In playing Martin Luther King Jr. in Rustin, British actor Aml Ameen had the unenviable task of bringing to life the greatest orator of the twentieth century (if not all of American History). King is not only a legendary martyr, but also one of the most famous and well-recognized figures in all of the world. Not only that, Ameen was following in the footsteps of such great actors as Paul Winfield, Jeffrey Wright, and most recently, David Oyelowo in Ava Duvernay’s great film, Selma.
After getting over some initial nerves, Ameen immersed himself in King’s life, not only as someone of great historical significance, but also as a man on the ground level, who could make mistakes, change his mind, and be a good friend. In doing so, Ameen delivers a very human performance that showcases King in ways many of us have never seen.
In our conversation, Ameen and I discuss his preparation, his rigor, and his ability to support Colman Domingo’s effusive performance as Bayard Rustin, the man who was the key organizer of the March on Washington, but whom the history books neglected, leaving cinema to take up his cause.
Awards Daily: There are few more recognizable characters in the history of, well, history, than Martin Luther King. What did you have to go through to win this role?
Aml Ameen: It was a very strange one. I was in Canada and I was shooting something else for my directorial debut (Boxing Day), and an audition for the part came about for August 17th. And genuinely, like the month before, I had had a dream that I’m playing King. Now, King was not someone that I was aspiring to play, necessarily. It wasn’t something on my mind. Then it came up and I was like, that’s weird. (Laughs). And it was King and Rustin and I’m like, Rustin? Okay. Who’s Rustin? Who’s that? You know? And then I saw Colman Domingo and I’m like oh, Colman! We’d known each other and had such a great time doing The Butler back in the day. I was like oh, C’s doing this movie. Alright, boom. And then it was a really fast turnaround. I auditioned in a hotel room.
The next day, while I was being rushed to set, they were like okay, we need to come on the Zoom with George C. Wolfe. I’m having a panic. I’m like no, no, no delay it, delay it, delay it. I’m not ready. And they said it’s now or never. You know, I’m having a proper tizzy. (Laughs). I got on there and read the lines and George makes you feel so comfortable. He knows way much more about the subject than you’ll ever know. And he’s almost guiding you through it. One of the things he was saying was I want Martin to be very human. So I played the scene and I think the next morning I got the part. Strangely enough, it felt very—I don’t know what to call things in life—but it felt somewhat designed or aligned or whatever it is when those synchronicities happen in life. It wasn’t the most difficult of processes to get the part, the difficulty was the undertaking afterwards and going well, how am I going to do this?
Awards Daily: That’s exactly what I was going to ask you next. And now you’ve got to play one of the most famous people in history who is also very well recorded. It’s not like you can do his voice however you want to do his voice, right? Once you got the part, tell me about the weight of that responsibility
Aml Ameen: You say to yourself all right, I got the part, what am I going to do? How am I going to do this? And then you just get to the work. I have to get his voice down. How am I going to do that? I called David Oyelowo, who had played Martin Luther King (in Selma), and he said go to Liz Himelstein, and she’ll start to develop the voice with you. We worked on the speech first to really understand the musicality of the performance. The big advice she gave me was to study King in interviews when he’s just being relaxed, because the King I play and portray in this movie is the King that nobody knew, the King behind closed doors. It’s the King and his friendship with Bayard Rustin, it’s the King at home. A lot of the feedback I’ve been getting is that people are having such a wonderful experience seeing King in those settings, because it feels very connective. I wanted to portray him as very grounded, thoughtful, and a big listener. The voice was the first entry point. The second entry point was understanding the mind of him. My access point into that was researching his influences: Gandhi, different theologians, his Southern Baptist roots, and Bayard Rustin. One of the things that was important for me to do is get behind how he really feels about life. Does he really sincerely believe and feel with the highest integrity what he’s projecting? And the truth is, he really did. That’s what all of my accounts got.
