Kingsley Ben-Adir Makes It Look Easy

KINGSLEY BEN-ADIR IS HITTING HIS VAPE AT THE CLIP THAT MOST people sip beer, telling me a story about smoking weed on the way to Dave Chappelle's house.("I fucking nearly whited, man. I was on the tour-bus van, heading down to the party, and I had to put my feet up in the air to get blood back into my head.")

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We're borrowing a C-suiter's office at Paramount's Times Square headquarters, and the thermostat is jacked diabolically high. The thirty-seven-year-old British actor is here to promote Bob Marley: One Love (out this Valentine's Day), and he's flown overseas for the first round of promotional duties. That's all to say: This could be a tedious work trip, but it's immediately clear that I'm talking with a man who has mastered the art of having fun on the job.

A brief history of that work: Ben-Adir grew up in London; conquered the local theater circuit (surprise: a lot of Shakespeare); and, in 2020, portrayed an anxious, tender Malcolm X in One Night in Miami. This past summer, he played one of the many Kens in Barbie. He didn't have a "job" the way Ryan Gosling's Ken did ("beach," as you will almost certainly recall). Instead, his Ken "just looks to Ken-Ryan to see what's good," Ben-Adir explains. Character development went like this: "I just thought he should always be holding something for him." Ben-Adir did his mandatory Marvel duty on last summer's Secret Invasion, as a sociopathic alien opposite Samuel L. Jackson's Nick Fury.