The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X are among American history’s most thoroughly chronicled figures, their voices and mannerisms captured forever on recording after recording, their lives picked over in book after book.
By himself, Malcolm X has been the subject of two Pulitzer-winning biographies in the past 13 years and just last year Jonathan Eig’s “King: A Life” landed a spot on Barack Obama’s yearly best-books list. Both men adorn countless T-shirts, posters and memes. They aren’t just people; they’re also symbols — of civil rights, of social progress, of a decade that saw many of its heroes murdered.
But symbols don’t make for particularly compelling drama. So when Kelvin Harrison Jr. and Aaron Pierre signed on to play King and Malcolm X, respectively, in the new National Geographic series “Genius: MLK/X,” which premiered earlier this month, they knew their imperative was to make their iconic characters as human as possible and leave more famous portrayals in the past.
“The first thing I had to do, and the first thing I needed everyone around me to do, was to stop speaking about them as icons,” Harrison said in a video interview last month alongside Pierre. “I had to live in the moment that they existed. They did not know who they were or where they were going.”
Gina Prince-Bythewood, who, with her husband, Reggie Rock Bythewood, are among the executive producers of the series, put it this way: “We wanted to take them off the T-shirts and make them real and tangible for an audience. And to do that, you need to show their humanity.”
Inspired by Peniel E. Joseph’s nonfiction book “The Sword and the Shield” and the play “The Meeting” by Jeff Stetson (who also served as an executive producer and screenwriter), “MLK/X” is the fourth season in National Geographic’s “Genius” series, following previous installments on Albert Einstein, Pablo Picasso and Aretha Franklin. Sprinting through its subjects’ lives from cradle to grave in eight episodes, it dramatizes how the men came to be the most significant and recognizable figures of the civil rights movement — King through his embrace of Gandhian nonviolence and sweeping protests, Malcolm X through a more aggressive insistence on Black pride and dignity.
It makes a point of highlighting their lives away from the spotlight, emphasizing the strength and support of their wives (Weruche Opia as Coretta Scott King and Jayme Lawson as Betty Shabazz). It also focuses on the mental strain of being marked men in the years leading up to Malcolm X’s assassination in 1965 and King’s in 1968, both of which occur offscreen in the series.
“They struggled with mental health, and they had issues as kids,” Gina Prince-Bythewood said. “They had these incredible love stories. They had crises of conscience. But they still remained committed to their vision, and that’s inspiring. When you can see them as real people, you can connect more, not only with them, but with their struggle. Hopefully you can say, ‘Hey, I can do that too.’”
Both men have been portrayed many times before. Those who have played King include Paul Winfield in the mini-series “King” (1978) and David Oyelowo in the more tightly focused movie “Selma” (2014). And in just the past decade, Malcolm X’s role has been filled by Kingsley Ben-Adir in the film “One Night in Miami” (2020); by Nigel Thatch in both “Selma” and the TV series “Godfather of Harlem”; and by Jason Alan Carvell in Season 3 of “Godfather.”
But one Malcolm X towers over the rest. Denzel Washington’s mercurial turn in Spike Lee’s “Malcolm X,” in 1992, is so entrenched in the public imagination that it can be difficult to imagine any other actor playing the role, or remember any others who have. This presented a challenge for Pierre, an English actor who considers Washington a hero and inspiration.
So Pierre had to pause, take a long look at Washington’s Malcolm, and let him go.
“Very early on in the process I had to accept that one of my heroes had portrayed Malcolm, and then set it free,” Pierre said. “I think had I not, I would’ve been deeply prohibited, and that would’ve all come internally from myself. So I accepted it, set it free, and then I embarked on my own journey.”
There is no iconic King portrayal comparable to Washington’s Malcolm X, but there are hours of recordings and news footage and all of those speeches, including the 1963 “I Have a Dream” speech in Washington, D.C. (In its re-creation, “MLK/X” actually skips over the “I have a dream” line.) Harrison had an “aha” moment when he saw King’s seminary school transcripts and discovered that he had been graded on among other things, performance. The famous oratory, he realized, was also performance and not entirely indicative of the private King. This gave him a base line to approach King in his more domestic and strategic moments.
From there, Harrison studied writings by and about King, and by the philosophers King admired. “And then you throw it in a pot,” he said. “I’m from New Orleans, you put it in a pot. You take some sausage, you take some shrimp, you put some crab in there. It’s gumbo, baby.”
Those involved with the series agree on one thing: Malcolm X and King are two sides of the same coin, different men who took different approaches toward the same goal of fighting inequality in the United States and, as they progressed through their short lives, throughout the world.
The series begins with their famous meeting on Capitol Hill, where they were closely following a Senate filibuster on the 1964 Civil Rights Act. “MLK/X” suggests that, as Malcolm X moved away from the Nation of Islam (which he left in 1964), and King moved toward issues like labor rights and ending the Vietnam War, the two men were converging more than separating.
“It’s an evolution in terms of how they get there,” said Joseph, who has also written books about the Black power movement (“Waiting ’Til the Midnight Hour”) and contemporary race relations (“The Third Reconstruction”), over lunch in Austin, where he teaches at the University of Texas. “Dr. King’s whole thing in one word is citizenship, and Malcolm’s whole concept is dignity. But over time, they come to see you need dignity and citizenship.”
Reggie Rock Bythewood recalled that National Geographic originally approached him and Gina Prince-Bythewood about telling the King story for “Genius.” Their response, as he put it: “You don’t get to have Dr. King without Malcolm X.”
Malcolm is more palatable to a mass audience now than in his own time. “MLK/X” details the making of the 1959 television documentary “The Hate That Hate Produced,” which introduced the Nation of Islam and Malcolm X to the general public and, per the title, helped to establish his early reputation among white Americans as a hateful demagogue. But King, despite the increasing radicalism of his final years, remains a safer option, widely embraced or at least quoted by people of varying political persuasions.
“Updating the format of ‘Genius’ this season and showcasing two stories in Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X is a tremendous honor and also a responsibility,” Brian Grazer, an executive producer of the series (with his Imagine Entertainment partner Ron Howard) wrote in an email. “We aimed to delve deep into their complexities, humanize their struggles and shed light on the impact they had on our society as a tribute to their enduring legacies and as a reminder of the power of unity and social change.”
That Washington encounter was their only meeting; both men were killed at the age of 39. Now they share a screen as young men in a hurry to make their mark. For Joseph, the performances of Pierre and Harrison, both 29, are particularly poignant because they allow viewers to see these historical figures as vital, youthful men figuring things out as they went.
“You never really get actors portraying them in their 20s,” Joseph said. “These were exceedingly young folks. They were young when they got married, young when they were killed, young fathers, young husbands. So I think this adds a fuller portrayal to both characters.”
