The highly anticipated Bob Marley: One Love biopic premiered in Kingston on Tuesday night (January 23, 2024) with plenty of fanfare.
The premiere saw the Marley family showing out including Ziggy Marley, Ky-Mani Marley, Rita Marley, and Cedella Marley. Plenty of other celebrities hit the red carpet at the premiere event, including Meghan Markle, Prince Harry, Prime Minister Andrew Holness, as well as other government officials, including Olivia ‘Babsy’ Grange.
According to Ziggy Marley, who sat down for an interview with Dahlia Harris and Simone Clarke Cooper on Smile Jamaica morning show on TVJ, the premiere was a massive success, and the audience reacted exactly how he envisioned everyone would while watching the highly anticipated film.
Ziggy, who is Bob’s eldest son, is one of the producers of the film, along with his mother Rita and sister Cedella Marley. Jeremy Kleiner, Dede Gardner, and Robert Teitel are the other three producers. The reggae singer says the film showcased a side of his father that his fans don’t know.
“The thing is that everybody think them know Bob you know, but them only know the side what them see through the public footage and the interviews and stuff,” Ziggy said. “But, there’s a side that we are discovering and exploring in the movie that is a much more personal side, much more emotional side, a side that is not tough as stone. So vulnerable, questioning things and just trying to figure out him own life in this very tumultuous time period that he was going through. So it is really an emotional human side of Bob [Marley].”
Ziggy Marley also reflects on when Neville Willoughby told him that Bob Marley couldn’t go inside of the RJR studio because Rasta wasn’t accepted at the time.
The film’s star, Kingsley Ben Adir, and singer Naomi Cowan, who plays Marcia Grffiths, one of Bob Marley’s backup singers, also saw down for the interview. Cowan, who is the daughter of Tommy Cowan and singer Dr. Carlene Davis-Cowan, says she immersed herself into the role by studying Marcia, another living legend in Jamaican music.
Kingsley Ben Adir also shared that he completely immersed himself into the role of Bob Marley by taking music and vocal lessons, learning Jamaican Patois, and talking to everyone who knew the reggae legend personally.
“I had the family there; I had so many of Bob’s friends and people who knew him and grew up with him and so we just went straight in,” the British actor said. “And yeah it was just a full immersion into the music; the guitar the singing the Patois, the language the culture, and you know I was very lucky.”
Ben Adir added, “It wouldn’t have been possible without Ziggy and the family and all of the Jamaican cast… when they came to London, they just lifted the whole thing and they lifted me. There was just a huge amount of love you know, as I went from kind of studying on my own and wanting to be in service in the best way that I could.”
Bob Marley: One Love hit theaters worldwide on Valentine’s Day, February 14, 2024.
