Lashana Lynch Breaks Down Her Intensive Research Process For Bob Marley: One Love

Bob Marley: One Love is a celebration of the life, legacy, and music of the iconic reggae star Bob Marley and the mark he left on the world. Marley’s is a powerful story of a man struggling to help promote a message of peace through his music throughout the world, facing numerous obstacles, including threats against his life on more than one occasion. Struggling with his growing fame, conflicts at home, and his own mortality, Marley finally returns to his home in Jamaica to share his message of love and peace.

Kingsley Ben-Adir and Lashana Lynch completely embody the roles of Bob and his wife Rita, bringing pathos and heart to the story. The music is a key part of not only Bob Marley: One Love, but also Marley’s life and legacy. Reinaldo Marcus Green understood the responsibility he held in telling this story and shows this through every part of the movie from the casting process to how he seamlessly incorporates Marley’s music into the storytelling.

Screen Rant interviewed Lynch about playing Rita Marley in Bob Marley: One Love. She explained her intensive research process, including meetings with Rita Marley, and the energy she wanted to bring to the role. Lynch also discussed working with Ben-Adir and the importance of the “one love” theme.

Lashana Lynch Harnessed A “Special, Unique, Queen-Like Energy” As Rita Marley

Screen Rant: Lashana, amazing job. I love revisiting this movie. You’ve described your research for Rita as the most nourishing you’ve ever done on a person, ever. Can you talk about your research process on Rita and something that surprised you during the process?

Lashana Lynch: Loads of things surprised me. I started with very obvious things of scouring the internet for any information at all, watching all the YouTube videos. I read her book, No Woman No Cry, which I didn’t know she had a book. There were just so many revelations as time went on. And then, I met her, and everything changed, and the research was out the window. And that didn’t matter any more.

It felt as though everything that I thought it needed to be, everything that I anticipated this experience being… But that just wasn’t the way to go. She’s an energy person. She’s a spiritual being. And she is someone that you feel before you hear. You feel her presence before you hear her presence.

And sitting with her on the two occasions that I did, I was able to harness this really special, unique, queen-like energy that really determined how I’ll say characterized her, but created my version of her off the back of things that she shared with me. Some of which I’m like, “I’m going to keep that for myself,” and some that were really beautiful things that you saw in the movie because we were able to get it in there. Loads of things though, man. Loads of things.

That is absolutely incredible. What a cool experience. Now, the relationship between Bob and Rita is legendary, yet complex. How did you and Kingsley build your on-screen chemistry to reflect that?

Lashana Lynch: I wouldn’t even say we actively built a chemistry. I think that we both have an appreciation for each other, and our craft, and the journeys that we’ve been on in our careers and in our lives to be able to even be at this place to play these legends. So after I’d met with the director for the first time, before I auditioned, before I read the script, I met with Kingsley and was just like, “What do you want? What do you see? How do you want this to go? Who’s your Bob? How are you feeling? Is it daunting?”

I just fired loads of questions at him, and we basically created a little bit of a plan for if I were to get the role, what would we want it to be? So from the very beginning, before we’d even fully gone in on the script, we knew that we were here. And that was the important thing that really held us throughout the shoot that, at times, was tough and came with its challenges as every project does.

We just found this really beautiful space where we just understood each other. And at work, we were Bob and Rita. That’s just what we became. And after work, we were like, “Right. What are we doing with the script? What do we want?” We just kept rehashing questions, which kept it fresh and new every day.

You guys really, truly disappear into these roles. To the point where, if I didn’t know that you guys were in the movie, I would assume you guys were Bob and Rita, especially the way that you executed the Patois, the sound, the dialect. Can you talk about the challenge of making sure that you had the right energy and sound for Rita Marley in this film?

