Inspired by his uncle Bob Marley, St. Petersburg filmmaker is ‘health advocate’

ST. PETERSBURG — If alive today, Bob Marley would be 78 and probably no longer smoking marijuana. At least that’s what his health-conscious nephew Charles Mattocks believes, despite the use of the plant being a spiritual component of the reggae star’s Rastafarian religion.

“He would have found another way,” said Mattocks, a 48-year-old St. Petersburg resident. “Not that there is anything wrong with marijuana, but at his age today it would not have been the best thing for him ... I’m being honest because he would’ve evolved.”

The biopic “Bob Marley: One Love” premieres Feb. 24.

Mattocks is not privy to what’s in it and only met his uncle twice, but he hopes the film inspires people just as he has been moved by his mother’s stories of Marley.

Those tales provided Mattocks the courage to leave behind his flashy career as a rapper and actor and reinvent himself as a self-described “health advocate.”

Mattocks has talked about healthy living on “The Today Show” and “Good Morning America” and produces documentary films and docuseries on the topic.

Through two seasons of his streaming docuseries “Reversed,” Mattocks delves into the keto and carnivore diets, and his streaming docuseries “Eight Days” follows five people seeking to cure their cancer through alternative medicine.

His documentary “Trial by Fire” tells the tale of his mother’s ongoing fight with complex regional pain syndrome, a rare neurological condition that can cause spontaneous and often excessive pain from something as mild as a touch. And his “The Diabetic You” documentary looks at the disease that Mattocks was diagnosed with around 15 years ago.

Next up, Mattocks will produce a series on menopause.

“We will bring on board some of the top experts in their fields that will dive into the physical, emotional and psychological transformations that women experience during this crucial time in their lives,” said Brandi Kasperski, who is producing it with Mattocks. “We will also be bringing together a group of women who are willing to share their personal journey through menopause.”

His career, Mattocks said, focuses on helping others. “Bob used to say that if this life is just for him, he doesn’t want it. I feel the same way.”

Mattocks’ mother, Constance Marley, is the musician’s 82-year-old sister living in Ocala. They were not raised together, but are connected by their father Norval Marley who, according to the 2012 documentary “Marley,” had little to do with parenting either.

“He’s the Marley,” Constance Marley says in the documentary, a reference to her brother surpassing the importance of their absentee father.

Mattocks, born and raised in New York, was 5 or 6 years old when he first met Marley, by then a global superstar fighting for political change in Jamaica while also battling the cancer with which he was diagnosed in 1977.

“It was at the Mayflower Hotel where he stayed in New York,” he said. “I walked into a room, and it was literally full of smoke. He was sitting in the corner. I was sitting on the edge of the bed. He came over to me and we started talking ... and then we went outside and started playing soccer, football, in the hallway.”

He can’t recall when or where they met next, but remembers it was after Marley lost his iconic dreadlocks due to cancer treatment.

“All of his hair was in a brown paper bag,” Mattocks said. “The locks represented everything that he stood for, from being a rebel to being a musician to being a Rastafarian to fighting for freedom and advocating for others ... so I could assume that he wanted to keep those.”

Mattocks was not with his mother during her last hospital visit with Marley, but she shared the experience.

“My mother’s Jehovah Witness,” Mattocks said. “And my mother was talking to him about her paradise. Even though he was Rasta and believed in something different, he was interested in learning more ... Bob was always evolving ... He was always open to learning new things.”

In 1981, Marley died at age 36. It was at the funeral in Jamaica that Mattocks first understood his uncle was famous.

“The streets were paved with people,” he said. “Before that, he was just my uncle. When I was at his house, which is now the Bob Marley Museum, I went inside, and I went into the studio ... I literally felt a presence ... And at that point I realized that this was something special. And when I went home back to New York, that’s when I really started getting into his music, really into who he was and everything that he was really about.”

At 20, Mattocks was poised for musical fame of his own. Under the guidance of musician and actor LL Cool J, he released a rap album under the name “Eddie Bone” through Tommy Boy Entertainment, which developed the careers of Queen Latifah and De La Soul.

Hollywood came calling next, his big break coming after he was cast alongside James Woods in the title role in “The Summer of Ben Tyler,” about a Black man with Down syndrome taken in by an affluent white couple in the racist South of the 1940s.

But Mattocks, a father of four, left Hollywood for Tampa Bay about 15 years ago to raise his family in what he calls a more stable place. It was also around then that Mattocks was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes due to his unhealthy lifestyle. So he began exercising more and learned to cook healthy meals.

“I didn’t see anybody like me, a young Black man, as a spokesman for diabetes,” he said. “I felt we needed someone who looked like us to speak to us.”

He wrote “The Budget-Friendly Fresh and Local Diabetes Cookbook” about how to affordably manage the disease and began making television appearances, first locally and then nationally, for programs like “Dr. Oz” and “The Martha Stewart Show.”

He put music and acting behind him as he became a full-time health advocate.

“We are all here for a short period of time,” Mattocks said. “But we don’t have to come and go. I think in what Bob did, he probably knew that. Like him, I want to leave something behind that changes other people’s lives for many years.”