Leslie Odom Jr. reveals he and wife were expecting while filming ‘One Night in Miami…’
Nicolette Robinson plays Barbara Cooke in Regina King's directorial debut
The world finally gets to marvel at One Night in Miami… The film that takes us back to one historic night when four friends celebrated a big win by having some critical conversations.
One night in 1964, then underdog Cassius Clay, soon to be called Muhammad Ali (Eli Goree), defeats heavy weight champion Sonny Liston at the Miami Convention Hall. Clay memorialized the event with three of his friends: Malcolm X (Kingsley Ben-Adir), Sam Cooke (Leslie Odom Jr.) and Jim Brown (Aldis Hodge).
Read More: ‘One Night in Miami…’ trailer shows four legendary friends that helped change the world
theGrio caught up with Leslie Odom Jr. who plays Sam Cooke in the incredible film that highlights how these heroes confronted issues of racial injustice, religion, and social responsibility.
His real-life wife, Nicolette Robinson plays Barbara Cooke, who famously married another musician, Bobby Womack, just four month’s after Sam’s death in 1964.
The couple played spouses more recently, on Freeform’s limited series, Love in the Time of Corona and Odom revealed his wife was a few weeks pregnant with their son when they filmed the scenes.
“Playing Barbara Cook is the lovely and talented Nicolette Chloe Robinson. She is my favorite actress walking the planet other than Regina King, of course. So I was very happy to share this with my baby,” he tells theGrio. “And actually, Nicolette, if you look closely, you wouldn’t see it. But Nicolette is like, I don’t know, like three or four weeks pregnant during the shooting of those scenes…Our little boy has has his first IMDB credit before he’s even here!”
The Hamilton star delivers a tremendous performance as Sam Cooke, the legendary singer known as the “King of Soul” who went on to play a pivotal role in the civil rights movement and whose success gave way to the likes Aretha Franklin, Curtis Mayfield, James Brown, Marvin Gaye, and Stevie Wonder.
Read More: Leslie Odom Jr. quarantines from pregnant wife, family after ‘Ellen Show’ appearance
According to Odom, this role is exactly the kind of work he wants to be doing, particularly at such a tumultuous time in our nation.
“I take a very silly job very seriously. We all do that,” he says. “You have no idea where your work will reverberate or how. That’s really not your business…But even the stuff that doesn’t work, the films that I’ve done that haven’t quite worked, they all prepared me for a moment like this,” he says.
“If I can just trust the process, I end up where I’m supposed to be. I end up in the places that I that I desire to be most and where I want to be. I want to be making work that is impactful. I want to be making work that matters and I don’t always succeed, but it sure feels good when something like ‘One Night in Miami’ does.”
One Night in Miami… is available now on Amazon Prime Video.
Have you subscribed to theGrio’s podcast “Dear Culture”? Download our newest episodes now!
TheGrio is now on Apple TV, Amazon Fire, and Roku. Download theGrio today!
