When Hector “Roots” Lewis got the role of Bob Marley’s drummer, Carlton “Carly” Barrett, he stepped into a fascinating group of people, family members, and actors. His Carlton is the brother of Aston Barrett, who’s played by his son, Aston Barrett Jr. That made Lewis’s co-star the nephew of the character he played — and he told Newsday that it provided invaluable context for him. He described the brothers as being “similar in structure, similar in almost vocal tone,” which provided some very real, in-person research for him.

Lewis has also been candid about how he was cast not because he was an actor, but because he was a musician. In an interview with Television Jamaica’s Daytime Live, he talked about studying his gestures and his facial expressions to help him truly embody the groundbreaking musician, and added that he found one major way that he looked nothing like the man he was playing.

“He had a high shoulder, and I don’t have a high shoulder,” he explained, adding that it took some extreme effort on his part to capture the drummer’s stance and posture. But Lewis also said that part of the challenges was what made it so rewarding: “When you’re honest with art, and when you approach it in a way where, ‘I’m scared, but I’m excited,’ it kind of opens you to going into the dimension and being fully immersed.”