I worked with Diana Castle, who is this great researcher. We’ve worked together on all of my projects as an actor. She really exposed to me King’s genuine connection to “otherness.” I didn’t know King previously had a relationship with this white lady that he wanted to marry, for example. Coretta similarly had a relationship with this white man that she wanted to marry, but the movement, the times, the energy brought them together on a particular mission. That was fascinating to me. To be in that particular era, be experiencing that level of prejudice, and still have a connectivity to something other than your own people. In the end it was about leaning energetically towards King. When I went to set, nobody met me as Aml. They met me as Dr. King. As soon as I left my hotel room, the voice was in place, and my thought process would lean towards him. Higher Ground and Bruce Cohen really supported me. The first day I turned up on set, they could see where I was, and they said “Dr. King, Dr. King.” And everybody really referenced me that way. Then we came to do the (“I Have A Dream”) speech within the first week of the film, and the speech was much more extended than the edit. I could only live as him energetically, and that means waking up, my brain kicks in, imagining his circumstances, thinking of his process, listening to his words, images of his family, just really inundating myself with the information, a lot of meditation, just allowing things to seep into your body, and then go leaving the hotel room with that in place. It’s really funny that the human mind is so agile that if you start pushing it towards a certain direction, you can capture something different from yourself.
Awards Daily: You mentioned David Oyelowo, who played King so well in Selma. There’s also Jeffrey Wright, who played him in Boycott, and Paul Winfield, who played him on television many years ago. Was there any thought in your head like I don’t want to repeat anything that anyone else has done, at the same time I have to capture the essence of the character, which those folks did?
Aml Ameen: I had seen Selma many years ago, so I didn’t reference it at that point. Then I watched Jeffrey Wright’s Boycott, what I could find of it. I later found it on HBO, but I was looking on YouTube. I liked Jeffrey’s approach, actually. There was an edge to King that I liked. And then I kind of went that’s that. Let me deal with Martin at this particular period of time in his life. George said to me that Martin at that point was a star, but he was not yet the icon that he later became. Within the context of our story, it’s about the friendship, it’s about betrayal, it’s about growth, it’s about galvanizing all efforts to achieve this march on Washington with this very famous speech and how everybody came together to do that. So, I watched for a bit and then let it go. I wasn’t particularly intimidated because I know the process of acting. Everything you are, as soon as you get to set, it’s at the door. Who you were and what you did, when I’ve got to do my next role, it’s at the door. It’s about the work that you’ve done in that moment to prepare for this live interaction. Those performances weren’t in my mind. Martin Luther King was in my mind, and making sure I was close enough to him.
Awards Daily: You had mentioned earlier that you didn’t know who Rustin was. I didn’t know who Rustin was either.
Aml Ameen: We all didn’t know who Rustin was.
Awards Daily: It’s stunning how little the average person knows about such a significant man who was on the cover of Life Magazine just a week or two after the march itself, and then he’s been kind of washed away.
Aml Ameen: A hundred percent. I’m not surprised. If we look at history in this context, revisionist history happens all the time. History is almost a convenience of the time we’re in. Who do we want to celebrate? Who do we want to elevate? King goes on to become a martyr. It’s very hard to be a martyr. They are trapped in that particular time and era and deified. He’s untouchable, unreachable. But it’s really important that people understand this: it’s the people on the ground that galvanize around a particular energy that help change the world and the world we’re living in. In that way, it feels more connective. In that way, you feel like oh, I can do this. Whereas with King in all his genius and his exceptionalism, you feel like you can’t. Bayard Rustin has exactly the same genius and exceptionalism, but in the context of this film, he’s presented really ordinary, alongside his exceptionalism. He has ordinary problems about love, ordinary problems about relationships, ordinary problems about betrayal. How do I figure out my place in society, my place within the movement? So, I think he connects to people, especially right now.
Awards Daily: You had mentioned that you were playing the King that maybe people didn’t see him as, less big, right? And Colman Domingo’s Rustin is BIG, and appropriately so. It’s an incredibly entertaining performance. He goes high, and your King has to play lower than that. Like the song Under Pressure by Queen. Freddie Mercury’s way up here, and Bowie decides to go down here, like he’s giving bass to the bigger performance.
Aml Ameen: No. (laughing) I’m going to record that. I gave bass to his performance. See, I gave bass to your performance, baby. (Laughs). No, I did not think about that at all. I’m meeting Bayard Rustin for the first time. And in establishing and understanding him and King’s friendship, he was always entertained by the boldness. There’s a line in the film when we’re sitting in my house and I was saying when I first met you, I remember saying that this Rustin fella is a little crazy in the head. Only crazy didn’t even fit. So you take that line and you go, okay, what’s the history of it? Martin likes to laugh. Martin likes to be entertained. Martin has a lot of eyes on him, a lot of pressure on him. He’s the focal point. You like people around you that have really big energy. I also understood that Martin had a friend when he was a kid that he wasn’t allowed to be friends with, because the father of that child said I do not want you to be friends with a Negro. Martin has felt that betrayal in his history, and then he does the same thing, but instead of race, it’s sexuality. But no, I wasn’t necessarily trying to play like the bass, but I like the analogy. I’m taking that. (Laughs).
