The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett XX
[0] I did everything that voice told me to do that night.
[1] Had that voice had told me to jump off Thamesbridge, I would have done it.
[2] Please welcome David Howard.
[3] Propel to superstardom and hit US drama Homeland.
[4] One of our most influential voices on race and mental health.
[5] I remember reading about a moment where you come home, you find your father's typewriter with one word written on the typewriter.
[6] I just said illness.
[7] I didn't quite know what it was, but I knew something was off.
[8] I haven't seen Dad for a while.
[9] And then one morning I got up and my mom said, Don't go into the kitchen and go straight to school out of the front door.
[10] That night, that was where my mom told me that dad had been.
[11] David Harewood was the first black actor to play this part.
[12] The hostility that I was met with as a young black actor was ferocious.
[13] Newspapers, reviews just dismissing me. It looks more like Mike Tyson than Romeo.
[14] What's he doing on the stage?
[15] So I really did feel like I was an anomaly.
[16] The whole thing, the stress, the smoke, the overthinking, just.
[17] ended up making me spiral.
[18] That's what led to me just falling into psychosis.
[19] I was lying in bed and I just heard this voice in my head.
[20] He said he was Martin Luther King.
[21] Even though I'm speaking to you from beyond the grave, I need you to close the gap between good and evil so you're going to sacrifice yourself tonight and you're going to be an angel.
[22] And that was the night I was eventually sectioned.
[23] I just remember I was flashing lights and then being in the back of a police wagon.
[24] If that would have continued, I'm not even sure I would have been here today.
[25] Without further ado, I'm Stephen Butler, and this is the Diary of a CEO.
[26] I hope nobody's listening.
[27] But if you are, then please keep this yourself.
[28] David, what do I have to understand about your very earliest years to understand the man you are, this perspective you have, and the work you do today?
[29] What is the most important context?
[30] Wow, that's an interesting question.
[31] What do you need to know about me then?
[32] that I was probably naive, open, innocent, and probably more, probably more conflicted than I thought I was.
[33] I was a vessel, and into that vessel was just been poured so much.
[34] I say false information, wrong information, that at some point it had to smash, break I grew up at a time when there weren't many black people on television when there weren't many black images that on television or anywhere and I think I think that is I think that seriously I don't say put me to disadvantage but I grew up with a false sense of myself and that that that false, false picture has only recently emerged.
[35] Does that make sense?
[36] Not entirely, unless I get further context.
[37] What was the picture of yourself you grew up with?
[38] I would say, you know, I just think I was just way too naive and way to, way to, way to, that's a really interesting question.
[39] I had really thought about that.
[40] But I think it's only in, it's only in recent.
[41] recent years, and having asked myself some of the questions that I've been asking myself for these last couple of years, and I've really started to get a real grip of the person that I am.
[42] So who did you think you were when you were younger?
[43] What did you think of the world in yourself when you were younger that was so naive and ill -informed?
[44] I think I was.
[45] I didn't really think it was important.
[46] I think my colour was important, and that's why I say I was naive.
[47] I didn't think my colour was that important.
[48] I had no concept of myself as a sort of young black man. And that's why I say I grew up at a time and there weren't any images of myself.
[49] So I couldn't really structure my identity around a sort of solid identity.
[50] And even my, you know, my mother was always sort of trying to steer me into a more Afrocentric mindset.
[51] You know, I got back to Birmingham where I, where I'm from and I look at how many of us are in, interracial relationships of that generation we were constantly told to assimilate it was all about assimilate assimilate, assimilate, you're not even my, you know, I heard the one, I heard the phrase one time, you're not black, you're normal which is so bizarre.
[52] It's so bizarre.
[53] So that your identity as a black person was sort of ironed out.
[54] You just, you just, you're British, you're English.
[55] And, And so when I came out of drama school, I think, and the world said to me, you're black.
[56] It was a real sort of wake -up call for me. And seriously contributed to what happened two years after I left.
[57] Going back to your mother and your father, how was their relationship and your early experience with them shaped the man that you are today?
[58] Who were they as people?
[59] Wonderful people, you know, very, very, my mother was extremely strong.
[60] And my dad was kind of a quiet, silent type, really.
[61] Very proud.
[62] Didn't really speak much.
[63] Didn't really, it wasn't particularly involved in our education, wasn't particularly involved in shaping.
[64] who we were, you know, he was very much hands off.
[65] You know, he was a long -distance Lorry driver, so he was away a lot.
[66] And when he came back, he would sort of sit and watch the telly and in peace and just, you know.
[67] I have to try to talk to him when I was a kid, but he was a very difficult man to sort of open up.
[68] whereas my mother was my mother was always sort of talking and and sort of cajoling and the very welcoming of her friends and she was just a really wonderful character and still is very very funny but you know she tells me now of stories that she used to you know some of the fights that she had some of the battles that she had when I was running my book you know as I said we were the only black family on that street and she was constantly in conflict with with neighbours, with racists.
[69] And she didn't back down.
[70] She was very, very sharp and fearless.
[71] Sounds like my mother.
[72] Fearless.
[73] Your father, you write a lot about how hardworking he was.
[74] The lack of affection you've described there, lack of openness.
[75] As you look back now, was there a cost to that to him and to the family, to you?
[76] I think so.
[77] I think so.
[78] I think the fact that he didn't...
[79] It's different to cause it feels like I'm criticising him and I don't really want to do that.
[80] But I think it was a loving home.
[81] There was a lot of laughter in the house.
[82] But that's, you know, he loved.
[83] I loved, you know, all the British sitcoms of the time.
[84] And one of my favorite sounds was the sound of him laughing.
[85] I loved hearing him laugh, hear my mum laugh.
[86] The house seemed full of laughter when I was growing up.
[87] So there was a lot of, you know, there was a lot of humor in the house, but there wasn't necessarily a lot of tenderness.
[88] And, you know, I kiss my kids every morning when they go to school.
[89] It's just that why, but I don't know why.
[90] It's important to me. Maybe it's just become habit.
[91] But I want them to know how much I love them and I want them to know how much respect I have for them and how proud I am.
[92] It's important for me to do that.
[93] And maybe it's because my dad didn't do that.
[94] Not because he purposely didn't do it.
[95] I just don't think he thought it was that important, maybe.
[96] Do you think he knew how to do that?
[97] I don't know if he did.
[98] I don't know if he did.
[99] But I think that's kind of true of a lot of men of that generation.
[100] Showing emotion wasn't very easy for them.
[101] And also I think it's really interesting.
[102] A friend of mine tells me this story of, it's very particular to the 60s and 70s, which is why I'm, you know, as a director and, and, I'm fascinated by this period of late 50s, 60s, 70s, England because I don't think people understand the level of racism that was present in this country.
[103] I just got goosebumps then because...
[104] They don't understand it.
[105] And the idea of being othered that you would leave your house and literally take your life into your hands.
[106] I mean, I remember randomly getting off a bus and instantly being chased by a group of skinheads, and you would just automatically find yourself running.
[107] Now, to have come here from the Caribbean with ideas of streets are paved with gold, England being the mother country, to have come here with that idea and to be met with that amount of hostility, to be met with with that amount of abuse, that amount of rejection, I think it's seriously damaged, not just my father, but many people who came here in that generation, that Windows generation, because it's fascinating to me how many Caribbean parents do not want to talk about that period, just do not want to go there.
[108] because I think it was horrific and I think it damaged him I haven't really thought about that before well I really considered it before but I do think that that was a tough period for a lot of us and whereas in America movies have been made plays have been written about that generation about that period we've not really looked at it I have to be completely honest I was born in 1992, I was born in 1992, came to the UK when I was two years old from Botswana.
