Blinn and Margulies spent months tinkering with different flashback versions of the story. “We went around and around, and finally I went to Stan and I said, ‘This is a lecture—very boring,’” Blinn said. “I understand all of the good intentions but I don’t think we are going to keep an audience.”5 Margulies shared Blinn’s concerns. “We finally, one day, looked at each other and said, ‘It’s terrible—just fucking awful,’” Margulies recalled. “And in the course of that day we said, ‘What would happen if we took Alex out of the story,’ and what happened was suddenly the story became crystal clear. . . . The strength of the story in terms of television was the Kunta Kinte story . . . which had never been seen nor ever been done.”6 Margulies and Blinn described being “seduced” by Haley’s storytelling and not realizing until Haley submitted more chapters that his book’s narrative was chronological and did not use flashbacks.7 “The minute we dropped Alex,” Margulies concluded, “the thing took off like a rocket.”8 Margulies still had to explain this decision to Haley, who had expected to play a significant role as a character and narrator when Roots came to the screen. “The reason we are dropping you is that you just can’t stand up to Kunta Kinte,” Margulies told Haley. “Kinte is bigger than you are. And anytime we take away from Kunta Kinte is lost time.”9
This decision made the casting of Kunta Kinte crucial to the success of Roots. Veteran casting director Lynn Stalmaster sought out young Hollywood talent and contacted New York University, Northwestern University, the University of Southern California, the University of California at Los Angeles, and other top theater programs to find an actor to portray Haley’s ancestor. “We wanted the audience to completely become involved with Kunta Kinte, as someone they didn’t know, a brand-new experience,” Stalmaster recalled.10 This description echoed Haley’s desire for readers to identify with Kunta as a baby and follow his life as a free young man before being enslaved. The crucial difference for the television production, however, was that this identification would have to be mapped onto a specific actor. Before audiences could meet Kunta Kinte, Stalmaster had to find an actor that could get the approval of Wolper, Margulies, director David Greene, and various ABC executives. Stalmaster auditioned dozens of young actors for the role but struggled to find someone on whom all of the decision makers could agree.
LeVar Burton heard the casting announcement in class as a sophomore at the University of Southern California (USC). Burton was born in 1957 in West Germany, where his father was stationed as a photographer in the US Army. He moved to Sacramento, California, with his mother after his parents separated when he was three. In his early teens Burton planned to become a priest and entered a Catholic seminary. After deciding that his passion was to be an actor, he left the seminary and earned a drama scholarship to USC.
Burton and two other actors, Hilly Hicks and Ernest Thomas, were called back for screen tests in March 1976.11 Hicks and Thomas were several years older than Burton and had more professional acting experience. The nineteen-year-old Burton’s largest role was in a campus production of Oklahoma!, where he played Ali Hakim, the Persian peddler. Burton had never been on a sound stage or performed in front of a film camera, but if he was nervous in his Roots audition it did not show. He was the “coolest cat I have ever seen in my life,” Margulies recalled. “I mean, first we thought well maybe he is stoned, maybe he doesn’t understand that he is testing for the part. We couldn’t understand how anybody could be that calm and collected. But that’s LeVar.”12 As Burton’s audition tape went back and forth between ABC executives in New York and Los Angeles, network executives were nervous about taking a chance on the young and inexperienced black actor. Margulies said ABC worried that Burton looked “too African.” “We wanted someone who is physically more attractive,” the network told Margulies regarding Burton. “He’s got those thick African lips.”13 This speaks to the challenge of casting Roots in an industry and a country where racist ideals of beauty were deeply ingrained. Margulies, Wolper, and ABC executives agreed that Roots had the potential to be commercially successful, but they also shared concerns about finding black actors who would not make white audiences or themselves uncomfortable.