Awards Daily: We were talking about that initial betrayal, which happens early in the film. Then we have what I thought was the most jaw-dropping moment in the film, when you as King make this defense of Rustin when there’s this outing of him and his background and the legal issue that he had that came to light, which involved his sexuality. And King makes the defense of Rustin on a moral basis. This Baptist minister made this moral defense of this homosexual man in 1963. I was angry at my history books for not knowing this. When you were reading that scene, did you say to yourself this happened and I get to do this?
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Aml Ameen: Not for nothing man, I’ve loved American movies since I was six years old. James Cagney, Jimmy Stewart, Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, all of that time and period. My mom was a connoisseur of movies and put her son in front of the television with her and we watched it. That moment is so classically great American cinema, right? The score comes in and you’re pushing in on Rustin and the TV’s there and “Mr. Rustin’s one of the most moral individuals I’ve ever known. He’s committed to American democracy. And we’ll fight.” It’s just beautiful writing by George C. Wolfe, man. Beautiful writing and it’s the moment.
It’s the one of the moments of the film that gets me most, actually. As to being angry at the history books, we’re still in the history books, aren’t we? And cinema has become a great part of that. To read that in the history book is not as powerful as seeing it, and that’s why cinema prevails. Now this film will be seen by young people around the world for many years to come. I feel like it’s a film that is going to soothe a lot of people’s hearts, people from different communities’ hearts. I don’t need to be angry about the history of it, because I feel like we’re constantly re-addressing history. There are so many misnomers in this life. So, I’m happy to be a part of history and the telling of it, and that this film will change minds and hearts.
Awards Daily: I saw the film at the Virginia Film Festival a couple months ago, and I said that’s the thing about cinema that will make up for gaps in the history books. This movie is about this character who was incredibly significant but has somehow been marginalized throughout history, and the film brings him to light. It had to be a great pleasure to be a part of a film that does that.
Aml Ameen: You never know what things are going to do, right? I think that the film’s taken on a life of its own. Look at those involved: Higher Ground–this is the Obamas’ first venture into narrative storytelling. George C. Wolfe, who I love as a filmmaker–I loved Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. Colman Domingo, Jeffrey Wright, Chris Rock, Glynn Turman, Michael Potts. You know, everybody. The Avenger team has been called. And there’s this new kid on the block, Spiderman, Aml Ameen. (Laughs). And they’re going all right kid, let’s see what you got, man.
As much as I’m new, I’ve been around in this business for thirty years myself. I bring all of that experience, all of that focus, all that seriousness to the role, and actually, they wrote more for me based on the King I was playing, based on the work I was doing. It’s amazing. There are a couple of scenes in there that didn’t exist in the original script. Bruce Cohen told me “The king that you played, Aml, not only is our favorite king–and obviously we’re going to be biased–but I really feel that the audience is going to feel a lot of that, but beyond that, you made us want to really dig into the friendship.” The friendship between King and Rustin was not necessarily the focal point of the film before. And it entered a lot more of the framework because of what George saw in the work I was doing.
Awards Daily: There are not that many movies about him being somebody’s friend. I just thought that was lovely. This is being well seen now. Which is great. You want it to be seen. It’s also extremely highly praised. You got both. How good does that feel?
Aml Ameen: It’s the moment you’ve been waiting for your entire career when you’re doing the work that is not necessarily getting seen by everybody, but you’re still doing the work. To be a part of a moment…I was at the Gotham Awards last week and I’m like, man, I’ve always loved this place. I’ve always wanted to be here. I’ve never been to the Academy Awards, for example. To go with a film that you’re a part of instead of just being a part of the soiree would be beautiful. These moments you hold on to. An actor’s job is a workman’s job, and you’re constantly trying to figure out things. I’m very happy that I’m a writer/director as well. It just gives me another lane of freedom to my life versus when you’re just acting. It’s really trying, and I did many years of just acting. So it’s a dream come true. The six year old is jumping up and down going, you’re in Hollywood doing movies, man. That’s wicked.