[109] I always saw my mum have this, I'll describe it as this like combative, I'd say it's slightly combative attitude towards people and this like general belief that other people were racist.
[110] And I never understood it.
[111] I never understood, I never fully understood it.
[112] I just thought she viewed the world as being racist.
[113] And as I've done this podcast and specifically spoken to people from the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, and early 90s, my mind has been blown because I don't get, I didn't get it.
[114] Of course, you know, and it's interesting as I listen to the wonderful Chris Kamara.
[115] Yeah.
[116] And the world that he was talking about, I know that.
[117] I remember it.
[118] You know, growing up in those, I was born just after Chris.
[119] five years after Chris, which is why he's such a legend for me. Why him, Sil Regis, they are legends because as kids, I watch them playing football, knowing full well that 50 % of that, the crowd, were giving him so much abuse regularly.
[120] And yet he was able to play football, smile, score goals, play aggressively.
[121] I was in awe of those.
[122] guys because I just thought I would be scared as a kid I was scared and that's one of the things I've touched upon in my book is is owning up to that idea that I was terrified growing up in those days because you just never knew where a brick would come from where where where you know a car would a car would sudden you'd be walking down a street whistling yourself having a great day, next thing you know, bigger, from a car, coon from a car, monkey, just monkey noises would just come from nowhere and you would just tighten, tense up.
[123] So I grew up in that environment.
[124] So I'm well aware of it, which is probably goes back to that, your first question about what you need to know about me. That's the environment I grew up in.
[125] So I, it was trying to form a sense of myself, it's constantly been sort of, it's growing up at a period where you're othered, where you're in fear and not understanding who you are, was destabilising, I think.
[126] And I'm in a sense lucky that my house fell down when it did.
[127] and I was able to put it back together again.
[128] Where a brick would have come from?
[129] You talk about a story being, I think, five years old where a brick comes through the window and your family home.
[130] Tell me about that day.
[131] Well, I write about it in the book and how, you know, Saturday mornings was always cartoon morning, you know.
[132] Saturday morning cartoons back in the day, again, you're too young to know.
[133] But it was always, you know, Tom and Jeff.
[134] and Pepe Lapewue.
[135] I loved Tom and Jerry.
[136] It was great.
[137] It was just, they were just on constantly.
[138] So you would sort of, you know, you'd sort of run down and watch telly.
[139] And my mom's, my mom was famous for her breakfasts.
[140] English breakfast.
[141] Bacon, eggs, just chips, all the English, which we used to love.
[142] And I remember her mom, I'm calling us down for breakfast and running down the stairs and then hearing this smash.
[143] And we ran into the lounge and there was an English breakfast covered in glass because a brick had come through the window and just there was glass all over our big kitchen table and we just all sort of stood there and shock and mum said, go back to bed trape's back up the road, back up to bed but that was a sort of you don't know where it came from in the where it came from But we were targets.
[144] Your mum's reaction there, when I read about this, seemed uncomfortably calm.
[145] Well, what are you going to do?
[146] You know, and she wasn't always calm.
[147] And there was times when she did, you know, grab people by the colours and have people up the wall.
[148] She was fearless.
[149] And, you know, don't you ever call my son that's like, get that.
[150] name again and she was you know she was fearless but at the same time you're powerless in that in that setting because you don't know who threw that brick and um you're almost you know i think back to it now and think you know she she used to sort of walk me to school and be waiting at the school gate to walk me home and for me that was it was great to see my mum's face at the end of school, but I realized later, maybe once you did that, because when you did go home on your own, years later, it was a bit of a minefield.
[151] You had to be careful.
[152] You were a target.
[153] People don't understand that, especially people that have an experience racist abuse.
[154] The idea of leaving the school gates and the journey home being anxious and looking over your shoulder.
[155] Anxious.
[156] There's a good word.
[157] good word, which, you know, I didn't realize it at the time, but I think it was a huge amount of anxiety.
[158] And then the thing that, the amazing thing about it is, you might go a week without it.
[159] You might go two weeks without it.
[160] You might go three weeks with it.
[161] And then you relax.
[162] And then you're normal.
[163] And then bang, a casual Wednesday afternoon, middle of the day, nigga.
[164] And suddenly you're right back to being scared.
[165] And, uh, I, I don't, really think my, you know, I think my whole sense of self, because, you know, you do your best to sort of, you do your best to normalize that stuff and think, I'm not going to let it affect me. I always had this, my mother's words ringing in my head.
[166] Don't let it affect you.
[167] Hold your head up.
[168] Be strong.
[169] So you keep thinking, no, no, no, I'm going to, I'm not going to let this affect me. Is that good advice?
[170] You know, I think, yes, yes, but it doesn't always work.
[171] It doesn't always work.
[172] And it, you know, it crystallised for me when, rather foolishly, I went, I was a Leeds, I was, I don't know why, I was a Leeds United fan.
[173] And, and, I always used to watch watching Leeds United.
[174] They were the champions back then.
[175] And they came to Birmingham one year to, to, to, to play Birmingham City.
[176] and like a jackass I thought I'm going to go sit in the Leeds end and back in the day back in the day you could at half time you could literally walk into the ground so I thought you know I think I was about 12 maybe about 9 10 or something like that and I half time I thought I'm going to go sit with the Leeds fans that's the idea of it now but I walked into the Leeds and at first it was just a couple of monkey noises and then it became like a chorus of monkey noises and then it became a chorus of goo nigger and then it seemed like thousands of people was screaming abuse at me and I heard these words in my mother's words hold your head up don't be scared so I thought I'm going to go and take my seat and I kept walking down the touchline but it got so loud that in the end I thought I don't want to sit with these people so I turned around and walked away and they cheer I remember them cheering but I remember I was really shaken and I remember to the day this groundsman or ward you know the staff as I walked out on the ground he shouted you're all right kid and I just went I was nodded and just walked home but I was really shaken by it because I'd done exactly what my mother told me to but he didn't want to were.
[177] In your early teens, after that, your father's mental health began to deteriorate.
[178] What were there, were there any events that led up to that?
[179] I remember reading about a moment where you come home, the lights are on and there's, you find your father's typewriter with one word written on the typewriter.
[180] Yeah, you just said illness.
[181] My dad was a prolific sort of organiser.
[182] and he started this this darts league and was always on a tight writer writing out the results and writing out that who's played who and who had won and who was going through its next round and who needed the trophy and who was going to where they were going to play and what times they played and he just loved the darts but he just took too much on and he was constantly sort of working at this, organising this whole thing and organising the trophies at the end of the season, organising the meeting, organising that he was just always, and I think he was just doing it all on his own.
[183] And I just think he just took on too much.
[184] And I didn't, I didn't necessarily, I didn't necessarily see it coming because I was quite young, but it happened very, very quickly.
[185] And I always used to hear my dad go to work in the mornings, which is he was keys, jingle jangle, dangled down the stairs.
[186] That was sort of my alarm to get up for school.
[187] There's my dad, hearing my dad come down the stairs and think, right, I've got to get up in a minute.
[188] And for a couple of days, I didn't hear it.
[189] And they kept hearing arguments in my mom and dad's bedroom.
[190] and I thought this is something's not right I haven't seen dad for a while I haven't heard the jingle jangle down the stairs something's off I didn't quite know what it was but I knew something was off and then one morning I got up and my mum said don't go into the kitchen get changes up in the bedroom and go straight to school out of the front door I did and then that night that was when my mum told me that dad had been sectioned So it happened really quickly, and they'd sort of kept me away from it.
[191] But unbeknownst to me, my brothers were holding my dad down in the kitchen because he sort of lost it.
[192] How do they explain being sectioned to you when you're in your early teens?
