired him when playing Bob Marley in a new biopic.
Ben-Adir plays the starring role in Bob Marley: One Love and spoke to Rolling Stone UK for a new digital cover feature about getting into the right frame of mind to portray the reggae legend.
“I was trying to understand Bob’s dancing because you can’t choreograph him; he was so kind of wild and free and instinctive,” he said. “But when I used technology to isolate instruments, you could realise that Bob was following the conducting of the drum.”
He added: “The reason he dances differently in every song is because the drums are different in every song. I would just rehearse playing the drum beat and the lyrics, and it started to make sense. He’s completely telling the drummer what to do through his movements, and I thought that was quite astonishing. He was leading the band through his movements.”
Watching Jonathan Demme’s legendary film proved the perfect inspiration for this, as Ben-Adir explained: “I put it on and was struck by David Byrne doing a similar thing. I couldn’t work out what it was, but then I looked at the drums, and it was just so similar. I thought, ‘Yes, that’s it.’”
He added: “It was just so much fun. I found the dancing and the guitar and the singing so much fun once you get over the embarrassment of looking like an idiot.”
Read Rolling Stone UK’s interview with Ziggy Marley and director Reinaldo Marcus Green about Bob Marley: One Love here and buy your copy of issue 15 of Rolling Stone UK – including the Ben-Adir interview – here.