Page 560 - Guildhall Coverage Book 2020-21

PE I kind of feel that grief is conscious and unconscious, right? And it’s lifelong. I really,
passionately do not believe in acting as therapy. I don’t believe in using this to process
shit – your grief, anxiety, whatever. But I do feel like unconsciously, something as huge
as that can’t do anything but shape the direction that you go in afterwards.

I know the reasons why I am the way I am, and I know the enormous part that my mum
played in making that. From here on in, it’s about continuing to bear that in mind and
hold that in your head and your heart, and allow that to flow through the work that you
do. But it’s definitely not a conscious thing.

LJ I’ve felt a long way from home this year. I’m usually back in the UK regularly, and
I’ve missed what that does for me without me even knowing it.

PE How long have you been there?

LJ We came in 2007. But like I say, we come home regularly. I was back to do Line Of
Duty, I’ve been back a lot of times to both work and see family. We’re based in LA and,
for a long time, we just couldn’t figure out a hot Christmas, it just didn’t make any sense
to us – so we’d always come home then. But this has been the longest in a while that I
haven’t been back home, and it’s at a time when shit is happening.

I missed the sensibility of back home during the pandemic, during all the other stuff
that kicked up this year – the battles over inequity and inequality and Black Lives
Matter. America, because of the nature of its history, has a particular way of saying
things and having the conversations. This is deliberately simplistic, but in America you
take any situation, add guns, add race, that’s the American way.

The conversation moves on to black British actors working in America.

LJ Ultimately, it’s about ambition. For a long time, if you wanted to do movies, you had
to come to America; if you wanted to do television at a certain level, you had to come to
America. I very much saw myself on one level as being part of a continuation of a
tradition of actors who came from other parts of the world to Hollywood – Charlie
Chaplin, David Niven, Yul Brynner, Errol Flynn, Sidney Poitier.

Part of that exodus was because their ambitions couldn’t be filled, either quickly enough
or at all, in their home countries. And that, in part, was true of me. I did feel that I was
being asked to come to America – I was being offered the opportunity and I came.
Having said that, I also feel that I was probably part of the last wave of actors who
needed to leave their countries to have a career.

How is it for you, Paapa?