How the Stars of One Night in Miami Became Cassius Clay, Malcolm X, Sam Cooke, and Jim Brown

In Regina King’s Certified Fresh directorial debut, One Night In Miami, four icons – Cassius Clay, Malcolm X, Sam Cooke, and Jim Brown – spend a wild (and fictional) evening together in a Magic City motel room bonding, drinking, and heatedly debating the best ways to advance the lives of Black people in America. Is it better to change the system from the inside, as Cooke says, or is the system itself the thing that needs to change, as X argues. Reviews of the film, which will no doubt be a big player this awards season, have heralded King’s skillful translation of Kemp Powers’ play to the big screen, as well as the performances of its four leads: Leslie Odom Jr. (Cooke), Eli Goree (Clay), Aldis Hodge (Brown), and Kingsley Ben Adir (Malcom X). In this exclusive and extended sit down with the four actors, they share how they prepared for and eventually inhabited the larger-than-life figures, from perfecting accents and swagger to transforming physically and digging deep into the ideologies that drove them.

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