National Geographic has set the date for its much anticipated Emmy-Award winning series “Genius: MLK/X.” The first two episodes of the next installment of the award-winning GENIUS franchise, GENIUS: MLK/X, will premiere Feb. 1 on National Geographic and stream the next day on Disney+ and Hulu, with two new episodes debuting weekly on all platforms. In a first for the Emmy Award-winning anthology series, the eight-part series will focus on two iconic geniuses – Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X – and how their dueling philosophies helped usher America through the Civil Rights Movement.
The cast includes Kelvin Harrison Jr. as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Aaron Pierre as Malcolm X, Weruche Opia as Coretta Scott King, and Jayme Lawson as Betty Shabazz. The series also stars Emmy-winning actor the late Ron Cephas Jones from “This is Us.”
GENIUS: MLK/X follows both King and X from their formative years, where they were molded by strong fathers and traumatic injustices, to their rich, parallel stories as they shaped their identities and became the change they wished to see in the world. Influenced as children by different upbringings and experiences: King by the Jim Crow-era South and life in the church before finding his voice at Morehouse and Boston University, and X growing up under the constant, deadly violence of the Klan and falling into a life of vice and incarceration where he was introduced to the Nation of Islam and found his voice. The two visionaries ultimately rose to pioneer a movement.
