Roots is a 2016 American miniseries and a remake of the 1977 miniseries with the same name. It first aired on May 30, 2016 and stars Malachi Kirby, Forest Whitaker, Anna Paquin, Laurence Fishburne, Jonathan Rhys Myers, Anika Noni Rose, T.I. and South African actress Nokuthula Ledwaba. It was produced on a budget of $50 million.
Ann Kindberg
George Parra Will Packer (executive) Marc Toberoff (executive)
Mark Wolper (executive) LeVar Burton (co-executive)
Korin Huggins (co-executive)
Alissa M. Kantrow (line)
Dirk Hoogstra (production executive)
Michael Stiller (development executive)
In the 1770s, Kunta Kinte (Malachi Kirby) is a Mandinka warrior from Juffure in the Gambia, in West Africa. Kunta's family is loyal to the Mandinka king and are resistant to the Europeans. This, however, means the Kinte family faces the danger of reprisal from the rival Koro family, who trade African slaves for English guns.
Kunta is captured by the Koros, who sell him and other members of the Kinte family to white slave traders for two crates of guns. Despite an attempted mutiny by the slaves, he is transported across the Atlantic Ocean to the Colony of Virginia, where he is sold to John Waller (James Purefoy), who owns a tobacco plantation. Kunta is renamed Toby, and put under the care of a musician slave called Fiddler (Henry) (Forest Whitaker).
With the aid of Fiddler (Henry), Kunta makes an escape attempt on Christmas, but is caught and flogged by the cruel overseer Connelly (Tony Curran) until he says his name is Toby, not Kunta Kinte. Kunta realizes that he will not be returning to his home in the Gambia. Fiddler tends to Kunta's bloodied back and tells him to keep his true name inside, no matter what the white men call him.
Part 2
Ten years later in 1782, during the American Revolutionary War, Kunta escapes to fight for the British army. Without proper weapons, his regiment is slaughtered. Kunta is eventually re-captured and, as punishment, all the toes on his right foot are chopped off.
He and Henry are sent to the farm of Dr. William Waller (Matthew Goode), in payment for his brother John Waller's debts. One year later the Revolution ends and the United States celebrates its independence. Kunta marries Belle (Emayatzy Corinealdi), a beautiful slave woman who nursed him back to health, and they have a daughter. Fiddler and Kunta take the baby into the woods for a Mandinka naming ceremony. They are suddenly surrounded by a slave patrol, which Henry distracts so Kunta and the baby can slip away. This results in Henry's murder. Kunta names the baby Kizzy, which means "stay put" in hopes of keeping their family together.
Kizzy (Emyri Crutchfield) grows up to be a bright young woman and Missy (G. Hannelius), Dr. Waller's niece, secretly teaches her how to read. Kunta trains Kizzy in the ways of a Mandinka warrior, passing on her cultural heritage. She also falls in love with another slave named Noah (Mandela Van Peebles).
When a hurricane hits the farm, Kizzy and Noah attempt to escape. The next day, Kunta finds Kizzy hiding inside a brick oven. A search party tracks Noah to a barn. When he runs the men shoot and kill him. They discover a written road pass that Kizzy forged and Dr. Waller learns of Kizzy's literacy.
As a result, Kizzy is sold to Tom Lea (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) in North Carolina. He rapes her the same night she arrives. Nine months later she gives birth to Lea's son, whom he names George. Kizzy contemplates killing her infant, but decides to raise him so she can pass on the story of his heritage.
Part 3
Tom Lea takes young George (Jaylin Ogle) along with him to be trained in how to raise fighting chickens. While George is eager to see the world, Kizzy is worried about him spending so much time away from her. Over the years, George (Regé-Jean Page) becomes a skilled breeder and fighter of chickens, earning his master lots of money and becoming known as "Chicken George".
His position as a trusted slave is challenged during Nat Turner's slave rebellion. Lea, like many other whites, begins to suspect that all slaves might be planning to rise up. After being insulted at a party, Lea fights a bloody duel with another slave holder. George serves as his second, and Tom agrees to allow him to marry Matilda (Erica Tazel), the daughter of a slave preacher who he has been courting.