[193] Because I, you know, I would have no idea what that meant in my early teens.
[194] They didn't really.
[195] And it's, it was just, you know, dad's not well.
[196] Father's not well.
[197] He's been taken to hospital.
[198] And, you know, there's always that gig.
[199] There's always that sort of that gag at school that, you know, the men in the white coats will take you away, you know, you're crazy.
[200] That's, you know, you're crazy or you're going to be, you're going to be taken away.
[201] And that's what happened.
[202] My dad was taken away.
[203] I didn't see it, but I knew he was, I knew that he'd been, I know now.
[204] Obviously, over recent years, I know that that's what had happened to him.
[205] He'd been sectioned.
[206] And when I was sectioned, I suddenly realized that I suddenly read, especially when I was writing the book, I thought, that's what had happened to him.
[207] And that now, it's only once I'd written my book and really understood what that was like, having your liberty taken away from you.
[208] Because I think that in prison is about the only, being locked up in prison, And the only time is when your liberty is taken away from you.
[209] And it was only then that I started asking myself, sort of started looking at my dad's life in sort of retrospect and thinking, because he hated it.
[210] My dad hated it.
[211] And was never the same again when he was released.
[212] It was never the same again.
[213] And I don't think, I think he had a really bad time in there, a really, really difficult and bad.
[214] time, which I don't think he ever forgave my mother for.
[215] Understanding what you understand now about the nature of mental health and what causes it and your own experiences with mental health, when you look at how your father became to be sectioned, have you got any suspicions about why that happened beyond that he took on too much at the darts?
[216] I do think that there was a lot of resent and anger built up in him.
[217] and you've got to wonder why and this is I only found this out again once I've studied writing my book and started looking at mental health and the numbers of black black people are overrepresented in the mental health system in this country and when I realized is that it was a Jamaican psychologist who actually performed this study and he realized that black people there's way less mental health in Africa amongst black community there is mental health problems but way less psychosis but there's more in when they are transmitted to a Western culture so there's more mental health episodes of mental health in England amongst the black community and in America amongst the black community and I think there's something about I call it in my and this is one of the things that my therapist talks about when you're in a white space and that's not a derogatory term but England is essentially a white space and I'm sure you've been in rooms where you're the only cousin colour the higher up the ladder you're one they call it tall poppy syndrome where the higher up the ladder you get the less of your own people you see and I think you know my thing I think my dad had found it very difficult coming from the Caribbean and coming to England and dealing with a completely different mindset, I think he'd found that difficult.
[218] And resentment had built up.
[219] And I think I was going to say a point earlier on that illustrates this, but a friend of mine used to told me that his dad, used to work on an assembly line and in the days of in the 70s when jim davidson was doing his chalky routine that and he was the only black person on the assembly line every monday morning after new faces or whatever it was that jim was on the comedians or everything was doing his chalky thing every monday morning he would be chalky and his dad would laugh and take it and and you know throughout the week they'd be calling him Chalky, and he'd be deli develop the name Chalky, Chalky, Chalky, Chalky, he's Chalky.
[220] His dad would laugh.
[221] And then on Friday night his dad would get drunk and beat the fuck out of him and his mother.
[222] And I think that was just a buildup of resentment of having to live in this place where, yeah, everyone's calling me this name, everyone thinks it's funny.
[223] And I'm laughing.
[224] But there's a buildup of resentment that he then takes out.
[225] his family.
[226] Now I'm not saying my, I'm not saying my dad had that level of resentment, but I think there was just something about being here that he started to find difficult to live with, cope with mentally.
[227] When I read through your book and also a lot of the stories you've told me today, I mean, I remember one particular story where you got a, you got a girlfriend in school and then you come in school the next day.
[228] Her father has said that she can't be with you because you're black, this constant, constant rejection, social rejection.
[229] You used that word earlier on the word rejection and it feels so apt because that's really what's, I think, on a psychological level going on, even going to the football and then being rejected socially from that crowd and it's constant throughout your story.
[230] You know, I read these studies about labeling theory where when the world tells, when you tell somebody they are something in these studies, they eventually become it.
[231] So, you know, there's the famous prison study where they said, you're the guards, you're the prisoners.
[232] They had to stop the study because the guards were so harsh.
[233] on the prisoners.
[234] And labelling theory says exactly that.
[235] Your teacher says you're a D and you're going to be a failure.
[236] The chances are that will actually lower your performance, your self -belief.
[237] How do you stop that happening when society has rejected you for years and years and years growing up at the most formative time?
[238] I think, you know, I think I was lucky because I do think that I lived amongst a lot of people who, you know, who didn't define you that way.
[239] So I think that was, I was very, very lucky for that.
[240] But I think that person had to, I think that house had to come down, which is what I think my breakdown was all about.
[241] The more I learn about it, the more I realize that that image of that young boy had to start again, had to rebuild my image of self.
[242] And that's what I've sort of, it's interesting because I, even though it happened 30 years ago, I'm only now just dealing with it because I only found the records, I only did that documentary.
[243] I only, all this is recent.
[244] And I think if I had talked to you last year, I'd probably be in tears by now because so much of this is recent for me. And having to deal with a lot of it.
[245] I just, I've spent the last 30 years in this sort of cocoon, not really dealing with a lot of this stuff.
[246] And it's only since reading my medical records and doing that documentary and uncovering all that trauma.
[247] As I say, the first thing I read when I opened my medical records from 30 years ago, which were the medical records that the BBC found in the bowels of the Whittington Psychiatric Hospital, I had no idea they were going to give them to me. No idea.
[248] I had no idea they even found them.
[249] The first thing I read was patient believes he has merged hearts with a young black boy.
[250] And I just thought, what is that?
[251] And I just looked through the medical records and it's all to do with my race and my identity.
[252] All of it.
[253] I was just confused.
[254] I'd sort of lost touch with my identity.
[255] Going off to drama school and playing Romeo and Pushkin and doing all these, doing Moliere and Dostoevsky, doing all these European romantic playwrights Shakespeare and all these different characters and thinking, my character, my colour doesn't matter.
[256] I can do all these wonderful things.
[257] And then I came out of drama school and every newspaper article was all about my colour.
[258] Every job I went through was all about my colour.
[259] I could go for these jobs and not these jobs.
[260] And it just, it was like I don't, it was like I hadn't, it was almost like I hadn't, um, dealt with it.
[261] dealt with my core identity as a young black man and it all started to just, I started to overthink it.
[262] What was your core identity that you hadn't dealt with as a black man?
[263] I think just understanding myself, as you, what your first question was, understanding myself in the world and knowing, having confidence in myself, there's too many questions about my identity.
[264] I think one of the things I did when I sought a therapist after my documentary was I sort out, I've had therapy many times in my life, but I sort out a black therapist, a black male therapist.
[265] And that has been really strikingly revealing to me because some of the questions I had, he would kind of say, well, why do you think like that?
[266] And he would question why I think like that.
[267] And I found it remarkable how he was able to make me understand that a lot of the things that I'm a lot of my fears, a lot of my insecurities are only natural, maybe potentially because I have, maybe growing up predominantly in a white environment.
[268] And maybe I didn't, maybe I wasn't comfortable with myself.
[269] I'm much more comfortable with myself now.
[270] What were those fears and insecurities?
[271] You're going to ask that.
[272] You know, there's that image of the strong black man. You know, great at dancing, great at sex, great at chatting women up, great at this, great at that.
[273] And I felt maybe that I didn't always live up to that.
[274] And if you have that idea that you can only be one way as a black man, the world is telling you that, you could only be this way, then you sort of don't feel like you measure up.
[275] And actually I've learned, yeah, you can be vulnerable.
[276] That's okay.
[277] You can be sensitive.
