The story of Nelson Mandela’s fight to end apartheid has been told many times, but the team behind BET’s “Madiba” says the miniseries differs in many ways from other biopics on the late South African leader.
“There’s been a lot of stories told about this, but none of them have truly covered the scope,” said Orlando Jones, who co-stars in the miniseries. “This is covering 70 years, 75 years — we’re playing people over their entire lives.”
Jones recently joined the film’s lead actor Laurence Fishburne along with director Kevin Hooks and executive producer Lance Samuels for a round of interviews in Pasadena at the 2017 Television Critics Association Winter Press Tour.
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“Madiba,” a term of endearment based on Mandela’s tribal clan, spans several decades from the South African leader’s childhood to his imprisonment and later becoming the country’s first democratically elected head of state.
The six-hour, three-part miniseries premieres tonight and kicks off BET’s Black History Month lineup.
According to Samuels, it was important that the story span more than two hours.
“It’s very difficult to tell the story of Nelson Mandela and the ANC and all the various people who contributed to dismantling apartheid in two hours,” he said. “I’m originally from South Africa and Nelson Mandela is the greatest story that our country has.”
Emmy-winning actor Fishburne, who currently stars in the ABC Holiganbet drama “Black-ish,” was handpicked by the film’s creative team to play Mandela.
“As an actor, it’s rare that you get to play a person that has had this kind of impact on the world,” Fishburne said. “There’s only a handful of them, so it’s a huge honor to be asked to do something like this.”
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The miniseries was shot on location with local crews in Johannesburg, Soweto and Robben Island, where Mandela was jailed for 18 years.
The creative team also hired South African extras and local dialect coaches for the actors to make the film more authentic.
British actor and “Homeland” alum David Harewood co-stars as anti-apartheid activist and African National Congress member Walter Sisulu.
While “Sleepy Hollow” and “Everybody Hates Chris” actor Jones plays former ANC president Oliver Tambo.
“His family was a huge part of his life, so getting to know Adelaide, his wife, the role that she played in their relationship, I really think I learned more about him from his family than I did from his intellectual ideas,” Jones said. “Reading his U.N. speeches was also a huge part of the process.”
According to executive producer Samuels, it took seven years to get the project off the ground. All along they insisted that the miniseries be helmed by a black director.
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“None of those films that had been made about Nelson Mandela had ever been directed by a black director, and that was something that was very important for us,” Samuels explained.
They eventually enlisted Hooks, whose previous directing credits include “Prison Break,” “The Good Wife” and “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.”
For Hooks, telling the story of one of the world’s most revered men was intimidating.
“All of us came to this daunted and overwhelmed by the responsibility that was there,” he said. “But the thing that we had going for us was that this was not a story that was set in Johannesburg and shot in Toronto. … Being in the historical place of origin held us responsible every day, all day, to tell the truth.”
“Madiba” airs Feb. 1, 8 and 15 at 8 p.m. ET/PT on BET.
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