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Emancipation star Zimbabwean-Australia based Charmaine Bingwa recently commended her co-star Will Smith for his “marvellous” acting in the new movie.

Speaking with PEOPLE at Los Angeles première of the movie, Charmaine, who plays Will’s wife in the Antoine Fuqua-directed movie, gushed the actor’s performance as she stated, “He’s very generous and I like to work with actors who, when you look in their eyes, you can kind of see the world in their eyes, and he has that.”

The Good Fight actress continued, “It worked, because we had a great love to portray, you know? So, I’m very glad it was that way. It would be a different movie otherwise.

“But no, he’s marvellous. I think the whole world loves him,” she added.

Besides Charmaine and Will, the movie also features Ben Foster, Gilbert Owuor, Mustafa Shakir, Steven Ogg, Grant Harvey, Ronnie Gene Bivens, Jayson Warner Smith, Jabbar Lewis, Michael Luwoye, Aaron Moten and Imani Pullum.

The outlet reported that Will attended the première alongside his entire family for the red-carpet event.

Meanwhile, Emancipation will begin streaming globally on December 9 on Apple TV+.

Also speaking at a London première last week, Smith said he hopes the ‘brutal’ depictions of slavery Emancipation are “not in vain”.

The 54-year-old Hollywood actor, who plays escaped slave Peter in the film, opened up on his latest project and said it was one of the ‘most difficult’ ones he has taken on in his more than 30 years as an actor.

Emancipation tells the story behind an infamous image known as ‘whipped Peter’ which shows a slave’s scarred back after he escaped a Louisiana plantation in the 1860s. The image was spread by the abolitionist movement during the American Civil War and was published worldwide.

The film is Smith’s first big-screen project since he stormed the stage of the Oscars and slapped Chris Rock after comments the comedian made about his wife Jada Pinkett Smith.

Smith later apologised to Rock and the Academy for the incident, but was personally banned from attending any Academy events or programmes for 10 years.

Talking about working with Smith, Bingwa said the Hollywood great would “always lighten things up” on set while she had to work with the kind of material that “weighs on you physically and mentally”.

Charmaine was born in Perth to Zimbabwean parents who migrated to Australia.

She is known for her role as Carmen Moyo in United States legal drama “The Good Fight”. Bingwa also starred in Black Box as Miranda Brooks, part of Amazon‘s Welcome to the Blumhouse anthology film series.

Her upcoming projects include starring as a fierce and formidable warrior Isisa in King Shaka which is executive produced by Antoine Fuqua, the same producer behind Emancipation.

In 2018, she was the recipient of the Heath Ledger Scholarship, which is awarded in Los Angeles to emerging Australian actors.

As an Australian in Hollywood, Bingwa feels she is “riding on the shoulders of legends, like your Naomis, your Nicoles, your Russells, and obviously Heath”.

Speaking about her role in Emancipation, Bangwa said; “It’s such a profound story and we filmed in an actual plantation. I don’t think I’ve ever researched something so thoroughly in my life. I really wanted to hear the stories from our people’s mouths.

“So I listened to well over 120 hours of enslaved narratives, which is quite a lot on the soul, to listen to how people suffered. But I went as deep as I possibly could for this project. It’s so important to me, and, I think, to everyone.”

A trained musician, Bingwa hopes to one day realise her dream of starring in the first Ella Fitzgerald biopic.

“I mean, that’s a big ask, but I’m surprised no one has made a film about her yet,” she said.— thezimbabweanmail/geo.tv