[278] That's okay.
[279] It's okay to be, not be, you know, darkest McFly, you know, who just beats down all the girls, dances fantastically, you know, he's the alpha black.
[280] It's okay not to be the alpha black guy.
[281] It's okay.
[282] And that's taken me a while to sort of understand about myself.
[283] I think Jay -Z, it was interesting, I think there's a thing about Jay -Z talks about the gold, silver, bronze, the gold, I think it's a book where How to be Black.
[284] It's a very, very funny book, but it talks about the gold, silver, bronze, black man. You know, the gold, born in the ghetto, black wife, black friends, you know, silver, born in the ghetto, black wife, went to university.
[285] Bronze, born in the ghetto, white wife.
[286] You know, and you sort of, you sort of get less and less, you're almost like you get less black.
[287] Must be copper or something.
[288] Yeah.
[289] And then you see, but then you see the effects of that in schools where you go, where you have teachers who'll tell me that, you know, you'd get a really intelligent black kid, but just to fit in with his peer groups, he won't work as hard.
[290] Because he fears the more intelligent he is, the less black he is.
[291] The brighter he is, the less black he's seen, the more, and I hate that.
[292] Isn't that funny being rejected by the white community, but also the black community?
[293] Well, that's exactly what I had.
[294] So, you know, when I came out of Rada, so I had, I had tough, I had this.
[295] sort of, when I started being an actor, you know, black communities, I'm like, you're going to be a what?
[296] That's too white.
[297] You're too white, man. And then I went to Rada and kind of did all this Shakespeare, all these plays, and I came out speaking like this, and everybody went, you're way too white.
[298] And so you're getting rejected by the press and critics because you're black.
[299] And then you're also being rejected by the black community because they, you don't look, Of course, you don't sound like, you know, man from the ends.
[300] You don't sound like, you don't talk like that.
[301] So I really did feel like I was an anomaly.
[302] At age 23, I think it's age 23, you, that's around the time you were sectioned.
[303] Yeah.
[304] This is a very strange way of asking the question.
[305] But in hindsight, knowing now what you know about why you were sectioned, what was going on in your life, your mind, your environment, your environment, the prayer.
[306] professionally, personally.
[307] What would you have had to change, avoid, do differently before then to have avoided that happening?
[308] That's a million dollar question.
[309] This really is a million dollar question.
[310] And I'm not sure there was anything I could have done.
[311] I think that, I think it had to come down.
[312] I'm a great believer that in trauma there's a lesson that there was something in that for me of value I don't think anything I don't think I mean I was very lucky that I came out of it but I do believe and as I have got older in my life and having written the book and having had so many people tell me since writing that book are so many people say thank you I'm not crazy thank you you really you've really articulated everything that goes on in my some of the frustrations at comments I've only given voice to a thing to things that a lot of people experience just I took it to an extreme I think and I think it's probably as an artist as an actor who's benefited some of my work it's enabled me to take things perhaps a step further than maybe what some people people can take things.
[313] I think it's giving me a perspective.
[314] I think there's something of, I think there was something of value in it for me. I don't, I think it had to happen.
[315] I don't think I could have done anything to have stopped it, which is both, um, scary and, um, worrying.
[316] What do you remember about that time?
[317] Because it seems to be quite a blur when you recount the events, it's almost like you have these abstract memories of different moments.
[318] It's interesting, because I do believe I started this process thinking that it was going to be fun.
[319] Because it's like manic depression, it is often psychosis, like, it's often preceded with a mania, heightened adrenaline rush, dopamine.
[320] The dopamine levels in your brain are heightened.
[321] And it's quite exciting because you've got, you're not getting sleep.
[322] It's often drug -induced.
[323] And you are really sort of operating at this quite high level.
[324] And I remember doing some pretty extraordinary things.
[325] I remember brief moments of real sort of mental acuity.
[326] And dare I say it, there was almost moments of fun.
[327] But it's usually preceded by a crash.
[328] So I sort of went into this.
[329] thinking, I'm going to, I'm going to remember all the fun things I did, some of the extraordinary things I did.
[330] And there were some really wild things.
[331] I was experimenting with a sense of what was real and what wasn't real, thinking I could do anything.
[332] And it was bizarrely exciting.
[333] Give me an example of something that you recount that is.
[334] Well, it's interesting because my, one of the consultants that was in the documentary, tells me that because she asked me for an example and I said I was walking out of street one morning I hadn't slept all night and there was a guy across the road and he had this huge Doberman huge kind of massive muscular and I'm normally quite afraid of dogs and I just walked up to this I walked up to this guy and said what's that dog's name any jeb or something and I looked at this dog and I screen the dog's name and I looked at this dog quite aggressively and right in its face and the dog just literally lay on the floor and started whelping whelping on its back just freaked out and the consultant said to me that often dogs can pick up some some energies disturbed energies and I don't Obviously, he's really, this guy was really freaked out.
[335] He said, what if you, the dog was literally whelping and moaning on the floor.
[336] And I just fixed this dog with no fear and screamed its name right in its face.
[337] Just freaked the dog out.
[338] That night you were sectioned.
[339] I read, I read that you were, you held a taxi and it was ultimately the exchange for the taxi driver.
[340] I mean, this was an extraordinary.
[341] I mean, that was an extraordinary.
[342] And again, it was the voice of Martin Luther King that was in my head.
[343] You hear voices and when you, when you, when you, when you, One of the aspects of psychosis, which is what I suffered from, you can hear voices, have illusions, allusions, delusions that seem incredibly real to you.
[344] And I was lying in bed, and I just heard this voice in my head, sat up in bed, looking around the room thinking, where's that come from?
[345] And this voice was in my head.
[346] sounds totally bizarre but his voice was in my head and he went on to say look i don't want to tell you who i am right now because you're going to be really scared but you have to go to camden you have to walk into this store don't be surprised if it's open it's three o 'clock in the morning don't be surprised it's open whatever you do do not turn around and it was all these things i had to do whatever you do don't do this whatever you do don't do that but then go to go into this store walk to the back of the store there's going to be one suit hanging up on a rack at the back of the store you need to put this suit on and then you turn around don't be surprised to find out that it's two o 'clock in the afternoon he said I'm going to I'm going to close the space time continuum and we are going to close the gap between good and evil this whole thing and it was he said it ended up being Martin Luther King he said he was Martin Luther King and he said when you when you because I played Martin Luther King as a kid and it was my first the first acting thing that I'd ever done and he said when you played me as a child I entered your heart and when I was he said even though I'm speaking to you from beyond the grave I need you and two or three other people in in the world to activate something and close the gap between good and evil and he said so you're going to sacrifice yourself tonight you're going to be an angel.
[347] And this voice was, I swear to you, was like, really in my head.
[348] And I'm sobbing in my bedroom, listening to this voice.
[349] So tonight's the night.
[350] And that was the night.
[351] I was eventually sectioned.
[352] But I got up, got my clothes on, and walked all the way to Camden.
[353] Obviously the shop was closed.
[354] It's the night of the morning.
[355] You know, I'm out of my nut.
[356] So, um, and I was exhausted and I thought, I've got to go home and flagged a cab down.
[357] And I didn't have any money.
[358] And, uh, I don't remember, I just, I just remember this driver looking around and then the driver pulling over and then, um, lots of flashing lights, obviously the police.
[359] And then being in the back of a police wagon.
[360] And then sitting in a cell.
[361] And all this was just, I'm in and out of what seemed like a dream for me. I didn't, I was in and out of, I remember being in this cell and then going to magistrate's court in the morning and not remembering my name, didn't remember my name at all, didn't know who I was, couldn't remember who I was.
