Catch a Fire

You’d be forgiven for not quite knowing where you’ve seen Kingsley Ben-Adir before.

- Marley Marius.

He was, for years, a steady presence on the London stage, doing A  Midsummer Night’s Dream in Regent’s Park, Much Ado About Nothing at the Old Vic, and new dramas including Gillian Slovo’s

 he Riots at the Tricycle Theatre in Kilburn and Arinze Kene’s God’s Property at the Soho Theatre. But his work in television and film has been quieter, characterized by mostly supporting parts in projects like Peaky Blinders, The OA, High Fidelity, and, last year, Marvel’s Secret Invasion and Greta Gerwig’s Barbie. (It was little more than instinct that pulled him away from the theater; in 2014, against his then agent’s advice, Ben-Adir declined an offer to make his West End debut in Shakespeare in Love, determined, he says, that he should “get some camera experience.”)

Yet it feels strange to call the 37-year-old a character actor—not only because of his marquee-idol good looks and reedy six-foot-two frame but also because, over the past few years, Ben-Adir has developed a knack for playing Great Men. In 2020, shortly after appearing as Barack Obama in Showtime’s The Comey  Rule, he popped up again as Malcolm X in Regina King’s One Night in Miami…, a part that won him the Gotham Award for Breakthrough Actor. (“I was like, ‘I didn’t know you could get nominated for breakthrough work at 34,’” he joked at the time.)