The genial side of an imposing icon

As an ambitious mini-series ends, a question lingers: What was Malcolm X (shown here) really like?
“So many people, all they know about Malcolm X is the one picture of him holding a gun, looking out the window,” Gina Prince-Bythewood told the Television Critics Association. “Or some of his words, taken out of context.”
She’s one of the producers of “Genius: MLK/X,” an eight-parter that has its final two episodes at 9 and 10:08 p.m. Thursday (Feb.22) on the National Geographic Channel,” but then remains available on Disney+.
This is a joint biography of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. “Way too often, these two men are pitted agaist each other,” she said. But “they were coming closer and closer together. They had the same goal. They just had two different ways of going about it.”
And both went far beyond their most stern moments. “Malcolm is way funnier and way more charming than given credit,” said Damione Macedon, one of two showrunners for the series. “Martin was extremely witty.”
Their roots were definitely opposites. King grew up comfortably in Atlanta, the so of a prominent pastor. He went to Morehouse College and the seminary, then got his doctorate at Boston University,
By comparison, Malcolm Little (his birth name) was born in Omaha, but soon moved with his family to Milwaukee and then to Lansing, Mich. He was 3 when the family home was burned, 6 when his father died. (Both were caused by racists, he said; that was never officially resolved.) He was 13 when his mother was sent to a mental institution,
After briefly being in foster homes, he moved to Boston, where a sister lived. At 21, he was convicted of larceny and breaking-and-entering.
That background made it easy to demonize him. “He is seen as the angry Black man,” Macedon said.
The truth, he said, was far different. “He had a huge, broad smile.. His daughter spoke about how loving he was as a father. He was a listener and not a talker.”
He emerged from prison well-read and thoughtful.. “He led with love,” said Jayme Lawson, who plays his wife. “The country did a really good job of muddying that up.”
Is it possible that he found the ominous image useful, possibly heightened for effect? Raphael Jackson Jr., another showrunner, rejected that idea.
“I wouldn’t consider it an act,” he said. “I think it shows his complexity …. We as humans have these different layers. He was able tdo show emotion and move in different areas throughout it all.”