[362] And the duty solicitor sort of talking about my mom and then said my dad's name was Romeo and I went, Romeo.
[363] Hang on a minute.
[364] I played Romeo.
[365] David, David Harewood.
[366] I used my, I used my sort of career to get back to who I was.
[367] Then left, went to court and had no idea what was happening in this court.
[368] I mean, I was, the judge was speaking at me and I was just a mess.
[369] And I walked out of court.
[370] And again, lucky, but some woman who'd been in the court walked out and said, said to me, are you okay?
[371] And I said, I don't think so.
[372] I don't know, I don't know who I am.
[373] She said, where do you live?
[374] And I said, where do you live?
[375] And I said, what's your nearest tube station?
[376] And I said, I, you know, Hybril Islington.
[377] And she flagged the cab down, gave the driver 10 pounds, and said, take him to Hybrin Islington.
[378] And I got out at Hybrin Islington, walked home and my friends were waiting for me. Because they'd been looking for me all night, couldn't find me. And that's the day that they knew something was, even though they'd been sitting with me and visiting me for the last couple of weeks because they knew something was off.
[379] They knew it wasn't well.
[380] And that's the weird thing about mental health, or particularly psychosis.
[381] You see somebody acting very strangely.
[382] Something that you love, it could be your son, your husband, your mom, they just suddenly start acting out of character, becoming obsessed with something.
[383] it's like they suddenly change and you know you know something's wrong but you're sort of hope desperately hoping that they sort of come back and that's sometimes you know they don't and you have to make that call to have them sectioned and luckily for me my friends would have been there because if they weren't there I think I would have been in real trouble I got it would have been in real trouble if that would have continued I'm not even sure I would have been here today.
[384] So I was very lucky.
[385] How long did that process last before you were sectioned of the sort of gradual deterioration?
[386] Well, I think it was happening for a while because I remember working and not feeling great.
[387] So I'd say at least two or three months there was a slow progression of not sleeping, overthinking, trying to hide that, drinking.
[388] to sort of self -medicate.
[389] I knew one wasn't well, but I thought I could handle it.
[390] I'm trying to understand how much of that you believe is a physiological, biological, biological situation, or maybe predisposed by biology versus circumstance experience and the things that you'd been through.
[391] I think, and again, speaking to the consultant who was working on my documentary, it's a combination of both things.
[392] Your propensity, your, the chances of you having a breakdown are sort of reliant on levels of stress, lack of sleep, what's called aces, which are these, fundamental, like people who experience trauma in life.
[393] I mean, for me, I think it was my parents' divorce and not dealing with that.
[394] Not dealing with that at the time.
[395] So much of it has just been squashed, not dealing with some of the trauma that was in my life.
[396] And I think a lot of it was coming out, slowly coming out then in that one slow progression of being deeply unhappy.
[397] Why?
[398] Why were you deeply unhappy?
[399] I read that and I thought, as I say, I came out of drama school and the hostility that I was met with as a young black actor was ferocious.
[400] Newspapers.
[401] Newspapers, reviews just dismissing me, completely dismissing me. And I'd sort of left drama school with a bit of heat.
[402] People were like, all really excited to see what I was going to do.
[403] And the school was very, very excited to, you know, everybody was talking about this young, young, kid coming out of drama school it's going to be, you know.
[404] And I just got slaughtered.
[405] Slaughtered.
[406] All about race.
[407] All about race.
[408] I played Sloan in entertaining Mr. Sloane.
[409] Mr. Sloane, yeah.
[410] Who is quite a devious, bisexual character.
[411] He's actually also a murderer.
[412] And there was one reviewer, a black reviewer who said, who was outraged that I'd taken the part because I was letting the side down and he said that people should go and demonstrate their disapproval of Mr. Harewood's choice of employment and I read it I was like wow put that down and I noticed that night people as Sloan has this really kind of tough monologue we talks about abusing somebody and in the middle of this monologue I saw people get up and walk out and I noticed that they were black and then the next night more black people started walking out and it was always in the middle of that monologue black people would get up and walk out and it was really tough to deal with it was really tough to try and they were sort of chopsing and as they walked out and sort of it was really disturbing me because I had to to get on with the play.
[413] And that was only the second act.
[414] There was another three.
[415] So the whole way through that play, I was sort of coping with, why do they walk out?
[416] Get on with the play seems to be quite an apt metaphor for that period of your life.
[417] Yeah, and I wasn't really dealing with it.
[418] So dealing with the fundamentals.
[419] So I think that's when the drinking started.
[420] To be able to get through the play, I started drinking.
[421] To be able to, I started self -medicating.
[422] So I was drinking a lot.
[423] before, during, after the show, smoking after the show.
[424] And the whole thing, the stress, the smoke, the overthinking, lack of sleep.
[425] Lack of sleep, just ended up making me spiral.
[426] How long, from being sectioned to getting back to acting, how long was that sort of recovery process per se?
[427] It was not quicker than I realized, actually, which surprised me. I thought it was going to be months, but it was, I was, It was section for about five days initially, and then again in Birmingham for another five days, and then the recovery was just about convincing my mother that I was okay, because she was convinced that it was acting.
[428] It was acting that sent me crazy, and then I was never going to act again, and then I was never going to go back to London again, and I was never going to be allowed to act again.
[429] So she tried to watch me like a hawk for about a month, maybe a month, six weeks.
[430] And eventually she allowed me to travel back down to London and get on with my career.
[431] I sat here with Maisie Williams, the Young Game of Thrones actress.
[432] And she talked to me about how acting was a form of escapism in her life, because her home had such little joy that acting became this place, almost this therapeutic place, where she could, I guess, in some respects, abandon that identity.
[433] And I remember reading from this like Swedish philosopher, which I wrote about my book Once Upon a Time, who said that when we, if we try and abandon ourselves, we'll ultimately, bear mind, he wrote this 200 years ago, so he was just, you know, if we try to, yeah, it's still true.
[434] Yeah, yeah, it's still true.
[435] That's why, yeah, that's why we really, it always stayed with me. If we try and abandon ourselves, and we're successful, we'll despair at the fact that we've abandoned ourselves in our identity.
[436] If we try and abandon ourselves and we're unsuccessful, we'll despair at being unsuccessful in our, in our attempts to become other than we are.
[437] And he concludes in his, like, philosopher piece that the only true way to be happy is to accept that which you who you are and to not abandon yourself.
[438] He, you know, that's his conclusion after this long study that he's done on people.
[439] That kind of rent felt almost quite true when I think about what acting is in many respects.
[440] For Maisie, it was this attempt to abandon the self and actually to not confront the issues.
[441] And then she ultimately had to at some point confront those issues and what had gone on in her family home, what her father had done to her.
[442] But acting was her escape at 12 or 13.
[443] Is any of that reminiscent to, or does any of that ring true specifically this idea of like the role acting played in identity for you?
[444] Acting is the only space I feel 100 % confident in.
[445] Why?
[446] Because everyone knows their lines.
[447] Everyone knows where they're going to go.
[448] Everyone knows the movement.
[449] Everyone knows the play on stage i just feel that's probably my what's where i'm at my happiest why it's i can't explain it i just become it's you become somebody else you know when you're when you're that's the true nature of i think of art it's like somebody who paints i think you know they they want to create something and they're free to create van garf could be in tort yeah it could be tortured but he can still produce an amazing piece of art You said there, though, that I'm happy when I'm acting because I become someone else.
[450] So what does that say about oneself if I'm half?
[451] Well, myself, I'm full of, there's insecurities, there's doubt, there's decisions to make, this is about, which is what, which is why life I think is so unique.
[452] I don't know what you're going to say next.
[453] None of us know.
[454] That's what's so beautiful about it and so fantastic about it.
