Page 556 - Guildhall Coverage Book 2020-21

Of Duty, Nelly in Save Me (a drama he also wrote) and Morgan Jones in The Walking
Dead, he’s there filming the show’s spin-off, Fear The Walking Dead. He muses on a
conversation about Covid-19 he had recently, with a friend in New Zealand. “I told her
the numbers were going up and she said, ‘What numbers?’ That’s how far away this all
seems to them,” he laughs incredulously. We are waiting for Paapa Essiedu to enter the
video call. He joins, beaming from his north London home, complaining of laptop
trouble. Another familiar pandemic occurrence.

Essiedu, 30, starred in one of the biggest shows of the year, I May Destroy You, written
by his drama school friend Michaela Coel. He plays Arabella’s gentle, supportive friend
Kwame who navigates sexuality, assault and the pressures around disclosure for queer
men. Standout roles in Black Earth Rising, Kiri and Gangs Of London followed star-
making performances in Hamlet and King Lear with the Royal Shakespeare Company.
Essiedu asked to speak to James after crediting him as an early career inspiration, but
it’s clear that the admiration is mutual. The pair have many parallels in their careers,
sharing a love of theatre, and both attended Guildhall School of Music & Drama. They
also both lost their mothers at a young age. At times, the call almost feels like
eavesdropping on a mentoring session, as Essiedu enthusiastically absorbs James’s
wisdom. “We’ve got to find a way of working together. Ideally we’d be going on stage,”
James says. Essiedu is game: “We’ll end up playing father and son.”

Paapa Essiedu How are you doing in Texas?

Lennie James Austin is kind of Texas but not Texas. It is a very liberal bubble in a very
conservative state. A blue ball in a red sea, as it were. Whereabouts are you? London?

PE London. I feel like we’ve been dancing around each other for a minute now. I wanted
to chat to you, Lennie; you’re quite a significant figure in my life and in my career, even
though we’ve never met. You’ve obviously got this mad CV of huge things, Walking
Dead, all of it. But the thing that actually means the most to me is a BBC TV film you
did called Fallout [a 2008 drama about a fatal stabbing]. Maybe like 12, 15 years ago.
Do you remember it?

LJ I do, yeah. We did it on stage at the Royal Court theatre, then we got to do it on film.
It was one of my favourite gigs.
You were blown away by my performance? Mad to hear that from you, but I’ll take it

PE I just remember it so clearly, seeing it on TV. I’m from Walthamstow [in east
London], I’m from that kind of world. I’d never seen it on television in a way that felt
recognisable to me. It made me think, OK, if there’s a way of using storytelling to bring
these worlds and these realities to the masses in an interesting and challenging way,
then that’s something I’m actually interested in.

LJ There’s a weird kind of synergy to how I first became aware of you. It was
through Ian Rickson who directed Fallout and ran the Royal Court. Ian was singing
your praises and there was an idea about a Caryl Churchill play he had in mind for me.

It was a relationship between a father and son, but it was a bit more complicated than
that. We had long conversations about his desire to put the two of us together. The first