Is representing a very iconic character and i know through reading that it has been said i can just read the page he didnt say this but i can just read the script and i can connect to it in my way without the baggage and things like that what i sense from the tweets accent or a is that africanamericans want someone who understands Harriet Tubman from an intimate level and from. A lyrical and painful ancestral memory not just im going to take that heart i can i can interpret this part they want almost someone that is being driven i want them to have a resume that says even beyond a resume into their marriage they want someone who actually feels the ancestrial presence of a Harriet Tubman put in the job heres something that i saw. And tony i hear you there but i want to bring in this person i think would agree and i saw you nodding your head. As well so this is actual on twitter who says the problem isnt so much that shes british but that she has said and supported things in the past that show she doesnt understand support or respect black americans or their culture she was the wrong choice antonio your thoughts let me say 2 parts the 1st part is these actors that you brought up playing different roles i dont know if you have a history of them saying anything disrespectful about the countries or tribes they were representing but in addition its a hollywood financing meant that when you get a big star like Forrest Whitaker or will smith or Morgan Freeman it could lead to financing the film cynthia revolt doesnt even have the history to be the lead role in this film im saying she doesnt have this strong backing in nigeria she doesnt have this great backing of british and she barely has a film history in america so you dont have that same need for her to play the lead role there are great africanamerican women that did not get a chance here in america and i would love to see who they actually auditioned let me play i dont think i think. That i was going to say i agree with you in terms of the law but if shes not respectful of this you have respected that culture im not a stew the history of where she is whether characters come from and whether that the essence of the people who come from then youre right she shouldnt be playing that role but as an artist. At the moment i mean i dont i dont. Think hollywood were having this discussion within a space that we did not create for ourselves hollywood creates the space right they decide through their mode of production as kellner would say hes a media scholar he says they decide who puts the scripts up what scripts are what they get to represent and most of the scripts that we get represent the dominant cultures narrative the ones that dont are usually independent films so if this is a larger film production. Hollywood doesnt care who plays the part as long as finances come in so were arguing about a number of Different Levels one were arguing about the disrespect that cynthia allegedly had for african or has for africanamericans 2 were arguing in a space about one another in the diaspora. That we havent created for ourselves because in that to ality yes we do play parts across the spectrum it is about getting to know one another were talking from a place of stereotypes we havent really had conversations with one another to determine how we feel about one another and the roles that exist for us to play if we and this is if you do that then. We would realize that there are multiple stories and that we can then share how to depict those stories and with whom i tell you this is my only and not only critique my only critique of that point is where in america talking about roles in american is not simply a real and in isolation we see daniel kalu youre playing fred hampton we see more of the play by david all along and what we dont see is a critical analysis not only you know who else got to audition for these roles but also who are these people and what is their lineage so we would never accept a white person playing Harriet Tubman for whatever a multitude of reasons appearance lineage Everything Else but we dont want to ask that question about somebody who is it well we need to know more in black this is not black in america and its not a lot across the globe and tony im not let me just ask people who are not nigerian the info is one of the tribes in nigeria and i had to speak of a who plays roles where Denzel Washington played in much ado about nothing that Kenneth Branagh i think in the eightys or ninetys he didnt write british accent he he just you know worked his way through that i remember that. It was a slightly odd so here you have all these shakespearean. Activists and you have them and he was there and i watch it and i said you know i like to think i know what it was and how i can and brits yeah i mean together and bringing whatever they had makes us i think we have opportunity here were missing because were getting stuck in the name calling so i dont really know. Right and im going to fight of this conversation and i hear you there because some of the earlier tweets i read where clearly from people who were descendants of slaves in america this is the other side here a few tweets from africans and joe black says weve had africanamericans playing nelson as weve mentioned and winnie for years let me not hear one peep from one of them about that shes a great actor and the trailer rocks i love it another person also african writing in saying i find this so strange if you think of how americans have appropriated other people stories from havent had a Morgan Freeman and Terrence Howard playing mandela will smith playing dr bennett almost washington playing steve biko don cheadle in hotel rwanda the list is endless so weve mentioned those names you saw the pictures there but im interested because you were in hotel rwanda with don tito with these conversations happening then and not do you think this is all aggression that were now having them not you know i dont remember having those conversations directly with with dont know anybody like im not sure the conversation was had outside of i know subsequently with various. Costings of various people playing mandela there has been a conversation and the people playing Winnie Mandela there has been a conversation but i you know i think the most important thing is that. When i was in say hotel rwanda there was a definitely a community and definitely a gathering to tell this to the story and i pulled out was the most important thing and i know as an advocate myself i did not feel that don cheadle couldnt play that character or shouldnt play that character but me the most important thing was was that he had. The depth and the honesty to really reach into the should manage that character and he did that time tacitly and it was a gentleman to the core and im with you. And i think that was the most important thing. And i did it in american. Yeah and i just heard back again i pushed back a i have said the king of a condo as an africanamerican