[455] But on stage, it's a controlled environment.
[456] So for those two hours, I can be kinglier.
[457] I can be a fellow, and I completely put myself into that.
[458] And it's, that's, I feel, it's like, I'm a, I guess you would, I guess you could say, I mean, footballers say that.
[459] You know, on the pitch, no problems.
[460] George Best, on the pitch, a genius.
[461] Off it, an alcoholic.
[462] Somebody who can't, somebody who can't cope, Maradonna.
[463] On the pitch, a genius.
[464] Off the pitch, something else.
[465] You can't cope with life.
[466] Life is uncontrollable.
[467] Life is full of contradictions, full of difference, full of failures and success.
[468] It's just, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, uh, it's very difficult to distill.
[469] Whereas on stage, I know, you know, I can play that.
[470] And I can put myself into that and pour myself into that character and I feel great.
[471] It's the most freeing place, for me, it's the most freeing thing I could, I've ever experienced.
[472] And that's why I love it so much.
[473] That's what Maisie said.
[474] She said it was, for her, she said actually, it was the only place she experienced joy.
[475] Yeah.
[476] I could not completely, completely understand that.
[477] But what, that, not to be repetitive, but what is that saying about the nature of our life in terms of, why can't life be joyous as equally joyous?
[478] What would we have to do to make our acting life when we're king?
[479] Well, that's the secret, I guess.
[480] And that's the secret of sort of finding a place where you can be, and I'm sort of on the way, you know, where you can experience joy.
[481] And I think that's a, that's a, it's a lifeline struggle.
[482] But you have to work at it.
[483] 2019 was the first time, 2017, 2019 was the first times you really opened up about your experiences in terms of.
[484] To the press.
[485] I'd always, I mean, that was the shock of it, is that I tweeted, 2017, randomly tweeted, as somebody who's had a breakdown, I just want to say, look, have a great, it was World Mental Health Day.
[486] As somebody's had a breakdown, just want to say, look after yourself today, get some help if you can, got on the plane, flew to America, got off the plane, 50 ,000 retweets, calls from ITV, calls from the BBC, calls from the Guardian, calls from the independent.
[487] Oh my God, you had a break, a nice, completely forgot I hadn't gone public with it.
[488] I've told everybody.
[489] It's been a bit of an anecdote for me, a bit of a late -night drunken anecdote for me that I'd had to break down and spent time in a minute.
[490] But it's only since doing that that I've really looked at it and really understood it.
[491] That moment of oversharing has led to all of this, has led to my first book, it's going to lead to my second book.
[492] It's led to this reckoning, which would not have happened.
[493] had I not have sent that tweet.
[494] 2019, you produced a documentary.
[495] Everybody talks about their documentary.
[496] Really incredibly powerful, but just artistically brilliant in so many ways.
[497] But so many people talk about it.
[498] You know, I even had members of my team put in big brackets.
[499] It is so good.
[500] When they were referring to a documentary, they don't usually do that.
[501] It was really profound and important in so many ways.
[502] How did that change your life?
[503] again because and this is really odd but I'd seen that documentary almost a thousand times because I watched it in every day a year before it went out the night it went out I was absolutely terrified and I as soon as I saw adverts for it I panicked and I was nearly called the BBC and said I don't want to go take it off I was really scared and that that was really unusual for me because I'd seen it and I was happy with it.
[504] But going public with it was a whole other thing.
[505] And I was really scared, really anxious.
[506] And I think the whole house picked up on it because my kids went to bed early.
[507] My wife went to bed early.
[508] You know, she watches, you know, she went and she was like, she was, after what she said she was worried that, you know, the kids might get ribbed at school or, you know, your dad's, this, good, dad's that.
[509] And I hadn't even thought about that.
[510] And I suddenly thought, fuck, you know, I'm letting people in here.
[511] And I was really scared.
[512] And I remember I, that night had a therapy session online with my therapist.
[513] And when we finished it, it was kind of dark.
[514] And I thought, well, it's got half an hour left to go, I'm not even going to watch it.
[515] I'm just going to go to bed.
[516] And I was just about to go to sleep.
[517] and every single device in my house was beat everything was just buzzing and it was and then the house house phone went and I jumped out of bed to do I didn't want to wake the house and it was my mom and the first thing she said was brilliant and that really calmed me down I went I watched it she said I've just watched it and she said it brilliant well done son huge sigh of relief and then started looking at all these messages and emails and they were all really emotional and like and moving and went to bed and got up in the morning and take my dog for a walk like I normally and I could not walk 10 feet without complete strangers coming up to me in tears I swear to God going just want to say Mr. Hayward thank you And normally, when you're an actor, people leave you alone.
[518] You know what it's like when you're on the telly.
[519] People kind of go, oh, that guy, but that's that guy off the telly.
[520] But suddenly it was Mr. Harewood, not the guy from the homeland, or the guy from Supergirl, or the guy from, it was Mr. Harewood.
[521] Excuse me, Mr. Harewood, just want to say, thank you so much.
[522] Tears strolling down their face.
[523] My dad had a breakdown, and we never talked about it, and just want to say the fact that you, we all suddenly started talking about it and start talking about Dad.
[524] and I'm blubbing, they're crying.
[525] Then I go, thank you very much.
[526] Walk up, somebody else, excuse me, Mr. Hare, I just want to say.
[527] And I suddenly realized how common it is and how everybody was touched by it because you just don't talk about it.
[528] There's a shame attached to particularly psychosis and particularly to being taken away.
[529] There's a shame attached to it.
[530] For some reason, maybe because I'm an actor, I have no shame.
[531] so me a recognizable successful actor talking about it allowed them to talk about it got a call from mine saying phones ringing off the hook people are talking about psychosis because they didn't they didn't that now they understand what happened to their son now they understand what's happening to their who's only just been sectioned that morning and on this book tour.
[532] I constantly do signings.
[533] And nearly every single time I sign, I go to one of these book tours.
[534] There's somebody who comes up to buy the book for it to get signed, and they're crying.
[535] And they go, I've just come out of a mental institution.
[536] I just want to say, seeing you, it gives me hope that I can get better.
[537] Or there's a mother who says, my son's just been sectioned crying her eyes out my son's just been sectioned he was away at drama school he was away at school because it happens normally when kids go to university or when they go away from home and they might smoke they might drink they might find themselves in a strange environment that's when it happens and uh the amount of times i've had to kind of get up and just hug the stranger and just say they'll get better i sometimes sit here with people and there's a moment where they let the wall down.
[538] And the wall can be a number of things.
[539] Sometimes it's sexuality.
[540] Sometimes it's something that they've been holding inside of them.
[541] You know, they might have told friends, but letting the world in and then feeling that feedback that people weren't attacking them.
[542] They didn't lose their job.
[543] And that sometimes can be quite a liberating thing.
[544] From then on, once we've let the wall down, whatever it is, and really let people in and see our deepest insecurities or our fears, life can feel different.
[545] We can be more open and honest and vulnerable.
[546] I can't say that happened because I then had three years of dealing with it.
[547] Yes, tell me about that.
[548] Because I thought, oh, okay, I've let the world in.
[549] And as you say, where's that moment of relief?
[550] Yeah.
[551] And it was torture because I couldn't cope with all these people coming up and saying, thank you so much.
[552] Normally you've got that shield.
[553] I said you've got that shield as a recognizable face where people don't bother you on the train.
[554] People don't bother you in the street, but they were.
[555] And they were coming with these really emotional stories.
[556] Some people's parents died, being restrained.
[557] Now, I talk about seven policemen jumping on me and giving me what's called an emergency tranquilization.
[558] I talk about that in my book.
[559] How I survived that, I don't know, because countless people have died like that, black people, being restrained by police.
