Samuel L. Jackson, Jeffrey Wright, and David Oyelowo have all portrayed civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr., whose Atlanta sit-ins, Montgomery bus boycotts, and peaceful protests desegregated the nation. When Kelvin Harrison Jr. was first offered the role, he was overwhelmed by the weight of the historical figure and turned it down.
“I still was a little bit scared and unsure if that was something that I needed to be participating in,” Harrison tells Rolling Stone. “I didn’t really see what I could offer in this moment, and I didn’t feel worthy of stepping into those shoes.”
The 29-year-old says he didn’t feel like his acting could elevate or expand Dr. King’s legacy. Aaron Pierre, who was tapped for the role of Malcolm X, got cold feet, too.
“I remember feeling terrified,” Pierre, 29, says. “I remember feeling terrified about whether I had the capacity to serve Malcolm X with the depth that I knew it needed, with the depth that I knew was essential.”
Despite their initial hesitancy, the young actors found commonality with each visionary’s personal struggles and challenges leading up to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Genius MLK/X, which premieres Feb. 1 on Disney+, right at the start of Black History Month, delivers dueling perspectives of the historical figures’ faith-based preachings, civil rights philosophies, violent police backlash, and intimate partnerships from their formative years to adulthood. The series, with Pierre and Harrison in the title roles, magnifies the support their wives Coretta Scott King (Weruche Opia) and Betty Shabazz (Jayme Lawson) provided along with guidance from advisors like Bayard Rustin (Griffin Matthews), Ella Baker (Erica Tazel), and Elijah Muhammad (the late Ron Cephas Jones).
The eight-part National Geographic series, produced by showrunners Raphael Jackson Jr. and Damione Macedon (Power), is the fourth installment of Genius, whose earlier seasons explored the journeys of Albert Einstein, Picasso, and Aretha Franklin. When asked whether the supposed ideological opposites should have received their own seasons, Harrison replied that King and Malcolm are more intertwined than people realize – although their sole documented meeting was in the U.S. Senate Chamber on March 26, 1964.
“What the show does really brilliantly is allows us to see how parallel their lives actually were, and how similar their trajectories felt, and how their experiences weren’t that different,” Harrison says.
Harrison reconsidered the King-sized role after the Genius team pleaded for him to join the series in a letter. In a summer 2022 Zoom call with Jackson, Macedon and several executive producers, Harrison says the team was surprisingly drawn to his imposter syndrome — a characteristic the civil rights icon similarly struggled with.
“There was a lot of resistance, which, in some ways, a lot of what the show is about is overcoming this resistance,” Harrison says.
MLK/X chronicles King’s upbringing in a Christian household, including a suicide attempt as a teen, to raising children of his own all while leading a civil rights revolution. Civil rights leaders like King, Malcolm, and their wives Betty and Coretta, once felt untouchable to Harrison. But the series made them feel human.
“The moments of struggle and the moments of conflict and adversity actually are more important to see because it’s how we deal with them,” Harrison says.
“At a certain point, it becomes a choice,” he continues. “I choose to engage with this conflict, and I choose to find a way to overcome it. That, to me, is empowering.”
There is arguably and subjectively, I would say, a significant amount of misinformation about Malcolm in the world, and I wanted to get to how he perceived himself, how he viewed himself and his journey, and how those closest to him did the same.
He looked to old interpretations of the civil rights icon and relied on talk show interviews, recorded speeches (his favorite: “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop”), books like King’s Strength to Love, and his favorite shows like Star Trek to master the revolutionary’s speech cadence, posture, and intellect.
“I have a binder about this thick of just research,” Harrison says, expanding his hands, “and every day based on what years we’ll be shooting, I would have the pages and I would skim through it and then try to see what I can infuse into the work.”
Pierre took a similar approach, meticulously annotating Malcolm’s autobiography (co-written by Alex Haley), watching a documentary helmed by Shabazz, and studying live footage of the Black power figurehead.
“There is arguably and subjectively, I would say, a significant amount of misinformation about Malcolm in the world, and I wanted to get to how he perceived himself, how he viewed himself and his journey, and how those closest to him did the same,” Pierre says.
Pierre is careful about comparing himself to Malcolm, a divisive figure whose ideology of armed resistance was sometimes at odds with King’s modus operandi of non-violent protest. The series follows Malcolm’s discovery of the Nation of Islam while imprisoned and his subsequent mission to spread his ideology of Black superiority and independence. Pierre, who has family members that are Rastafarian, Christian and Muslim, says the series hired someone akin to an Islamic guidance counselor who ensured an accurate portrayal of the leader’s faith.
“I have the viewpoint that Malcolm operated from a place of love, and he operated from a place of light,” Pierre reasons. “I think what is commonly digested or received as aggression was actually just him operating from a place of having a deep love for himself, for his loved ones or for his people, for his community, and making it public knowledge that you have the right to protect that.”
Malcolm X (Aaron Pierre) faces off with police officers in ‘Genius: MLK/X.’
Josh Stringer/National Geographic
Although Pierre hesitates to call his six to seven months of physically, emotionally, and mentally embodying the Black power leader method acting, he admits the project was emotionally taxing.
“I walked the way Malcolm X walked, I talked the way Malcolm X talked, my gestures changed,” Pierre shares. “I remember when we wrapped, I had to sort of remind myself of my own nuances and gestures.”
Pierre will soon have new shoes to fill. The Foe actor has been cast in an unnamed role in Blade, which has faced director changes and production delays due in part to the writers’ and actors’ strikes. The Marvel vampire-slayer film, which Pierre is reamining tight-lipped about, is expected to hit theaters in late 2025.
He’ll also take on the king of the jungle, Mufasa, in the Barry Jenkins-directed Disney prequel Mufasa: The Lion King, out Dec. 20. The actor will reunite with his MLK/X co-star Harrison, who will star as Scar.
“It’s been such a beautiful, joyous, exciting, energizing experience, and we’re really looking forward to later on this year sharing it with the world,” Pierre gushes.
Though Pierre and Harrison once shied away from the intimidating roles of King and Malcolm, they’re welcoming the Pride Rock challenge with open arms. Harrison explains that MLK/X has made Pierre feel like a brother to him, and the anthology series has provided the armor for his next groundbreaking role.
“If I’m being called to be a soldier for our future, to fight some battles for us, I need to be armed by the best,” Harrison says, “and embodying them is really great training.”