Margulies and Wolper arranged for Burton to meet with ABC executives in person to try to overcome their concerns. “I had seen LeVar’s test, which I didn’t like very much,” ABC’s Brandon Stoddard said. “He looked great, but the test was not very good. . . . He came into my office with David and Stan . . . and he was just so impressive in person. He was so Kunta Kinte—the energy, the feeling, the power, the positiveness of LeVar—that we said ok.”14 Everyone recognized that Burton’s performance as Kunta Kinte would be critical to the success of Roots. “If the audiences did not like and sympathize with Kunta Kinte, you could throw the rest of the series out the window because nobody was going to be watching,” Margulies said.15 David Greene, who was tapped to direct the opening episodes of Roots after a successful turn on the hit miniseries Rich Man, Poor Man (1976), was confident he could help Burton deliver a good performance but reflected that “the graveyard is built with directors who said they can make a star of this kid.”16
To ensure that white viewers would watch Roots, the producers and network sought out established television stars to cast in the white roles. “The problem with Roots was that there had never been a successful black drama in the history of television,” Stoddard recalled. “I was terrified. I thought what we’ll do is we’ll get big heavyweight white actors and build around them. . . . We were scared no one would come to the party.”17 Casting director Lynn Stalmaster initially lobbied to cast less famous actors but came around to see the logic of looking for television names. “I generally prefer to cast actors who are not well known . . . specifically in a project like this where you have a certain truth and you don’t want any distractions,” Stalmaster said. “I totally empathize with the network wanting to have some people to publicize, so that an audience . . . might say, ‘Oh, I want to see Chuck Conners, I want to see Lorne Greene’ and then discover that they are caught up in this original concept and perhaps learning something in the process.”18 Writer Bill Blinn felt these familiar white actors would help white viewers work through a range of emotions, “not just unrelenting white guilt, we were dealing with white insecurity, white problems, white flaws.” Blinn argued that without these points of identification “it would be too easy for the white guy sitting in his chair at home to say, ‘I’d never do that, I’d never be that mean to another human being. I wouldn’t be [the overseer character] Vic Morrow beating that kid to death just to say a new name. I’d never do that.’ Fine, would you be the Robert Reed character? Would you be the Sandy Duncan character? . . . Well, in that case you would have been part of the problem.”19 A viewer from Placerville, California, was among those who found this casting strategy successful. “I think it was particularly effective to have had these characters played by usually well liked and well known actors,” she wrote. “Some of my favorites were among them, but for eight days they were intolerable to me.”20
Figure 8. LeVar Burton with director David Greene on the set of Roots. ABC Photo Archives/Getty Images.
In discussing the casting for Roots, the producers were explicit in stating that the series had to appeal to white viewers in order to be a commercial success. Whereas the book version of Roots has no major white characters, this was never seriously considered as an option for the television series. David Wolper argued that having white “television names” in Roots was the only way to ensure that it would not be pigeonholed as a black show. “If people perceive Roots to be a black history show—nobody is going to watch it,” Wolper said. “If they say, ‘Let me see, there are no names in it, a lot of black actors and there are no whites’ . . . it looks like it’s going to be a black journal, it’s all going to be blacks telling about their history, if it was perceived like that, Roots would have been a disaster from a ratings standpoint.”21 A similar logic extended to the casting of black roles.
“It was very important that we used black actors that are not perceived to be artsy-craftsy,” Wolper said. “We tried to get black actors that are more accepted to the white audience. . . . Leslie Uggams is safe, Richard Roundtree is safe, Ben Vereen is safe, so all are safe.”22 For Wolper and the network, these casting decisions were simple arithmetic. “Remember the television audience is only 10 percent black and 90 percent white,” Wolper said after Roots’s record-breaking run. “So if we do the show for blacks and every black in America watches, it is a disaster—a total disaster.”23 Wolper was a television veteran who had pitched and developed programs for two decades before Roots. He understood the logics of race and demographics that governed Hollywood as well as anyone. There was never a possibility that Roots would be broadcast on one of the three networks while being marketed primarily to black audiences. Haley also shared these commercial aspirations of his family story and always intended for his project to be marketed to the largest possible audience. Rather than arguing over whether Wolper and ABC whitewashed Roots, as some critics charged, it is more productive to see Roots in the context of the racial realities of network television in this era.