George and Matilda marry and have several children, the eldest of whom is named Tom after his master. George attends another cockfight, where Tom Lea makes a large wager with a visiting British gentleman. Lea promises that if George wins the fight he will give him his freedom papers. George wins and celebrates his newfound freedom. However, they fight one more round against the Englishman and lose. Lea does not have the money to pay off his debt and instead agrees to give George to the man to be taken back to England to raise fighting cocks. George protests, but is dragged away.
Part 4
On the eve of the Civil War, George returns from England after his British master gave him his freedom for many years service. He tracks down Matilda and his family, now owned by a new master, Benjamin Murray (Wayne Pére). Murray allows George to stay with his wife on the plantation, much to the consternation of his secessionist son Frederick Murray (Lane Garrison), who is engaged to marry Nancy Holt (Anna Paquin).
George's son Tom is now a skilled blacksmith and valued member of the Murray plantation. Tom (Sedale Threatt Jr.) blames his father for abandoning them and initially wants nothing to do with him. When war breaks out, Nancy reveals to Tom that she is a Union spy and tries to enlist him to help her. He initially refuses, but when Frederick and his friends rape his lover, Tom decides to help. Their plans go awry and Nancy and her slave Jerusalem (Mekhi Phifer) are exposed as spies and executed.
Meanwhile, George and another black man named Cyrus (T.I.) join the Union Army. They participate in the Battle of Fort Pillow, and watch horrified when surrendering black troops are massacred. George, Cyrus, and Tom flea pursuing Confederate bushwhackers and return to the Murray plantation to learn that all the slaves have been freed by the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. When Frederick threatens them, George shoots him dead. George, Cyrus, Tom, Matilda and the rest of their family pack up their belongings and head to Tennessee to start a new life. Once there, Tom and his wife have a daughter, the first Kinte born free in America. Many years later, a man named Alex Harley traces his roots to Kunta Kinte and writes a book to honor both his family and all those descended from African slaves.
Roots' 2016 - Full Cast List & Character Descriptions
The 2016 remake of the Roots mini-series premiered on History Channel tonight and you can meet the full cast right here.
Malachi Kirby was introduced to the world in the first night of the mini-series as the important character Kunta Kinte.
Other stars who will be featured in the four episodes include Forest Whitaker, Laurence Fishburne, Anna Paquin, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Anika Noni Rose, and more!
Roots is a historical portrait of American slavery recounting the journey of one family’s will to survive, endure and ultimately carry on their legacy despite enormous hardship and inhumanity. Spanning multiple generations, the lineage begins with young Kunta Kinte who is captured in his homeland in The Gambia and transported in brutal conditions to colonial America where he’s sold into slavery. Throughout the series, the family continues to face adversity while bearing witness and contributing to notable events in U.S. history – including the Revolutionary and Civil Wars, slave uprisings and eventual emancipation.
Chad L. Coleman stars as “Mingo”
A stern no-nonsense slave/cock trainer for Tom Lea, who keeps the Lea plantation afloat. He befriends Chicken George and they bond like father and son. (Appears in Night 3)
Emayatzy Corinealdi stars as “Belle”
The American born wife of Kunta Kinte and longtime favorite cook and housekeeper for Dr. William Waller. She gives Kunta Kinte a reason to live and stop running. She is the mother to Kunta’s only child – a daughter named Kizzy, but lives with her own terrible secret, her two baby girls who were sold away from her when she was young before she was married. (Appears in Night 2)
