Samuel L. Jackson docuseries ‘Enslaved’ to air globally

Samuel L. Jackson is the host and executive producer on 'Enslaved' which examines the trans-Atlantic slave trade.

Sep 28, 2020

Samuel L. Jackson Enslaved thegrio.com — (Credit: Fremantle)

Samuel L. Jackson‘s docuseries of the retraced path of human trafficking has found a global audience as Enslaved: The Lost History of the Transatlantic Slave Trade will be shown worldwide.

Enslaved: The Lost History of the Transatlantic Slave Trade was sold to 130 territories after its US premiere earlier this month according to The Hollywood Reporter. Jackson pulls double duty as an executive producer and hosts of the series that traces the trans-Atlantic slave trade.

Historians Afua Hirsch and Simcha Jacobovic, a director of the documentary, accompany Jackson as he makes the journey on the various sites the trafficking occurred in the six-part series.

Fremantle, which is handling international sales, closed the deal on the Epix docuseries. It premiered in the states on Sept. 14.

Jackson has long expressed a desire to have been the Black Jacques Cousteau and was drawn to this project because of its focus on sunken slave ships.

“The director told us that they had identified these ships that had gone down and started telling me where they were and what it meant, that some of them had enslaved people on them,” the prolific actor recently told THR. “And one in Michigan was a liberation ship that was taking people from some point here in the U.S. to Canada. I wanted to be a part of that of course.”

Jackson added that he felt Americans needed to know more about what took place after those who were enslaved came to these shores.

“That sounded like something that was totally different from what we know or what we talk about. We are always talking about what happened to the enslaved people once they got here [to the United States] and what that history is,” he said.

“And it turned out to be totally intriguing in terms of them leaving, the business aspect of it, learning new things about how these people were insured and what kind of people were commissioning these ships.”

LaTanya Richardson Jackson, Jackson’s wife, is also one of the executive producers. She was awed by the group Diving with a Purpose that located six human cargo ships.

“There’s always a dive that goes with each episode,” Richardson Jackson said, “and each episode takes you to a different exploration of what happened in this particular place and time.”

Eli Selden, Rob Lee, Ric Esther Bienstock, Sarah Sapper and Yaron Niski are also executive producers on the projects.

HISTOIRE TV (France), HISTORY (Germany), Movistar+ and RTVE (Spain), HBO Portugal (Portugal), BBC Earth (Poland), Discovery Film and Spektrum (Eastern Europe), Cosmote (Greece), BBC Persian (MENA), National Geographic (Latin America), M-Net (Africa, South Africa) and Cable & Wireless (Caribbean) are just some of the territories that will be airing the documentary.

BBC Two gained the rights to air the docuseries last month.

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