Q&A with Roger Guenveur Smith and UC Santa Barbara Professor Stephanie Batiste. Smith's Bessie Award-winning solo performance is inspired by the late Rodney King, whose videotaped beating by LAPD officers ignited the 1992 Los Angeles uprising. Twenty-five years after the uprising, Smith reunites with director Spike Lee for their ninth collaboration in a remarkable body of work that includes the Peabody Award-winning A Huey P. Newton Story and the Oscar-nominated Do the Right Thing. Filmed in one take, with multiple cameras, in front of a live audience, Rodney King (2017) navigates the tragic odyssey of the man Smith calls "the first reality TV star."