Laurence Fishburne stars as “Alex Haley”
The author of the novel Roots: The Saga of an American Family. (Appears in Night 4)
Lane Garrison stars as “Frederick Murray”
The racist, pro-secession son of Benjamin Murray, a sentimental, vicious young man who is violent to the slaves on the farm. He is engaged to Nancy Holt. (Appears in Night 4)
Matthew Goode stars as “Dr. William Waller”
The educated, charming, more refined and successful younger brother of John Waller. William has a more benign manner in handling his slaves though he certainly believes in slavery. (Appears in Nights 2 & 3)
G Hannelius stars as “Missy Waller”
The daughter of John Waller and the best friend of Kizzy until she betrays her. (Appears in Night 2)
Tip “T.I.” Harris stars as “Cyrus”
A headstrong slave who fights for freedom for the Union Army against Confederate Forces. He befriends and helps Chicken George. (Appears in Night 4)
Malachi Kirby stars as “Kunta Kinte”
Kunta Kinte, “the African,” member of the highly respected Kinte clan of the Mandinka people of Gambia. A warrior who is educated, clever, skilled, strong, resilient and proud, he is young man of immense courage and spiritual fortitude – all traits that empower him when he is captured by slavers. Kunta never relinquishes his dream of returning to his homeland and never stops challenging the slaves born in America to fight for their freedom. (Appears in Nights 1 & 2)
Derek Luke stars as “Silla Ba Dibba”
A powerful Mandinka fighter who is battle-scarred and highly skilled in ways of combat – he helps train new warriors. He is an icon to the young men of Juffure and an inspiration to Kunta when they are both captured and sold to English slave traders. (Featured in Night 1)
Jonathan Rhys Meyers stars as “Tom Lea”
A poor farmer of Irish descent from the impoverished Carolina hill country. Craven, aspiring, though at times great fun, always suspicious and can’t rise above a deep rooted jealousy of his betters. He buys Kizzy as a 15-year-old and rapes her resulting in the birth of their son George whom he takes under his wing and teaches about cock fighting. He has a deep struggle that torments him in owning a slave that is in fact his son. (Appears in Nights 2, 3, & 4)
Regé-Jean Page stars as “Chicken George”
Kizzy’s clever, theatrical and resourceful son. A handsome social magnet who knows how to transfix a crowd with a story, yet doesn’t appreciate what he has until his luck abandons him. He struggles with following his family traditions until he is abandoned by his true father, slave owner, Tom Lea. (Appears in Nights 3 & 4 )
Anna Paquin stars as “Nancy Holt”
The Quaker fiancé of Confederate officer, Frederick Murray, she has her own agenda when it comes to the handling of slaves. (Appears in Night 4)
Mekhi Phifer stars as “Jerusalem”
A mute slave who works on the Murray plantation, but who is not quite who he appears to be. (Appears in Night 4)
James Purefoy stars as “John Waller”
An English colonist who is the profligate owner of a Virginia tobacco plantation who buys Kunta Kinte as a slave upon his arrival in America. An alcoholic, deep in debt, braggart, more negligent than mean, he’s unable to keep his farm vital without secret loans from his brother. (Appears in Nights 2 & 3)
Anika Noni Rose stars as “Kizzy”
The cherished and smart only child of Kunta Kinte and Belle who maintains her family pride and warrior spirit. She is trained to be a warrior by her father, remembering every story about Africa that her father ever told her. She is taught to read by her slave master’s daughter, Missy. After being raped by her slave master, Tom Lea, she gives birth to her only son, George, the only grandchild of Kunta Kinte. She perpetuates the dreams and teachings of her father in the rearing of her son. (Appears in Night 3)
–Young Kizzy (Age 15) Featured in Night 2 is played by E’myri Lee Crutchfield.
