Will Smith’s interview in the Daily Telegraph as Concussion opens in British cinemas this weekend

(Will Smith)

Award-winning actor Will Smith who plays physician and neuropathologist Bennet Omalu in the movie, Concussion, is interviewed here by Brian Moore and Susanne Reid, Daily Telegraph, London, Thursday 11 February 2016

Smith: “ … I met with Dr Omalu, and he is such a special human being. He has eight degrees and is one of the most brilliant people you’ll ever meet. But at the same time there is almost a childlike naivety about him. He expects people to be good, and he’s shocked when they are not – he really doesn’t understand how not knowing something is better than knowing … ”

(http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/othersports/americanfootball/12152712/NFL-players-would-call-to-see-the-movie-for-information.html, accessed 11 February 2016)

(Bennet Ifeakandu Omalu)

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Award-winning actor Will Smith plays forensic neuropathologist Bennet Omalu in Concussion

(Dr Bennet Omalu)

(Will Smith)

In the new film, Concussion (director: Peter Landesman), to be released on Christmas Day 2015, Will Smith will play Dr Bennet Omalu, the forensic neuropathologist who, in 2002, discovered chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a degenerative disease caused by trauma in the brain sustained in contact sport injuries. Omalu, an African American born in Biafra in 1968 during that catastrophic phase of the Igbo genocide in which 3.1 million Igbo were murdered by Nigeria and its allies, is co-founder and director of the Brain Injury Research Institute, Landing Lane, Moon Township, Pennsylvania, US., and clinical professor at the department of medical pathology and laboratory medicine, University of California, Davis.

Professor Omalu here (link below) discusses his research on CTE in an interview with Michael Kirk, Frontline, 25 March 2013:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/sports/league-of-denial/the-frontline-interview-dr-bennet-omalu/ (accessed 2 September 2015)

Twitter@HerbertEkweEkwe