Lashana Lynch: In regards to the Patois, my parents are Jamaican, so that was handled… Though, I did find that with researching her, her voice is so different to mine, her actual quality of voice. My voice is quite low. Hers is quite high, has a lot more air in it. Mine’s a lot more… I don’t want to say dense, but mine is a lot more… It’s just lower and deeper. And hers just has this really light, beautiful, quaint quality that I hadn’t actually experienced for myself, in my mouth, in Patois before.

That was different for me. So I had to really discover how to adopt her way, but also make it sound like it could come from my mouth. Because that’s the weirdest thing for me, when I’m trying to find the voice of a character and it actually sounds like it’s somebody else speaking, but my face is there. I find that strange. We worked with a dialect coach, and one in particular, Fae Ellington, who is a legend of Jamaica. She helped us get into the ’70s quality.

I have a lot of Jamaican colloquialisms that I just know from being of Jamaican background that just do not apply here because you’re in a period drama, essentially. So there was still a lot to learn. Even the Jamaican performers that we had, Fae would come up to them and be like, “We wouldn’t say that. We wouldn’t say that in the ’70s. That’s just not what there was a lot to do. There was a lot of research, and I was always on top of it trying to make sure that it just felt like my version of Rita Marley, not a caricature version of her.

Bob Marley: One Love Is “A Real Journey To Go Down Through Love”

The film’s title, One Love, is one of Bob Marley’s most famous songs. Can you talk about how that theme of one love is woven throughout the film?

Lashana Lynch: Oh, yeah. You get to see all four corners of it. On the surface, if you didn’t relate the title, One Love, to Bob Marley, it would maybe feel a little vacant, a little empty. What is it? It’s love. It’s cool. It’s sweet. That’s nice… But when you get to see the broader spectrum of what love means outside of the romantic sense, outside of the blood family sense, into the chosen family, into the love of self, the love of your country, the love of your environment, the love of the world, and the beauty that it can be.

You just learn and discover all of these things about yourself just by thinking about it. Even saying it now, I’m thinking of the things that I could contribute to the world or the things that I could love more about my neighbor, myself, someone I come across on the street. It’s just a plethora of things that make you feel like you’ve got a real journey to go down through love.

Switching gears just for one second. You had that amazing post-credit scene in The Marvels. If we see more of that X-Men world, your character a part of it, are there some of the former cast members from that franchise that you’d like to share the screen with?

Lashana Lynch: That’s a big question. Firstly, I don’t know. I don’t know anything. Because I know that whenever we’re asked a Marvel question, it’s like we know something, but I genuinely don’t. So this is a fresh answer. I think Teyonah Paris is absolutely excellent. It’s been an honor being able to play her mom, which is strange because we’re a similar age.

So her… The original Avengers lot, I just love them and I didn’t get to work with everyone in my time in the franchise, so they would be brilliant to bring back. I love Tom Holland. He’s brilliant. But there’s also new, fresh faces that haven’t been in the MCU yet that I just think that would be beautiful, to be able to really see some new energy with some of the most classic Marvel energy. I think that would make… And even play on that within the story. I don’t know, maybe.

That would be incredible. The one thing that I love about things like the digital release, the home entertainment release, is that you can do your own at-home double features. So if you were going to put on Bob Marley: One Love what’s film that you’d like to pair it with as a double feature?

Lashana Lynch: Oh, my gosh. I’m going to think carefully about this because this is a big question. What’s the film? Classic… Classic, classic, classic. The Harder They Come, because it’s Jimmy Cliff. It’s old Jamaica. It’s of a similar ilk, but very much so not. They definitely came across each other in their paths, and it’s also an opportunity to have a resurgence of what Jamaica was and what Jamaica is.

About Bob Marley: One Love

Bob Marley: One Love celebrates the life and music of an icon who inspired generations through his message of love and unity. On the big screen for the first time, discover Bob’s powerful story of overcoming adversity and the journey behind his revolutionary music.

Check out our other Bob Marley: One Love interviews here:

• Kingsley Ben-Adir
• Lashana Lynch
• Reinaldo Marcus Green
• James Norton