Erica Tazel stars as “Matilda”
A preacher’s daughter, literate, modest and religious. She is swept away by the charm and attention of Chicken George and is the only woman that could tame him and soon thereafter becomes his wife and the mother to his eight children. (Appears in Nights 3 & 4)
Sedale Threatt Jr. stars as “Tom”
The youngest son of George and Matilda. Tom reacts to his father’s spendthrift, wastrel and philandering ways by simply hiding his emotions. A quiet, handsome young man, Tom believes surviving slavery will only come through hard work as a blacksmith. The stories of his great grandfather, Kunta Kinte, resonate for him as parables of hard work and perseverance. He is provoked when he realizes that he cannot protect his wife and family by keeping his head down, and his inner warrior comes out during the Civil War. (Appears in Night 4)
Mandela Van Peebles stars as “Noah”
A lanky teenager and orphaned child of a slave who died in the fields. Noah is a slave on the Waller plantation who is promised to Kizzy by Dr. Waller, an act which infuriates both Kizzy and her father, Kunta Kinte. Noah is a decent young man though, who grows to love Kizzy and works hard to win her love. Noah proves to have more to him than meets the eye, with a rebellious, determined streak. (Appears in Night 2)
Forest Whitaker stars as “Fiddler”
An urbane slave musician who is rented out by the Waller family to play for various plantations, he has “fiddled” his way out of the fields to what he thinks is an especially comfortable life. Fiddler is garrulous, a staunch friend to Kunta who mentors him but learns a great deal from him as well. (Appears in Nights 1 & 2)
‘Roots,’ Remade for a New Era
The stars of “Roots” include, from left, Malachi Kirby, Anika Noni Rose and Regé-Jean Page.CreditBrinson+Banks for The New York Times
ST. FRANCISVILLE, LA. — Cannons boomed, shaking the leaves off 50-foot trees. “Ready, I need fire on that hill!” an urgent voice yelled. Weapons were reloaded. Exhausted infantrymen — black, white, young, old — were splayed around a muddy pit. “Watch your muzzles, gentlemen,” their leader called. “Don’t blow your friend’s face off!”
In a wooded grove in this town near Baton Rouge, La., a television crew was meticulously recreating the brutal Civil War battle of Fort Pillow, for a remake of “Roots,” the seminal mini-series about slavery. The carnage in the fight was significant: After Union soldiers surrendered, the Confederates disproportionately took white soldiers hostage as prisoners of war and slaughtered hundreds of black soldiers, sending survivors into the slave trade. This massacre was not in the original “Roots,” broadcast in 1977, which is exactly why the producers of the new one chose to include it.
It is one of many unexpected historical details put onscreen in “Roots,” which will air over four nights starting on Memorial Day. It will be simulcast on the History, Lifetime and A&E channels, with a sprawling cast that includes Laurence Fishburne; Forest Whitaker; Anika Noni Rose; Anna Paquin; the rapper T.I.; and the English newcomer Malachi Kirby as Kunta Kinte, the central character. The revival aims to deliver a visceral punch of the past to a younger demographic, consumed anew by questions of race, inequality and heritage. With a crew of contemporary influencers — Will Packer (“Straight Outta Compton”) is a producer; Questlove oversaw the music — the hope is to recontextualize “Roots” for the Black Lives Matter era, a solemn and exacting feat.
“I’d be lying if I said I had zero trepidation and nervousness,” said LeVar Burton, who began his career, indelibly, as the slave Kunta Kinte, and who serves as a producer on the modern version. “But I do believe that we have a lot to contribute to the very important conversation of race in America, and how it continues to hold us back as a society.
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Regé-Jean Page and Anika Noni Rose in the remake of “Roots,” which will air over four nights starting on Memorial Day. It will be simulcast on the History, Lifetime and A&E channels.CreditMichele Short/History
“Roots” is based on the best-selling, Pulitzer Prize-winning 1976 book by Alex Haley, in which he traced his own ancestors back to Gambia in West Africa, followed their path to the United States as slaves and forward into freedom. It occupies a singular place in American cultural history and remains one of the most popular television series ever: Its finale, on ABC, was watched by an estimated 100 million people. And it marked one of the first times that a mass viewing audience was asked to contemplate the legacy of slavery from an African-American perspective. In its wake, generations took a new interest in their own genealogy; even the word “roots” came to be associated with identity.
So why remake it?
That was the question that Mr. Burton and many others asked of Mark M. Wolper, an executive producer and the main force behind it. His father, David L. Wolper, produced the original “Roots.” As the rights were passed down, the younger Mr. Wolper rebuffed many remake offers, he said. But when he tried to watch it anew with his children a few years ago, he came to a surprising conclusion: His father’s “Roots” was no longer good enough. It didn’t connect.
It was a landmark, to be sure, but its performance style and production values are dated. “The makeup is terrrrrible,” Mr. Burton said.
And with nearly 40 years of scholarship since the original, there was new information about the atrocities of the era, the societies of western Africa and the daily life of the enslaved. As much as it was presented as a history lesson, the first “Roots” got some things wrong.