[560] The amount of the criminalisation of that, the criminalisation, particularly of black people, in that period of illness, of psychosis, is look at the people in America.
[561] People shot because they're acting strange.
[562] They're in a moment of medical crisis.
[563] But they happen to be naked, running down the street, screaming.
[564] You will get shot.
[565] People don't understand it.
[566] People have been arrested.
[567] People have been, one guy knew he was having.
[568] And one guy I knew he was having a breakdown, went to the hospital, they refused to treat him, went to another hospital, they refused to treat him, started banging on the door, they called the police, he got arrested, he got sent to prison, and it was only in prison that he got treated.
[569] And so this whole book has really opened up the whole, how particularly people of colour are criminalised at a moment of crisis by being arrested and then being treated.
[570] like for me it was only when I showed the book to my consultants she said do you realize you were given three times the legal doses of tranquilizers and I said why is that she said well it was it's and then I again once the book got out I had somebody contact me saying this is standard practice because most people are afraid of big black men so most times a large black man is sectioned, you will get knocked the fuck out.
[571] For no medical reason, other than we're scared of this big guy, let's just up the dose here.
[572] And that's all it was.
[573] So it just all this stuff was coming out.
[574] All these stuff was coming at me and I couldn't really process it.
[575] And I remember going into my therapist and just crying my eyes out.
[576] I was, it's too much.
[577] It's too much.
[578] I can't cope with it.
[579] And funny enough, my medical records that I find in the documentary, I hadn't opened those notes for two years since I got them, since filming it.
[580] But before I wrote the book, and I knew where they were.
[581] They were in my flat in Vancouver.
[582] I knew exactly where they were.
[583] And once I decided to write the book, I remember flying back to shoots the next season of Supergirl, and we flew into quarantine because it was a couple years ago.
[584] so you had 14 days on your own and the first thing I did walking the flat got my medical records out and I read them cover to cover and that was really tough because you're reading your disturbed self everything that I'd said, done was recorded so I'm reading all the stuff I did and getting flashes of moments that I thought fuck that's where that memory comes from taking the piss in the middle of a office and just the most weird stuff that I did and said.
[585] Is it scary to know that you're capable of getting to that place?
[586] Yes and no. And, you know, again, I think of myself, thinking about the acting side of it, you know, I've always had this ability to, not method, but I really throw myself into a character.
[587] And I love that.
[588] And I think maybe there's part of me that having pushed myself, having let myself go, Not many people go there.
[589] I literally went crazy.
[590] Cross the line into unacceptable behaviour, where your behaviour is deemed, we have to take you away.
[591] Unsafe for yourself and for others.
[592] Sectioned.
[593] I've crossed that line.
[594] So for me now, I think, in acting, anything up to that line?
[595] it's fair game it's fair game and I love it and I that's why I was more will push push myself and I look for characters who are like that because who do push that's what makes acting so great for me and so exciting because I can behave like somebody else but even reading about even reading about psychosis as someone that's never been through it I'm going to be it makes me realize that it's completely possible for me to find myself in that situation.
[596] Absolutely anybody.
[597] And that's what, because, you know, when I grew up with mental health, I thought it's something that happens to other people.
[598] And then you get a flavor of it, right?
[599] Yourself, and you go, fuck, we can all.
[600] We all have mental health.
[601] And reading the stories of psychosis and how a very normal young man can quite quickly, apparently quickly.
[602] Very quickly.
[603] Yeah.
[604] But I mean, from what you've described, it's a series of events over time, but apparently very quickly, fall into that situation, in some respects, makes me realize that, you know.
[605] We are very highly strong individual.
[606] I mean, the brain, you know how incredible that.
[607] It's an incredible muscle, an incredible muscle.
[608] There's thousands of firing electro, thousands every day, just going off in our brains.
[609] some of them miss fire and some of them very quickly can lead to you taking your own life and you know I know how having you know having been there I'm just lucky that I think my doctor said it that he said you know we're lucky David is a calm essentially a clown because my psychosis played out in all sorts of silly ways but that I did everything that voice told me to do that night had that voice have told me to jump off Thames Bridge I would have done it I would have done it so I've met people who the voice told them to throw themselves in front of as that young girl in the documentary did throw yourself in front of the next white van and she did and it hit her you know it is it is a very powerful thing and it can happen to anybody where do you find yourself today so you're three three or four years on now from that documentary coming out and you've been on that journey as you describe it of rebuilding the house and yeah I think you know it's taking me this long to I think I've come through I think I was really in pain I didn't realize at the time but I think I was really specific when the documentary went out I was in very, very vulnerable.
[610] And it really was painful.
[611] And it was uncomfortable.
[612] And I used, I get, I would get very emotional.
[613] I'd be in Tesco's and somebody had come up to me as I bought my sausages and say, saw your documentary.
[614] And I would just go.
[615] They'd go.
[616] I'd go.
[617] Why?
[618] Being reminded of it, they would make me cry because they'd tell me about their uncle.
[619] And they'd start going, I don't know, it's just something about the helplessness of seeing a loved one acting very out of character.
[620] And some of them don't recover because you don't understand it.
[621] So I used to find it very emotional.
[622] And I think I've moved through that period of vulnerability into a period of healing.
[623] And I think I'm in that healing period now.
[624] I said to you, if we'd have done this doc, this podcast last year, I don't think I'd have got through it like this.
[625] It would have, and every now and again, I find a rising emotional level as I'm talking about it now, because I know it sounds very weird.
[626] I feel like everyone must be sitting there thinking, God, he's nuts, or, you know, but I've sort of dealt with that.
[627] Was there ever any regrets about doing that documentary?
[628] Yes.
[629] Really?
[630] Yes.
[631] which all disappeared the morning after it went out.
[632] The regrets were all the night.
[633] Oh, before.
[634] All the regrets were.
[635] And then maybe afterwards there was like, maybe I've said too much.
[636] You know, maybe people don't now see, because since then I've done a lot more, a lot more documentaries.
[637] And more documentaries than I have dramas.
[638] And I've been back in England now for a year.
[639] And in America, I was playing leading characters.
[640] three -dimensional authoritative characters and I haven't had a single offer of anything like that since coming back and that's been really worrying and I suddenly thought, well maybe I've said too much or maybe I'm not you know and I thought maybe I've crossed the line but I don't care anymore and I've sort of sort of gone well I'm embracing who I am now sorry you've since you came back from America you haven't had enough for to play leading characters.
[641] Not one.
[642] And do you have a suspicion that that's to do with?
[643] I worried that.
[644] That's what I'm saying.
[645] You say, you know, you talk about, do I think?
[646] There was a fear of that.
[647] I don't think that's the case.
[648] Yeah.
[649] But it's just...
[650] But, you know, there's our insecurities and fears and maybe I've said too much.
[651] Maybe people feel now...
[652] Or you, one reviewer said, oh, David, all we see him now is in documentaries.
[653] I say, but the only reason you see me in that is because I'm not going to play some shit role.
[654] I want complexity I want a challenge so I'm finding that in the world of documentaries and I really enjoy doing that.
[655] Your career as an actor and now as an entrepreneur and many of the things in a director unbelievably successful unbelievably successful against many many odds why you yeah you have the talent you're a class clown you said that you know back in the school days and all these things you're a funny guy but that's not enough I know lots of funny people they're not actors.
[656] I don't think that's for me to say.
[657] No, but this is why it's such a tough question because I actually think only you would read, you know, people might have told you along the years, but I really think that when you look at your peers, that's one way I've tried to figure myself out, is what makes me different from these other, my peers in my industry?
[658] And I go, oh, that's the thing I'm particularly good at, that bit there.
