‘Bob Marley: One Love’: Inside the Making of the Bob Marley Biopic

Filming a scene as the title mystic in Bob Marley: One Love, Kingsley Ben-Adir was striding across a room in Jamaica when he heard, “Cut!” Marley’s son Ziggy, who was on set, had some input: He told the actor that his father wouldn’t have walked that particular way. “He was going up the stairs,” Marley says, “and I tell him, ‘Listen! When Bob walks, he takes two steps at a time.’ ”

Months later, in New York, Ben-Adir re-creates the revised move, his knees almost coming up to his chin. “Everyone was doing an example of how Bob would do it,” he says. “I had to stay open to that and be like, ‘This stuff is helping me. It’s helping me find him.’ I had to stay fluid with that.”

Since Bob Marley’s death 43 years ago, his family has turned his legend into a highly monetized estate, selling everything from weed to headphones. The only thing missing was a biopic — which, according to Ziggy, had been broached in the past, but perhaps too soon for him and his family. “As human beings in our maturity,” he says, “I don’t think we were at the level yet to take this on.” But starting in 2018, the family decided to take the reins. “They were bringing something to us, and in this case, we brought something to the studio,” he says. “That is the big difference.”

In theaters Feb. 14, Bob Marley: One Love is an unconventional biopic in ways that might startle or please his fans. Start with its focusing on a specific period in Marley’s life: from the attempt to end it in 1976 through his two-year exile in London, the making of his Exodus album, and his return to Jamaica in 1978 for a concert that helped ease political tensions in his home country. “I don’t think anybody was interested in doing a cradle-to-grave story,” says director Reinaldo Marcus Green (Monsters and Men, King Richard). “We felt like that window of time encapsulated a lot of Bob’s life. There was a lot going on: political turmoil in Jamaica, a war, the assassination attempt. Bob was at the center of it. He wasn’t a global superstar, but Exodus put him on the map. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”

When he was first approached about the role, Ben-Adir, who is British, admits he thought he was the wrong man for the task. “I was thinking practically,” says Ben-Adir, who is 6’ 2″. “He’s 5’ 7″. I’m a baritone and can’t sing, and I don’t play the guitar. Having one white parent and one Black parent is what we have in common.” But after he learned that Green would be directing and that Marley’s family was aboard, Ben-Adir signed on — then underwent months of training to transform himself into Marley as much as possible.

With the help of never-before-seen interview footage supplied by the family, the actor studied and transcribed Marley’s particular patois to avoid making any obvious mistakes. “I’ll convince everyone in the States that it’s OK, but Jamaicans will know,” he says. “They will know every single fucking word.” During the music performances, we’re mostly hearing Marley’s voice, but Ben-Adir took vocal and guitar lessons so he could still sing along, even if we’re ultimately only hearing his own singing voice in a few scenes, like a re-creation of the jam session that led to “Exodus.” “You do not want my concert singing in this film,” Ben-Adir admits. “I mean, I butchered a lot of people’s ears for hours and hours.” Green even called Rami Malek to ask how he inhabited Freddie Mercury in Bohemian Rhapsody in a similar way. “He said, ‘I belted out everything in that movie, and he should go for it — he should do everything, and you’ll find the right balance,’ ” Green recalls.

Ziggy Marley says he was ultimately satisfied with Ben-Adir’s work re-creating his father. “He captured a deepness that is really human and is really touching,” he says. “He touches on funny things, too. He did that very well. Not in a mimicking way, not in a cheesy way. There are some scenes that might be closer than others, but overall, he did it artfully. He’s interpreting Bob, not being Bob. Nobody can ever be Bob. This is an artist representing this painting.”

The soundtrack involved sonic tweaking of its own. The movie re-creates two pivotal concerts during those years — 1976’s Smile Jamaica show and 1978’s One Love Peace Concert. In what may be a controversial move, Marley’s son Stephen, who served as the film’s music supervisor, hired newer Jamaican musicians to rerecord the backing tracks on songs from the two shows. (One of those musicians is Aston Barrett Jr., son of the original Wailers bass player and leader of the current version of the Wailers.) “It’s a long time [ago],” Stephen says of the concert tapes. “So you have to go in and touch up some of the music to make it sound good in the theater.” 

With Ziggy serving as its most hands-on producer in Jamaica and London, One Love involved a greater level of scrutiny than most biopics. Neville Garrick, the Tuff Gong art director and Marley confidant who died this past November, was also an adviser. “We bring the culture and authenticity to it,” says Ziggy. “We lived it.”

As Ben-Adir learned during his walking scene, cast members were regularly corrected on the types of clothing or hats they would wear. “There were small things like, ‘She wouldn’t wear a shirt like that, or ‘Where’s the bangle she always wears?’ ” says Lashana Lynch, cast as Rita Marley, Bob’s wife and protector. “The bangle was really dear to her, and I realized I hadn’t had it on in one of the scenes and thought, ‘Gosh, we have to make sure we have this in every scene.’ Every day was something new.” 

During a scene in which Bob is seen disembarking a plane and stepping into a limo, Green was told they had it wrong. “It was, ‘No, Bob would never sit in the back seat and be driven by somebody,’ ” says the director. “His brethren are his equal. If there’s a seat in front, he’s going to sit next to him.” In her own headset during filming, Sevana, the Jamaican singer and actress cast as I Threes member Judy Mowatt, would be told when she wasn’t sounding enough like Mowatt. Lynch says they all rolled with it. “I personally invited the guidance because I just thought, ‘If this was my parents and two strangers came in trying to emulate them, I would want to police everything to protect my parents,’ ” she says. “I don’t have a legendary family. They do.”

To make himself more closely resemble the shorter, more sinewy Marley, Ben-Adir had some mild prosthetics added to his nose. According to Ziggy, his mother signed off on the project, although she did occasionally point out something she felt wasn’t quite right. “She might say, ‘Oh, he doesn’t look like Bob,’ ” Ziggy says, with a laugh. “She was complaining like that, about his look in one shot. She knows Bob, you know. But she trusts me, too.”

Lynch had her own concerns going into the project. “With her being a wife and a mother, there’s danger of Mrs. Marley being reduced to just those two roles in her life,” says Lynch, who is British and of Jamaican descent. “And she was so much more and represents so much, and so much to Bob. I was just determined to have her be what she needed to in the film.”

That sense of protectiveness emerged during one of the movie’s most dramatic and pivotal scenes: an argument between Marley and Rita in which the latter expresses her frustration over her husband’s fame going to his dreadlocked head. “It was months and months and months in the making,” says Ben-Adir of that scene, which only lasts a few minutes. “That scene got redrafted and redrafted,” he explains. “That was a deep discussion between Lashana and me and Ziggy and the family. There are lines in that scene that are so deeply personal to the family. It was a decision for them to make, how much they wanted to share.” Green adds: “I would be very protective if I was making a movie about my father too. But Ziggy’s protection was to tell the truth. Rita would get angry and she would slap Bob. For us to see that is great. Ziggy wasn’t saying, ‘Let’s pretend that didn’t happen.’ ”

Of that and the rest of the movie, Ziggy Marley says he is ultimately at peace: “You have to tell the truth in this truncated time period. It’s the life truth, and we’re telling it.” The lessons learned were evident months later, when cast and crew reassembled in London for a reshoot and Marley watched as Ben-Adir emerged from a subway stop. “He remembered, one year later, to take two steps,” Marley says approvingly. “Which, you know, is good.” 

From Rolling Stone US.