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LeVar Burton began his career, indelibly, as the slave Kunta Kinte in the original “Roots,” broadcast in 1977. CreditABC Photo Archives/ABC, via Getty Images
In this version, accuracy is at the forefront, Mr. Wolper said one day last fall, in his production office in New Orleans, where the walls were covered with images of slave ships, plantation houses and African beads. “I’m not being modest here,” he said. “We have to make it better than the first ‘Roots.’ Otherwise, why bother?”
He was midway into a four-month shoot, with episodes being filmed in Louisiana and South Africa. (The original was shot mostly on the Hunter Ranch in California, on property that was for many years by 20th Century Fox.)
Though the filmmakers wouldn’t disclose the budget, this “Roots” is among the costliest productions that A&E Networks has done, said Nancy Dubuc, its president and chief executive. (A&E Networks is the parent company of Lifetime and History.) They have had hits like the 2012 History series “Hatfields & McCoys,” but Ms. Dubuc said that given its legacy and the challenges of creating event-worthy programming, “Roots,” another History production, “has to stand head and shoulders above anything we’ve ever done before.”
The creators hired historians as advisers, like Stephanie Smallwood, an associate professor at the University of Washington and an expert on the Middle Passage, the treacherous, monthslong journey of the enslaved across the Atlantic.
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Malachi Kirby who plays Kunta Kinte in the remade version of “Roots.” CreditSteve Dietl/History
In the ’70s, Dr. Smallwood said, the basics of the slave trade, like its size, were still emerging. Now, research has revealed that “it’s not just the largest, but it’s the most complex migration in modern history,” she said, adding that there is also a more nuanced understanding of its human cost. “It doesn’t rely solely on the symbolism of shackles. That’s a very profound part of the experience, but I think we also think more in terms of the social violence of being separated from your entire genealogy in Africa.”
That is a rift “Roots” tries to highlight, with a new understanding about the real Kunta Kinte, now said to be an educated young man from a prominent, well-to-do family, who lived not in a remote village (as depicted in the 1977 version) but on the shore of a bustling trading post. “He spoke probably four languages,” Mr. Wolper said.
His characterization changed, too: While Mr. Burton’s is a headstrong naïf, the new Kunta is “a little tougher, a little edgier,” Mr. Wolper said, in what he hoped would be a more contemporary spin. Though one of the iconic images of the original was Mr. Burton in shackles, in promotions for this one — “focused thematically more on defiance, resistance and the ability to overcome the shackles of the body,” Mr. Wolper said — Kunta Kinte is shown breaking through his chains.
For Mr. Kirby, the 26-year-old actor who plays him, it was intimidating, from the audition on. “I spent more time worrying about what would happen if I got the part, than actually preparing for it,” he said. He had seen “Roots” a few years earlier, after his mother gave him the boxed set, “and I was still impacted by it,” he said. He first heard of Kunta, he recalled, as a schoolboy: “It was a name that people used to curse me, if ever my hair was particularly messy.”
After he landed the role, Mr. Kirby and Mr. Burton had an emotional meeting. Filming the scene of Kunta being whipped until he says his slave name, Toby — a scene seared in many people’s memory — Mr. Kirby drew on Mr. Burton’s words. He said that before he made “Roots,” he was a mighty boy, and afterward, “a mighty man.” (In the retelling, Kunta Kinte is played by one actor; in the original, John Amos played him as an adult.)
Describing the shoot months later in a phone interview, Mr. Kirby said: “‘Intense’ is an understatement.”
It wasn’t all horrible,” he added. “There were some very beautiful moments, and moments of joy and elation, but there were also moments, and I think it was necessary, of torment and pain.”Mario Van Peebles, the director of the second episode, said, “There were days, honestly, where I had to go home and sometimes have a good cry and say, God, I am so blessed that these people found their way out of it.”
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Mark M. Wolper, left, and Mr. Burton serve as producers on the modern version of “Roots.”CreditBrinson+Banks for The New York Times
For much of the cast, “Roots” felt personal. “As a young brown person, it’s almost a rite of passage,” said the actor Regé-Jean Page, who grew up between London and Harare, Zimbabwe. “Somebody will sit you down in front of ‘Roots’ and say, ‘you need to watch this.’” (Characters from “Roots” have also made regular appearances in hip-hop over the years, like “King Kunta” by Kendrick Lamar.)