[659] That's interesting, though, because, you know, and again, maybe I'm oversharing, but, you know, my therapist, we talk, you know, sometimes that's, you know, when I first started to ask him about this not living up to this ideal blackness, he said, well, part of the reason why you have been so successful is because you are this, you can go, you can be over here, you can be over there, you're formless.
[660] And I love that, Bruce Lee will say, it's not, be like water.
[661] You put water into a cup, it's a cup, you put water into a bottle, it's a bottle.
[662] You pull water into a teacup, it's a teacup.
[663] I haven't tried to be one thing.
[664] And I think some actors come out and think, I'm going to be like this.
[665] And I'm going to be like that.
[666] And I haven't.
[667] I changed my voice because I didn't want to play Brummies all my life.
[668] So I learnt the RP.
[669] I can do, if I wanted to do street, I can do street, which is always used to piss me off when I was young, because people got, oh, he's a bit too rada.
[670] It's a character.
[671] I play characters.
[672] But because you're a, I don't know, maybe black actors don't play characters.
[673] they just play black people.
[674] I play characters.
[675] And I think that that USP that I've had that I like playing characters has enabled me to change.
[676] And it's also what's constrained me because, as I said to you, when I came out of drama school, you were, you weren't an actor, you were a black actor.
[677] These days you're allowed to be an actor.
[678] John Boyega is an actor.
[679] Daniel Kaluya is an actor.
[680] He's not a black actor.
[681] When I came out, I was a black actor, and I found it so constricting.
[682] I'm more than this.
[683] I can play anything.
[684] And that's maybe, you know, that's what I think is my, of my generation.
[685] That's probably one of the things that I perhaps gave me my unique USP.
[686] It's funny, the things that often give us our USPs are also entirely linked to the things that give us our difficulties and our struggles.
[687] And it seems to be the case from what you've said.
[688] It's funny, because what I heard from one of that is that your versatility as an actor came from the versatility that you had to demonstrate in your real life as well.
[689] 100%.
[690] And I think that my experience, particularly getting out of a mental institution, acting my way out of an institution, it's all been good training.
[691] And I think, you know, my crossing that line has given me that, you know, That kid that came out of Rada, if you could have a chat with him, if he was sat here, you could just say a couple of sentences to him.
[692] The sentences that...
[693] I would 100 % tell him, and I tell this to all young actors.
[694] To all young people.
[695] Be prepared for the tough times.
[696] People think it's going to be, life's going to be roses and people think it's going to be easy.
[697] And yeah, things are great now.
[698] But be prepared for when things get a bit rocky.
[699] Because they will get rocky.
[700] time you know himself in business it's not all about winning sometimes you learn your best lessons in failures so i would would just and again i'll talk about this with my therapist that i didn't take care of my younger self i didn't take care of him so now i try and take care of my younger self and i always try and tell people look after yourself really look after yourself Because what does that mean to you, look after yourself?
[701] Control what I can control.
[702] And don't, if I don't get a job, I don't get a job.
[703] I can't, there's nothing I can do about that.
[704] I can control how I feel about it.
[705] And just think that it wasn't for me. And right now, as I said to you, there's thousands of things going my way and thousands of calls that are going.
[706] I'm acting maybe not, but that's okay.
[707] it'll come around maybe it'll come around I can't control that I can control what I can control so I've just got to keep myself sharp look after myself don't allow I could easily allow myself to get down now because I've not been working but I'm busy than I've ever been outside of that creating this company looking to create other work doing documentaries meeting people it's a very exciting time for me And I wouldn't have had this time had I been starring in some show.
[708] So there's benefits to having time on your hands.
[709] When you said that about controlling what you can control, it made me realize that this word popped into my head.
[710] I almost imagine myself stood at crossroads, and one path was like, control what I can control, and that says left acceptance.
[711] And on the other hand, the right turning is the resentment that you said your father had, which is that slowly, slowly, slow insidious.
[712] build up of, like, resentment towards the world.
[713] And it's a choice.
[714] You can't go that way.
[715] And I'm determined not to go that way, is keep it open.
[716] Keep attracting good vibes.
[717] And at the moment, that's where it's leading.
[718] And it's a very exciting time.
[719] I've only been back a year as well, so who knows what's going to happen.
[720] We have a closing tradition on this podcast where the previous guest asks a question for the next guest.
[721] Before I ask you the question, I actually was really intrigued because I know you've just, you've started a production company.
[722] what was the thinking behind that and how's that going it's a new challenge it's very exciting and you know i think over the last couple of years i've seen how some people i've been involved in projects and i don't they haven't exactly been run very well and i think well i i you know i've now got the experience to know i can do that job i know i'm bringing my a game but if the people above me aren't bringing their a game, it's going to make it tough.
[723] So I'd like to bring excellence to everything that I do.
[724] That's what I think I do, is I bring excellence to everything I do.
[725] So I want to put some excellence out there.
[726] And what do you want to make?
[727] What kind of things?
[728] Documentaries, dramas, give myself some good roles.
[729] Why not?
[730] You know, but ask questions of the audience.
[731] Work in a different way.
[732] Create work that isn't being written yet.
[733] Why wait for somebody else to write it?
[734] Create it yourself.
[735] I'm 57 years old.
[736] You look about 35.
[737] Thank you.
[738] And you say to yourself, well, why isn't that role come along yet?
[739] Create it yourself.
[740] And that's one thing the younger generation are doing, brilliantly, starting their production companies, you know, valuing themselves.
[741] And I think that's something I really want to do, but myself at the top, be the bossman like you.
[742] it comes with its costs but that's a conversation for another time the question that was left for you what is a personal legacy you want to leave for yourself slash children I would say crack up in the universe you know inspire those around be an inspirational figure in what you do be an example in what you do and I'll give you an example of that but I've just been casting this film as a director and two leading roles, two black, two black people all these young black kids came in the door, young black actors and the first thing they said, oh my God, man, I used to watch you when I was at school, thank you so much for, I had no, I'm not like, I was feeling, I'd probably be feeling really depressed that morning, but even without, me knowing, just being there, just by doing what I did, I inspired that kid to think about even becoming an actor, just even think about it.
[743] So I would say to, you know, that inspire people by your actions.
[744] Crack up in the universe because we're still living in an age where we're the first, I was the first black actor, Palo, this was the first black person we're still living in that age.
[745] So I think there's a whole legacy to leave, a whole legacy to open up.
[746] Be an example, not just to your generation, but to future generations.
[747] Well, David, I have to say you're certainly that.
[748] You're certainly an example.
[749] You're certainly that inspiration and that role models to so many people.
[750] So if that is your objective, then I think you've already achieved it in a tremendous way.
[751] No doubt you've got so much more to do.
[752] And I have a sneaking suspicion based on your tenacity and your, which has been present since you're a very young man, that you'll find a way to crack open the universe in any way that you desire.
[753] I have absolutely no doubt about that, in fact.
[754] Thank you.
[755] I hope to do that.
[756] That's my plan.
[757] Thank you for inspiring me as well.
[758] And I don't act, but watching a black man rise so high and achieve so much is incredibly inspiring for me. And my role models are varied across industries and you're certainly one of them.
[759] But, you know, I'm right back at you, because you inspired, you likewise and yourself inspire people.
[760] And, you know, I was listening to, I say, listened to your Chris Kamara piece, which was beautiful, by the way.
[761] Oh, thank you.
[762] And hearing how he's inspired people, you know, a lot of the people who go through that, but they don't think it.
[763] They can't even imagine the world, but even just by being yourself, you inspire people.
[764] So, let's write back at you.
[765] well thank you David means a time coming from you and I'm sure this conversation we're going to continue off there in various forms so thank you thank you huge inspiration