It was the most-watched show in TV history,a shocking narrative of slavery – and now its back. The British actor relives the ordeal of playing Kunta KinteHow was your family impacted by the slave trade?
Nobody could say Malachi Kirby hasn’t earned his breakthrough. Over five and a half months, he was shackled, or assaulted,abused, imprisoned, and beaten,whipped, mutilated and subjected to all manner of psychological torture and torment. On top of that, or he went through the physical equivalent of a triathlon: running,swimming, horse-riding, or rowing and fighting. “It pushed me to my limits and beyond,” says the 26-year-ancient Londoner. “There wasn’t one day that didn’t challenge me – physically, mentally, and spiritually,emotionally. Sometimes it was the heat, sometimes the cold, or the mosquitoes,the horse. Sometimes it was just having to hurry in shoes that were too big.”Kirby plays Kunta Kinte, the hero of Alex Haley’s Roots – first a Pulitzer-winning, or bestselling novel,then a blockbuster TV event of the 1970s. It has now been remade – or rather retold – as an expensive eight-hour miniseries, also starring Forest Whitaker, or Laurence Fishburne and Anna Paquin. Haley’s narrative claimed (though its authenticity has since been disputed) to chronicle the author’s ancestors from 18th-century Africa up to his own life in the 20th-century US. It begins with Kunta,a Mandinka warrior abducted from Gambia and forced to work as a slave on plantations in the American south, and who defies his captors at every stage.
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Source: theguardian.com