Mr. Page plays Chicken George, the grandson of Kunta (Ben Vereen in the original), and the role meant a heightened sense of responsibility, he said, “because there is a story to be told that is underrepresented and misrepresented, again and again.” In an interview on the Civil War set in St. Francisville, La., he spoke not in his own voice but in his character’s Southern accent. The part was “massively hard to shake off,” he said, months afterward, still clad in George’s shoes.
Recently there has been a small burst of entertainment, from the Academy Award-winning “12 Years a Slave” to the television series “Underground,” that has shown other sides of antebellum life, even as there is some pushback to revisiting that era. “I know there are a lot of people who are tired of the slave narrative,” said Ms. Rose, the Tony Award-winning actress who plays Kizzy, Kunta’s daughter. “With regard to black people, I think they are tired of seeing themselves enchained and downtrodden.” But those depictions, she added, were often one-sided, and designed to humiliate. “I think what it is time to move past is shame, embarrassment, guilt.” Anybody who survived slavery did so “with a fortitude of superhero proportions.”
In researching her role, she listened to slave narratives collected in the Library of Congress, but new understanding about Gambian life was also “invaluable,” she said. There was “civilization, scholarship, lineage and royalty before the Africans were stolen and brought to these shores,” she said.
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Photographs that Ruth E. Carter, a costume designer for “Roots,” used as inspiration. CreditSteve Dietl/History
A costume designer, Ruth E. Carter, visualized that connection, linking the indigo dyes of Africa to the dusty blues — made from the same indigo — of the South. She found evidence of how valuable seamstresses were in the slave trade. “In the war, they were making cloth for the soldiers and for the plantations — that part, nobody ever deals with,” she said, adding: “That’s why it’s important to tell this story, and that’s the reason to be detailed about it.”
After the original mini-series, Mr. Haley was accused of botching some of the research in his book and of plagiarism. (He settled one lawsuit.) But Mr. Haley, who died in 1992, was open about his novelization and felt he was telling a broader truth. “He described it as ‘faction,’ a combination of fact and fiction,” said Matthew F. Delmont, a historian at Arizona State University and the author of the forthcoming book “Making Roots: A Nation Captivated.” (A spokeswoman for A&E said that the new “Roots” was developed “with the cooperation of the Haley family estate,” although it was not directly involved.)
The new “Roots” does not delve into the lives of the white characters as often as the 1977 version did. And the producers aimed for diversity behind the camera; they gave the directors — Mr. Van Peebles, Thomas Carter (“Save the Last Dance”) and the Australians Phillip Noyce (“Clear and Present Danger”) and Bruce Beresford (“Driving Miss Daisy”) — control over the look and feel of each episode. It has already been screened at the White House.
Almost no one involved with “Roots” imagines it will have the same seismic impact, let alone the ratings, of the original — the culture and media landscape is too different. But on a much smaller scale, it could still succeed, as the original did, in making history “less abstract,” Dr. Delmont said.
That has already happened for Mr. Kirby, the young star. “I don’t know where I come from past my grandparents,” who are Jamaican, he said. “So the idea that that kind of knowledge of self could empower you so much, really spoke to me.” He has started researching his roots. “I’m hoping that will give me some insight,” he said, “into who I am today.” Correction: May 18, 2016
An earlier version of a picture caption with this article reversed the identities of two actors. Regé-Jean Page is in the center, and Anika Noni Rose is on the right. Correction: May 29, 2016
An article last Sunday about the new version of the “Roots” mini-series misidentified the university where the historian Matthew F. Delmont is a professor. It is Arizona State University, not the University of Arizona. The article also misstated Stephanie Smallwood’s position at the University of Washington. She is an associate professor who was hired as an adviser for the show; she is not an assistant professor.
Correction: June 12, 2016
An article on May 22 about the remake of the mini-series “Roots” misstated the name of the ranch where the original series was filmed. It was Hunter Ranch — not Disney Ranch, which was used as a location for “Roots: The Next Generation.”
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