However much the producers geared Roots to the perceived preferences of white viewers, the series still promised to be a once-in-a-generation opportunity for black actors. The Roots casting call created a buzz among black performers in the spring of 1976, leaving casting director Lynn Stalmaster with an overflowing folder of headshots and résumés. After casting Burton as the young Kunta Kinte, the producers looked for black actors whom audiences would recognize. The producers’ wish list featured dozens of prominent black actors and celebrities (mostly men), including Muhammad Ali, Bill Cosby, Sammy Davis Jr., Redd Foxx, Isaac Hayes, Sidney Poitier, Richard Pryor, Diana Ross, Billy Dee Williams, and Flip Wilson.24 The actors who earned the major roles in Roots each had impressive acting credits. Louis Gossett Jr., who played Fiddler, a character who mentors Kunta Kinte, was a veteran of New York’s esteemed Negro Ensemble Company and had a number of Broadway, television, and film credits.25 John Amos, who played the older Kunta Kinte, had starred as the father on Good Times before quitting the Norman Lear–produced show when it started focusing on the character J.J. and his catchphrase, “Dy-no-mite.”26 Jamaican-born actress Madge Sinclair, who played Belle, a character who marries Kunta Kinte and gives birth to Kizzy, had appeared in the film Leadbelly (1976) and had had small roles in several television series. Leslie Uggams, who played Kizzy, had won a Tony Award for her role in Hallelujah, Baby! (1968) and had hosted her own television variety show, The Leslie Uggams Show, in 1969. Richard Roundtree, who portrayed Kizzy’s love interest, was famous from the Shaft films and television series (1971–74), while Ben Vereen, who played Kizzy’s son Chicken George, was a Broadway star and Tony Award winner for Pippin (1973).
Figure 9. Louis Gosset Jr. and LeVar Burton filming a scene from Roots in Savannah, Georgia. ABC Photo Archives/Getty Images
Roots was more than just another acting credit and paycheck for these actors. The series gave them an opportunity to represent black history in ways that had been missing in their own school experiences. “It gave us a sense of pride,” Leslie Uggams said. “The way we had been depicted. We were just slaves on a plantation. No one knew where we came from and how did we get there. Alex wrote this story of people who were kings and queens and had a beautiful life . . . [and were] taken away to another country, denied speaking their own language, names.”27 Ben Vereen recalled, “When I was growing up, there was only a paragraph [in school textbooks]. You were slaves and Lincoln freed you.”28 John Amos, who was one of the first students to integrate schools in East Orange, New Jersey, also remembered his school textbooks being derogatory about Africa and Africans. “The only reference made to Africa in my childhood history books was that it was shaped like a pork chop and inhabited by savages,” Amos said. “So it was a tremendous vindication for me to play that character and help to rectify some of those stereotypes.”29 Burton felt Roots exposed a new side of the history of slavery. “In every history unit I ever had in school, slavery was always referred to as an economic institution,” Burton said. “It was an economic engine, upon which this country was built. The human cost was never part of that module in school. We got schooled through Roots of the human cost of that equation.”30 While the black freedom struggle made the histories of African Americans and Africa more visible on college campuses, it took years for new scholarship to trickle down to high school textbooks.31
When the cast and crew traveled to Savannah, Georgia, to film the first episode in April 1976, they knew Roots had the potential to be groundbreaking television. Alex Haley’s frequent presence on the set contributed to the sense that Roots would be a special job. The producers arranged for Haley to talk about Roots to the cast and crew at their hotel the night before filming began. Haley’s Roots would not be published for another four months, so for many of the cast and crew this was their first time hearing Haley tell his story. “Alex brought such validity to what we were doing, this was his family story,” Burton recalled.32 Georg Stanford Brown, who played Haley’s great-grandfather Tom Hardy, said, “We sat around Haley like children, he was our father.”33 Haley was well suited for this role of on-set mentor, sage, and consultant. Several actors sought Haley out to ask questions about different characters. “He was able to tell us little details to help us in performance,” Brown remembered. “We always had Alex to turn to.”34 Ebou Manga, the Gambian student who had facilitated Haley’s successful research trips to Africa, was also on the set to offer the actors tips on Mandinka language and culture.35 In addition to answering questions about the characters, Haley shared galley copies of Roots with some actors. “Alex came to my hotel room and he brought me a galleys copy [of Roots], and he had placed a bookmark in the section of the book that began Kunta Kinte’s Middle Passage,” Burton recalled. “That was the first time I had a chance to read any of the novel. . . . It was perfect, it was just what I needed to go into those days’ filming.”36 While several aspects of Haley’s family genealogy did not stand up to the scrutiny of journalists and academics, his skill as a storyteller gave the Roots cast and crew a sense they were bringing a powerful story to television. This sense of seriousness, commitment, and purpose was ultimately more important than historical accuracy in creating a memorable television miniseries.
