Kingsley Ben-Adir Has Already Won

Kingsley Ben-Adir is trying to explain why he doesn't want to win the EE Bafta Rising Star award, for which he is nominated for his performance in Regina King's One Night in Miami. It does make sense if you'll hear him out.

"I’m a big fan of Bukky [Bakray's] work on Rocks," says the actor. "I’m 34 and that’s the first time I’ve seen girls who I grew up with represented in a way that was to do with friendship and love and positivity. It was just so joyful to watch girls from quote-unquote 'the ends' represented in such a beautiful way. I’ve been really trying to do as little press as I can since those nominations came out because I really want her to win," he laughs.

Kingsley Ben-Adir at the BFI London Film Festival in 2020

Ben-Adir grew up in Kentish Town in London, attending boys' school William Ellis where a drama teacher called Mr Pratt took him under his wing. After school he worked in the drama department and helped kids with behavioural problems alongside Mr Pratt, eventually enrolling at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama at age 22. After graduating he was cast in television series like Peaky Blinders and later Netflix's The OA, but it was playing two icons in Barack Obama in The Comey Rule, and Malcolm X in One Night in Miami, which has seen his career suddenly gain momentum.

Ben-Adir shot both at the same time under tight time pressure, "chain smoking, not eating and sleeping four or five hours a night for ten weeks" in order to quickly lose 20 pounds. It's not a regime which he'd recommend, but he knew he just had to get on with it. "As a working actor it’s like a shift," he says. "My work up until this point has always been: ‘This guy has dropped out, you need to fill in’, so my job is about being able to turn up quickly."

In playing Malcolm X, Ben-Adir didn't have the time he might have wanted to read every biography of the famous activist. Instead he tried to narrow in on the months surrounding the meeting of these legendary men on that real but fictionalised night. "My focus became where he was at emotionally, spiritually, politically; what were the big changes and shifts in his life that were happening to him at this time?" he says. "I was trying to find anything I could that gave me a way into his vulnerability and power."

The vulnerability of Malcolm X is a central component of the character in Kemp Powers's script, showing us the games he played with his young daughters and the doubts in his mind where history has always focused on his conviction. In the closing moments of the film we see Malcolm rush out of his family home which has been set alight and silently watch it burn. When shooting that scene Ben-Adir insisted on wearing as little as possible, having listened to recordings of Malcolm describing that night. "He says he was outside in his bare feet and his underwear and he had to wait however may hours for the police and the fire brigade to come."

As Malcolm X in One Night in Miami

Playing men who people think they already know so well is something Ben-Adir has had to come to terms with recently. "When you’re dealing with a figure like Malcolm, I think lots of people have an idea of him that they don’t want to let go of," he says. "All of the press and criticism or praise, by that time you pass the film onto the audience and let people experience it how they will."

We are speaking during an elongated awards season in which he has been promoting the same film for many months, and this is now the longest he hasn't been on set in ten years. As such he's learned to be guarded in interviews, and can't say much about his forthcoming Marvel film Secret Invasion. He similarly isn't keen to comment about diversity at awards shows or the changing landscape of the film industry. He'd rather keep himself out of it entirely.

As Obama in The Comey Rule

"There’s absolutely nothing about celebrity culture that interests me at all," he says. "The more you know about me and my personal life, and where I eat and sleep and where I go on holiday, the more difficult I’m making it for you to get into a story where I’m trying to convince you that I’m someone else. It’s in my interest to try and not do that."

What he really wants to talk about is Mads Mikkelsen's performance in Another Round, which he has already seen four times and has made him cry twice, or about LaKeith Stanfield playing William O’Neal in Judas and The Black Messiah. "Just two soulful, soulful, soulful motherfuckers who, when they let subconscious flow, it does something to me," he says of the two actors. Ben-Adir looks at character actors like Gary Oldman and Anthony Hopkins and Jeffrey Wright and Viggo Mortensen, and wants the same kind of big transformative parts they have mastered. Roles where he can disappear so deep into the character that you can't see him anymore.

At the premiere for The OA in 2019

This is perhaps why Kingsley Ben-Adir seems to have already won, and why he's only now realised his home internet connection isn't great instead of rehearsing his Zoom acceptance speech for the big night. "Malcolm and Regina have done everything for me, the shift has happened, the work coming in now and the offers, you know, I’m so grateful for it," he says. "There’s just something about Rocks that I think spiritually and culturally represents such a huge shift in the right direction. I’m Team Bukky!"

The EE Rising Star 2021 Award is announced on 11 April. Vote here for the winner

WATCH ONE NIGHT IN MIAMI

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