John Legend is stepping into the shoes of Harry Belafonte. The EGOT-winning musician has signed on to play the late entertainer and civil rights icon in The Road Home, Bill Condon‘s ambitious music-driven drama about the political firestorm that followed the creation of Paul Simon‘s classic 1980s album, Graceland.
The film, now shooting in South Africa, dramatizes one of pop history’s notable moral controversies. In the mid-1980s, Simon (played by Johnny Flynn) travels to apartheid South Africa to record with township musicians, producing the beloved, Grammy-winning Graceland — but also igniting an uproar, as the Anti-Apartheid Movement accuses him of violating the United Nations’ cultural boycott of the country. The story unfolds through the perspective of exiled South African trumpeter Hugh Masekela (Thabo Rametsi), who is forced to choose between his mentor, the movement leader Archbishop Trevor Huddleston (Guy Pearce), who declares a boycott of Simon, and his own conviction that the music itself can serve the struggle. Masekela breaks with Huddleston and, together with fellow exile and powerhouse vocalist Miriam “Mama Africa” Makeba (Cynthia Erivo), joins Simon to form the Graceland band, a supergroup designed to take South Africa’s music to the world.