so what exactly exactly i mean you know so what are you going to do about it well thats not a real country because i dont think were talking about hollywood hot you know were not talking about the glitzy hollywood is the what is what is structuring this entire conversation how we know this i know what yesterday officers who started a conversation were structuring this conversation africanamericans have decided to make make it clear that theres a bigger narrative going on and the reality is that you need people that are in most positions in those roles that would make tweaks like like like a revolt. Let me Say Something with you because we have an ad that. I want to hear from an africanamerican actor who also was part of this conversation back in 2017 samuel l. Jackson spoke on hot 97 of Radio Station its a deep deep deep conversation but heres a little a little slice of it so you can hear his perspective have a look the thing in my mind is i know the Young Brothers in the movie and hes british so there are a lot of British Black british actors that were out of time. So i tend to wonder what would that movie have been when an american brother really stands that in a way because i mean daniel grew up going to country where you know theyve been in a recent. You know britain only about like real white people rest them. So what would a brother from america have made of that. And im sure the director helped and you know some things are universal but everything. So antonio keeping in mind what sam jackson said there i want to share this on twitter from black state of america who say black citizens of other countries can empathize empathize but never understand afro descendents experiences any more than we can fully understand their experiences we have connected heritage and spiritual ancestors but our lives are very different especially inside of america so what do you make of this week because it kind of sounds like what sam was saying in that clip there that unless youve had that lived experience you can actually bring it to the role let me say this just to everybody around the around the globe even in america the theyre watching this can understand recent report comes out in los angeles a color of what they actually break out africans from native blacks and one of the 1st reports to be done like this was done by the Federal Reserve along with several economists one being said he dared and what you saw is that the middle nigerian family in los angeles is worth about 140000. 00 heart almost 70000. 00 of his liquid the middle native like them in los angeles is what 200. 00 and what were not dealing with is not only the fact that they have this well which is which puts them on par with White America in many ways but also where does it come from now you come back to what Samuel Jackson was saying his last his most important there or our point was that they had in a rational dating for a 100 years understand during those years we had jim crow and red lining its not just about being black in mel it is about lineage its about the narrative of what we went through and the fact that weve been locked out of being american for so long and now as we push through all of a sudden we want to let you blackness but not discuss what that means get i want to play one more clip because i found this came on one of my colleagues al jazeera found this clip today and sent me the link to it its a story about how interest alva got his role on the wire have a huge thing in baltimore for a very long time this is a remarkable story thank you to complex media for allowing us to pay this clip this is how it. Yes but his wairau. Alexa fogel was a carson directed i was really into scene you 10 and she met me and she said i love you i got to bring you into this whole question but the problem is me you can tell me from east london that want to walk in you got to talk which x. And you live in brooklyn right you got sit in a barbershop talk all day i was ok. So my 1st additional moten name. I had to just pretend shes outside the door shes likely to go with it hey harry is it just doubling down or so i said and i did my 1st edition david great great. Assume i came can you see my African American simply kind of fear yes have you ever failed an american accent to get out all the all the time you know you do you know its its you know how do you not fake an american accent you get to try that embody the humanity of the people im like i get the discussion and i get that the payment of all of this young lady playing tom and im disrespecting africanamerican up to america i think from an artistic want to do as an artist says and as a knight so then i think you want to be out and compass everything and everything and i dont understand i just i think African Americans going to die in the sense of slavery i understand where that comes from soup because. In the one sense hollywood has let people of color out of 00000 of the discussion and so yes they are fighting for that place i get that but im not an artistic sense. I dont think that we as obvious should be able to play this and as long as we can embody those characters and true of this unit or otherwise tell you console me that any american should play an operative well in this interview is that i think theres i was there i think a city as well you know when you have roles for africanamerican man. And you think you need 7 white males have 7 times those roles so youre talking about scarcity so i understand very much what antonio is saying in terms of as an african a africanamerican man or a person their unique. Experiences that have occurred here that have not occurred elsewhere even though i myself come from descendants of slaves in barbados colonization resulted in africans being treated horribly and so we all have a story of pain and suffering and oppression that continues to this day so for Samuel Jackson to say british blasted omarion ways for hundreds of years thats kind of oversimplifying the issue right black brits are suffering you have the winbush issue no where people who came from the caribbean to work in britain no longer have papers because the British Government decided to throw and i think. They have to do when i work right so weve had these horrible experiences throughout the diaspora we have got to come to a point where we see this as how do we work with what we know how do we work with this scarcity that we currently have to make it abundant. Within the scarcity were talking about their city antonio when we talk about scarcity i want to bring this to you because this is a former guest of the show this is talib kweli who tweeted august 6th this is inexcusable inexcusable you should be ashamed of yourselves for creating a hate cult that leads to antiblack tweets like this and he tags you in this tweet here would you say to people that say this is anti immigration rhetoric and this is antiblack rhetoric that you guys should have never put something on the screen. Voters black people in america