Bringing Haley’s book to the screen presented the producers with several challenges. The first was how to make the opening scenes, set in the Gambia in the 1760s, appear realistic. The series’ budget of over $6 million was large by television standards but small compared to a film’s. In designing the sets and costumes the producers tried to avoid stereotyped images of Africa in films like Tarzan or National Geographic–style documentaries. To portray an image of Africa that would be true to Haley’s book, the producers relied on the author’s research on eighteenth-century village life and photographs from his recent trips to the Gambia. While searching out potential filming locations, the producers unexpectedly found the Oyotunji African Village near Savannah (the Oyotunji African Village later moved to Sheldon, South Carolina). Dozens of African Americans who were interested in learning, practicing, and teaching West African culture lived in the village. “They knew a lot because they had studied a lot,” director David Greene said. “So we brought them to Savannah and put them up with us in the Ramada Inn.” Several members of the Oyotunji African Village appeared as dancers or served as consultants for the Africa section of Roots. “We were so lucky, we fell into all of this really authentic African information, which we used,” Greene said.37 As the Oyotunji African Village suggests, many black Americans had been interested in connecting with African culture and history long before Roots and did not see the book or the television miniseries as educational in the way that Haley supposed.38
Figure 10. Alex Haley holds a galleys copy of Roots on the set in Savannah, Georgia. ABC Photo Archives/Getty Images.
Figure 11. LeVar
Burton and Alex Haley. ABC Photo Archives/Getty Images.
As producers tried to bring an “authentic” version of Gambian village life to television, their biggest challenge was whether actresses could be shown with bare breasts. When ABC reviewed the scripts for the African and slave ship sections of Roots, Tom Kersey, director of the network’s office of Standards and Practices, explained that his office was granting Roots greater liberties than other ABC programs. “In the interest of maximizing a sense of authenticity that we expect to contribute meaningfully to the dramatic and historical value of this unique project, we will permit certain exceptions to our general policies,” Kersey wrote. “Surely all parties involved share the conviction that nothing about this production should appear exploitative, particularly with regard to the handling of sex and nudity. Through careful handling this sensitive material will be judged not as sensational programming for television, but as a necessary and appropriate ingredient to the story we are telling. Much will depend upon the actual direction and execution of the scenes.” Kersey emphasized that the producers would have to walk a fine line between authenticity and what could be shown on television. “You have told us that Mandinka women were at least partially nude in their customary mode of attire,” Kersey told Margulies. “In the interest of authenticity, portrayal of breast nudity among women will be allowed in scenes occurring in Africa and on the slave ship, subject to certain conditions.” The Standards and Practices director went on to offer specific suggestions regarding camera positioning and casting to ensure compliance. “In the African locales, please limit the exposure of nude breasts to long-range shots,” Kersey wrote. “Close-ups must be shot from the shoulder level or above. In casting these scenes, we ask that you not employ actresses whose physical presence would make them a distracting feature in themselves.”39 The Roots producers heeded these suggestions. “The women can be bare breasted [but] we must observe the long shot convention,” Margulies reported to Wolper after consulting with Standards and Practices. “The question of bare breasts also relates to the actress. We should not use an obvious sex symbol—a Lola Falana—as one of our nude ladies. . . . When Fanta is being chased about the deck, we must be careful to avoid any unnecessary bobbing of the bare breasts. Since [the character] is a 16-year-old-girl, we should cast someone with small, firm bosoms. Again, the bare breast status is okay as long as it isn’t the main purpose of the scene.”40 ABC’s Brandon Stoddard later joked that at some points there were four men in a room debating the issue before the network reviewer, who finally said, “We’ll compromise and you can have an A bra, no closer than 30 feet.”41
Making Roots Page 11