--- title: Louis Gossett Jr. on Roots and Why We Need Non-Slavery Films description: The star from the original 'Roots' reflects on the groundbreaking show and its new reboot canonical: https://time.com/4346637/louis-gossett-jr-roots-history/ author: Eliana Dockterman article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2016-05-25T19:00:18.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-22T17:48:20.145Z article:section: History og:title: Louis Gossett Jr. on the Original 'Roots' and the Black History That's Yet to Be Filmed og:description: The star from the original 'Roots' reflects on the groundbreaking show and its new reboot og:url: https://time.com/4346637/louis-gossett-jr-roots-history/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt18761221e69ebea0/698894bbe20a8716d7a90f9f/gettyimages-518194550.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 4361 og:image:height: 2453 og:image:alt: Premiere Of Sony Pictures Classics' "Miles Ahead" - Arrivals og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Louis Gossett Jr. on the Original 'Roots' and the Black History That's Yet to Be Filmed twitter:description: The star from the original 'Roots' reflects on the groundbreaking show and its new reboot twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt18761221e69ebea0/698894bbe20a8716d7a90f9f/gettyimages-518194550.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Louis Gossett Jr. on the Original _Roots_ and the Black History That's Yet to Be Filmed > Sponsored content. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription.  by [Eliana Dockterman](https://time.com/author/eliana-dockterman/)  ## Eliana Dockterman Correspondent May 25, 2016 7:00 PM UTC  Louis Gossett Jr. arrives at the premiere of Sony Pictures Classics' "Miles Ahead" at the Writers Guild Theater on March 29, 2016 in Beverly Hills, California. Louis Gossett Jr. arrives at the premiere of Sony Pictures Classics' "Miles Ahead" at the Writers Guild Theater on March 29, 2016 in Beverly Hills, California.Amanda Edwards—WireImage  by [Eliana Dockterman](https://time.com/author/eliana-dockterman/)  ## Eliana Dockterman Correspondent May 25, 2016 7:00 PM UTC It’s been nearly 40 years since Oscar-winner Louis Gossett, Jr. starred as Fiddler in the groundbreaking 1977 miniseries _Roots_. Since, he’s won an Emmy for that role, an Oscar for _An Officer and a Gentleman_ and, most recently, [spoken out](http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/2016-oscars-louis-gossett-jr-870820) about the #OscarsSoWhite controversy on the red carpet. This year, _Roots_ getting a [reboot](http://time.com/3842265/roots-remake-television/) (airing on the History channel, beginning Monday) with another Academy Award winner, Forest Whitaker, as the Fiddler for a new generation. Gossett endorses the new telling of the _Roots_ story, which traces the history of a black family to its African ancestors. “It’s a different audience. There’s a whole lot of young people who are so far removed from the original _Roots_ that it had to be told again,” says Gossett. “Our children have no idea, viscerally I mean, of what really happened.” **MORE:** [Read Daniel D’Addario’s Review of the New _Roots_](http://time.com/4341417/almost-40-years-later-a-miniseries-returns-to-televisions-roots/) Still, while he believes it’s important to revisit the story of Kunta Kinte, Gossett hopes that other black stories will make it to film too. He says that executive producer Mark Wolper asked his advice on rebooting the series, and that while he thought revisiting the source material was a good idea he had hoped that would be a chance for moving the story forward. “I said maybe we should continue the legacy — go into the west and World Wars, et cetera, and bring all of that story about us in America up to date. But I didn’t tell him not to do _Roots,”_ he says. “I was just looking forward to the rest of the story.” (In 1979, [_Roots: The Next Generations_](http://time.com/vault/issue/1979-02-19/page/96/) brought the story as far as 1967; though the sequel was well-received by critics it wasn’t quite as much of a cultural phenomenon as the original had been, and its material is not included in the remake.) Indeed, many actors have [spoken out](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/arts-and-entertainment/wp/2015/02/02/david-oyelowo-of-selma-says-the-oscars-only-reward-on-black-actors-in-subservient-roles-is-he-right/) about the fact that the most prestigious roles for black actors in Hollywood films are usually as slaves. “It’s a business. When _12 Years a Slave_ got that much attention, everyone started to copy that. That story has to be told, but there are a lot more stories to be told than slavery,” says Gossett. Indeed, that legacy of slavery stories largely began with _Roots_, based on Alex Haley’s book of the same name. Unlike predecessors that romanticized the Civil War—like _Gone With the Wind_ did—_Roots_ didn’t shy away from brutality. And, in doing so, it sparked a new wave of conversation about race in America. [_Get your history fix in one place: sign up for the weekly TIME History newsletter_](http://time.com/newsletter) Gossett says [the whipping of Kunta Kinte](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1CpJpGF8lS8) in the original series was the most emotional scene he’s ever filmed in his entire career. Vic Morrow, the late actor who played Ames, apologized before the scene to Gossett and LeVar Burton, who played Kunta Kinte. “All of a sudden, he did this part so fluently. And me as Fiddler, I’m looking at LeVar, who is my new friend, and I also looked at Kunta Kinte, and all of a sudden it morphed back and forth, from LeVar to Kunta Kinte,” Gossett recalls. “All of a sudden it was the realest thing. I knew that the whip was made of felt, but I got very emotional.” **MORE:** [Read TIME’s 1977 _Roots_ Cover Story, Here in the TIME Vault](http://time.com/vault/issue/1977-02-14/page/1/) Gossett says that he ended up improvising a line that captures his feelings about the whole project. The famous penultimate lines of the scene—”What you care what that white man call you? Make you say ‘Toby’? What you care? You know who you be, Kunta. That’s who you always be, Kunta Kinte”—were originally also the end of that script. “For some emotional reason, I looked up at Vic, and I looked up at the whole scene, and I said, ‘There’s gonna be another day. You hear me? There’s gonna be another day,'” Gossett says. “Alex \[Haley\] was on the set, and he said, ‘It was very prophetic and I wish that I had written it that way.'” ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/4346637/louis-gossett-jr-roots-history/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/4346637/louis-gossett-jr-roots-history/"},"headline":"Louis Gossett Jr. on the Original Roots and the Black History That's Yet to Be Filmed","datePublished":"2016-05-25T19:00:18.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-22T17:48:20.145Z","description":"The star played Fiddler on the 1977 miniseries Roots","url":"https://time.com/4346637/louis-gossett-jr-roots-history/","keywords":["Television"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt18761221e69ebea0/698894bbe20a8716d7a90f9f/gettyimages-518194550.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Eliana Dockterman","jobTitle":"Correspondent","url":"https://time.com/author/eliana-dockterman/"}],"articleSection":"History","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt18761221e69ebea0/698894bbe20a8716d7a90f9f/gettyimages-518194550.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"Premiere Of Sony Pictures Classics' \"Miles Ahead\" - Arrivals","caption":"Premiere Of Sony Pictures Classics' \"Miles Ahead\" - Arrivals","creditText":"Amanda Edwards—WireImage","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/history/","name":"History"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/4346637/louis-gossett-jr-roots-history/","name":"Louis Gossett Jr. on the Original Roots and the Black History That's Yet to Be Filmed"}}]}] ```