Photo: Taylor Hill/Getty
The miniseries, based on Alex Haley’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, told the sweeping story of Kunta’s horrific experience in Colonial America, encompassing generations of his descendants in the centuries to come. It aired across eight consecutive nights, beginning on Jan. 23, 1977.
Ahead of the miniseries' 45th anniversary, Burton spoke with PEOPLE aboutRoots. He shares his memories of stepping onto the set with a legendary ensemble cast, howRootsopened the door for his eclectic career and where he seesRootsfitting into today’s social and political landscape all these years later.
PUTTING DOWNROOTS
Burton filmedRootsin Savannah, Georgia, and Los Angeles in the spring and summer of 1976. While he says he experienced nerves during his audition, his first day on set “was more inspiring than it was intimidating.”
“I felt like I knew who this kid was, so intimately well. That’s all I focused on,” he explains. “All I needed to do was play this part. And from the very first moment I read the first set of sides, I knew, I knew who Kunta was, inside and out. And that never wavered for me. Never.”
ABC/Getty
It didn’t hurt, of course, that on his “very first day as a professional actor … my very first scene,Cicely Tysonplayed my mother.Maya Angelouplayed my grandmother. I was in the presence of royalty.”
“They treated me like a peer, a young peer, which was great for me because they all schooled me,” he continues. “Everything I know about the professional work ethic of an actor, I learned onRootsfrom Lou Gossett, from Maya Angelou, from Cicely Tyson, from Moses Gunn, from Hari Rhodes, from Ji-Tu Cumbuka. I was the kid. They were the vets, and they took me under their wing.”
Nearly three months later, after filming had wrapped, Burton says, “I did not want to let the character go. … The experience was so enlivening for me. It’s like I found my place in the world.”
EMBRACING A PHENOMENON
“They were very nervous about how the series would perform,” he says. “If it failed, because nobody wanted to watch a show starring Black people as the heroes and white people as the villains,how would it play in Poughkeepsie?”
“And as it turned out, that was the decision that really changed the course of television history [when America got its first taste of binge-watching],” he adds.
Rootswon nine of the 37 Emmys for which it was nominated and attracted an audience of more than 255 million, with its final night still standing as the second-most-watched finale in U.S. television history.
For Burton personally, the impact ofRoots' unheralded success “came much quicker than I ever anticipated.”
He emphasizes, “Again, I was a sophomore. My plan was to finish my Bachelor of Fine Arts degree and move to New York and hustle my way on to the stage. Television and film acting were not in my plan.”
Instead, he was now a household name — or at least a newly familiar face.
“There was a moment on the morning after night two,” he recalls. “I was running an errand for my mom at the supermarket, and I got recognized for the first time. That was a trip.”
READINGTHE ROOM
So, after five years of steady work as an actor, he was offered a new role in 1983 that “made perfect sense”:Reading Rainbow.
“When I was presented a few years later with the idea of using the medium of television to steer children back in the direction of literature and the written word during the summer months, I thought, ‘Yeah, that makes sense to me,'” he explains. “Reading Rainbowwas a good idea, a good use of the television airwaves and a perfectly legitimate way for me to tell stories to perhaps the most important audience for all of us.”
Never miss a story — sign up forPEOPLE’s free weekly newsletterto get the biggest news of the week delivered to your inbox every Friday.
PBS/Courtesy Everett
RootsandReading Rainboware just two of the roles for which Burton is stopped on the street. (Star Trek: The Next Generation,Communityand his upcoming turn as thehost of the Scripps National Spelling Beeare a few of his credits.) A throughline of education and representation runs across many of the projects he chooses.
And in a moment where America is grappling with fierce arguments over those very topics, including the culture clash surroundingCritical Race Theory, Burton tells PEOPLE, “I don’t grapple at all. The work is not done. The beat goes on.”
He affirms, “I do consider myself to be a social justice warrior. And as such, I am acutely aware that we are in the midst of an ongoing battle. America’s ascendancy and her current moment, where she is teetering in the balance, has always been a journey of progress and retrenchment. So this is nothing new, is my point.”
“We come here again and again, and I think each time we get the message out a little bit more. We are able to spread that sense of empathy,” Burton continues. “However, at its very core, this has always been America. I’m of the generation that we’re not ducking down. We’re certainly not going away. This is our country as well. Our ancestors fought, bled, died … That’s why representation matters so much. Because this is a country that is made up of diverse stories. And to pretend that they aren’t is really foolish.”
Jemal Countess/Getty
LEAVING A LEGACY
With the wisdom that accompanies his “elder” status, he’s able to look back and see howRoots’ role in U.S. culture — its impact on storytelling and shaping people’s views of their fellow Americans — has evolved over nearly five decades.
“Even though it was really widely embraced — they used to show it every year on television and schools would show it as part of their history classes — I think the real work thatRootsdid took time,” he says. “You can measure the viewership in the overnights, but you can’t measure the depth to which people’s hearts and minds got changed and then were able to pass that on to succeeding generations, in their own families.”
As for his ownRootsfamily, Burton admits it’s been difficult to stay in touch with such a large ensemble over the years but to mark this milestone anniversary, he has a thought: “I wish we had aRootsgroup text. That would be awesome,” he muses. “Maybe we’ll start one. That’s how we celebrate the 45th — start aRootsgroup chat.”
source: people.com
