“I would just ask questions all the time… we were constantly trying to make sure that the authenticity of the moment, whatever moment we were shooting, was double, triple, quadruple checked. “Sometimes we’d be like: ‘What would Bob think? If Bob read this scene, what would he say?’.That was an interesting conversation sometimes, and we had to change little bits and make sure that his voice was represented.” Also “critical” to Marley’s story, Green says, was ensuring his wife Rita had a prominent role. Rita, who married Bob in 1966 and provided backing vocals for his work, is shown through Lashana Lynch’s performance in the film to be an influential presence in his life and his music. Lynch, known for roles in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, TheWoman King, and MatildaThe Musical, says she was able to sit down with Rita “for hours on end”, soaking in her energy and life story as she prepared to play her. “I read her book, which was brilliant to a point where I realised that I can have all the information that I can muster on my own but the main thing I need is to meet her,” says the 36-year-old actress.
“She is part of his inspiration, his support, the one that reminds him of who he is when he’s straying away from himself. I was just determined to make her as three- dimensional as possible.” “She’s the mother of some of his children, she was in the band, so she just had a unique perspective – and that perspective needs to be heard and needs to be understood,” Green agrees. “It only makes our story richer, it only makes Bob’s story richer, to understand what he was going through as a family, as a man, as a husband, as a father.” It’s this holistic approach to telling the story of the short but brilliant life of Marley that shows the legacy he leaves behind, Lynch adds.
“When I watch a biopic I always want to learn something completely new about the person,” she says.
“We know the legend, we know their music, we know they probably worked really hard, and they had a life, and that’s all generic stuff. But when you get to know just how much they had to overcome, what they had to push through, and who they were at their core… there’s so many different complicated layers of Bob that are really interesting to watch. “And the way in which Kingsley has approached (Marley) – I mean, he’s just brilliant, absolutely brilliant. And that’s because he focused on the humanity of the man. “It meant that if we have him at his core, everyone else can dance around him in a really authentic way, because they’re responding to him as a human, rather than him as a legend.”
“And I’m so glad she’s here, she’s accessible.
“I got in touch with Ziggy and Sharon and Cedella, her children, and met her for hours on end on a couple of occasions at her home, and just literally sat down on the floor, cross legged, staring at her like this ethereal being, which she actually is, and just listened to her and soaked her up and tried to get as much of her energy and spirit as possible to make my version of her realistic and authentic.” Lynch says that the most important thing for her was that Rita “was not going to be reduced to the mother and the wife, or even the band member” in the film.
Bob Marley: One Love is in UK cinemas from Wednesday February 14.
“She is literally the anchor for Bob,” she says.
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