Original subtitles

[EASY LISTENING MUSIC]

LEVAR BURTON: When I auditioned for the role of Kunta Kinte,

I knew from my very first exposure to the text

that I could play this character.

I felt like I knew this kid.

And I really believe that my preparation

was being Black in America.

I could absolutely relate to the joys and the sorrow

of that kid's existence.

Emotionally, there were times that were really difficult.

I will never forget that Alex brought

me a galley's copy of "Roots" right before we started

shooting the scenes that took place

during the Middle Passage, the scenes in the hold of the ship.

And I sort of devoured that section of the book.

And we shot for three days in that set.

I remember the beginning, and I remember the third day.

But the middle, day two, I'm pretty hazy about.

Now I interpreted that experience

as being one where I checked out the personality of LeVar,

was relieved momentarily by the ancestors

coming in and protecting my psyche,

the pain of recreating--

[EXHALES] --that kind of experience.

That kind of ordeal was such that, in the telling

of the story, I required assistance from a--

I will say it-- a supernatural force.

It's the only way I can explain it.

Because I just don't remember.

I see the footage, and I know I was there.

But I have no recollection of the moments spent

in this body in the pursuit of those aspects

of the storytelling.

Now maybe I'm grasping at straws,

but it's the only way I know how to put it into context

that makes sense for me.

And I was very much aware of the presence of others

when we were shooting various aspects of that.

Another time, when I had that sense that I was not alone

in the moment, was the end of hour 4,

when Kunta was being whipped and trying to--

they were trying to whip him into submission to accept

this new name of Toby.

[SCREAMING]

James.

[PANTING]

He got a name?

He is Toby.

[PANTING]

I want to hear you say it.

Your name is Toby.

You're going to learn to say your name.

Let me hear you say it.

What's your name?

[PANTING] Kunta.

Kunta Kinte.

I know I wasn't alone in that moment.

Because at the beginning, when I read that scene,

I was very excited.

I-- you know, I was young.

I was 19, and I was really eager to do all of my own stunts.

And I thought, okay, this is going

to be a really fun and interesting scene.

When it came time to shoot that scene,

and I stood on top of that apple box--

the sort of crates that I was standing on-- and with my back

to this man with the whip in his hand, all of a sudden,

I was terrified that the tip of the whip

is moving at 120 miles an hour.

And his job was to wrap the whip around my body, which

as it turns out, he was very proficient at.

But I did not have any sort of level of trust in this man

that he was as good as they said he was.

So I was jumping before the lash ever got to me.

And so we had to make a new plan.

And they brought him back a couple of days later,

scheduled the scene to be shot in the afternoon,

and I spent the entire morning with this man,

with him showing me just how much control

he had over that weapon.

And in that communication, I developed the trust

I needed to turn my back on him and let him do what he did,

so that I could do effectively what I was supposed

to do in the story.

Trust is an essential factor for the successful communication

that needs to happen between human beings,

especially in an instance of storytelling.

We have to be able to trust one another.

We have to trust the source, and we

have to trust that the receptacle, the receiving end,

is also there intact, alive, and paying attention.

[MELANCHOLIC MUSIC]

[GASPING]

Shh.

[MELANCHOLIC MUSIC]

Don't you care what the White man call you.

Make you say Toby.

What you care?

You know who you be.

Kunta.

It's who you always be.

LEVAR BURTON: What's remarkable, to me, about that scene

is the part of that scene that was unscripted.

When they cut Kunta down, and Fiddler comes to minister

to his wounds, it was not written

in the script that Fiddler says, "Don't you worry,

Kunta Kinte, about what that White man call you.

There's going to be another day."

That was not scripted.

That was Lou Gossett being in the moment

and responding from this place of humanity that lived inside

of himself responding to the needs of a young boy battered

and broken by the whip.

And he was trying to restore his spirit by reinforcing,

"You know who you are.

What they call you does not matter.

Because you know your name is Kunta."

That's the power of storytelling,

of being alive and present in the moment

and open to the unknown to what happens next.

[EASY LISTENING MUSIC]

"Roots" was a watershed moment in--

certainly in entertainment history and television history.

It was a shared experience.

It was back in the day when there were only three

channels and PBS, really.

We didn't have the plethora of choices

that we currently enjoy for our entertainment

in absorbing stories through popular culture.

I think one of the things that really stands out

for me about "Roots" and its impact

is that the story of slavery in America

had never been told from the point of view of the Africans

before.

This was a new take on a tale that everyone

thought they knew.

America, up until "Roots" had been

able to tell itself the story that slavery

was this necessary economic engine that

enabled America to rise to the world power that it became--

what we never took into account before was

the suffering inflicted, was the horrors enacted,

was the injustice that was so much a part of that system.

People will say all the time in response

when I talk about the horrors of slavery, yes,

but Africans had slaves, too.

Well, you can "what about" me till you are blue in the face,

but you will never convince me that there

was a system of slavery anywhere else,

except for the Western hemisphere that was based

on the color of one's skin.

That the color of one's skin, that arbitrary uncontrollable

factor in one's life, subjugated them to a life of enslavement.

And that there was no humanity being

recognized by the enslavers of the enslaved.

So "Roots was an epiphany for America.

Because we were finally exposed to the aspect of the story

that was about the suffering of the human cost of slavery.

We'd never thought about it before.

We were-- as a nation, we were content to exist

in this sort of idyllic fantasy about the Antebellum South,

and how noble and bold and honorable it was.

Now, I'm not saying it wasn't any of those things,

but it's important to acknowledge

the context in which you're able to discern those things

as a part of that period.

Right?

If you want to think of the Confederacy

as this noble institution, be my guest.

But you cannot do it in my presence without the inclusion

of the rest of the story.

I'll fight you tooth and nail on that.

So "Roots" was really, I think, it was

an essential moment in America.

And I think that there is a through line that

goes from the end of the Civil War, Reconstruction, the Great

Migration of populations of Black people from the South

to the North and the West, of which my family is a part.

The Civil Rights Movement in the '60s, "Roots" in the '70s,

and Barack Obama gets elected.

You remove one of those--

I see them as links in a chain.

Remove one of those links, and the whole thing falls apart.

So "Roots," I see as an important moment

in the history of America.

Because it was an opportunity for us

to learn about our own story in a way

we had ignored previously.