| Gugu Mbatha-Raw on Fall Out |
 Gugu Mbatha-Raw is a name worth looking out for. The
24-year-old actress stars alongside Lennie James in Channel 4’s
powerful one-off drama, Fallout. Playing Shanice, a teenage girl whose
boyfriend has knifed another youth to death
on the edge of their London
housing estate, hers is a luminous, heartbreakingly brilliant
performance. Apt, then, that her name is short for Gugulethu, Zulu for
Our Pride, because this is one actress destined for the top. It’s all a
long way from her theatrical roots, mind you…Is it true you started out doing panto in the Oxford Playhouse? Yeah. When I was about 11 I used to do dancing and ballet and all that sort of stuff locally, and so I started doing pantomime at the Oxford Playhouse, in the children’s chorus. It was just a bit of fun. Did you know then that you wanted to pursue a career in acting? Yeah. I basically felt that it was so much fun, and I enjoyed it so much, that I really knew I wanted to do something performance-based. But in terms of pinning it down to acting, as opposed to dancing or singing, I wasn’t sure of that until I was a bit older. I just knew I wanted to do some sort of performance. It was my hobby, what I did after school, and I thought “If I could do this for ever, as a job, that would be ideal.” Did you get paid for the panto work? No, it was all voluntary. I did it because I loved it. I didn’t have pushy parents or an agent, I wasn’t sent to a stage school or anything. It was just a great experience, joyous to be in that environment. You then went on to get a scholarship to RADA when you left school, didn’t you? Yeah, but I’d done a lot of theatre in between. I joined the National Youth Music Theatre and the National Youth Theatre, and then when I was 17 I auditioned for RADA, and I got in! I was amazed, I thought I was far too young. I never thought I could possibly afford it, but they said they never turned anyone away on financial grounds. I got a scholarship with The Ogden Trust, which put me all the way through RADA. I was so lucky. After graduating, you found yourself back in the theatre - but it wasn’t exactly panto any more, was it? [Laughs] No. My first year out of RADA was mainly Shakespeare - I did As You Like It, Anthony and Cleopatra, and I got to play Juliet at the Royal Exchange in Manchester, which was amazing. Romeo was played by Andrew Garfield, who’s an amazing actor. And what a role! I seem to be attracted to all these tragic heroines. It’s not all tragic roles, though. You did Spooks and Doctor Who, which must have been fun. Yeah, both were great. Spooks was incredible for me - getting a semi-regular character in a long-running show was great. I learned a lot from working with the actors on that show. Doctor Who is just wonderful - it’s held in such great affection by so many people. And it’s so out there - I got to run around Wells Cathedral at 4am in high heels being chased by a monster, which isn’t something you get to do very often. And working with David Tennant and Freema Agyeman was perfection. Your latest project, Fallout, is a bit of a return to tragedy, isn’t it? What’s it about? I play Shanice, who is kind of the moral heart of a story about the aftermath of a teen stabbing in southeast London, and the group of teenagers involved in that. It’s about the crime and the investigation, which is done by a policeman who grew up in the area and comes back to solve the case. And it’s about how everyone’s lives are affected by the murder. My character is stuck in the middle, a go-between who wants to do the right thing but is torn by a sense of loyalty. It’s an important and topical subject. Was that one of the reasons you wanted to be involved? Definitely. I was incredibly moved by the story, and there’s a huge responsibility that goes with the role. It’s so resonant today. Every week there are teenagers being stabbed to death in London, and I just felt that this is a story that needs to be told. And it’s so beautifully written - it does deal with the issues, but it’s also an incredibly involving human story, told on a very personal level, and that really attracted me too. What did you do in the way of research, to get to know Shanice and her neighbourhood? I did as much research as I could, but it was quite a hectic time for me. I was doing a Shakespeare workshop in Australia for two weeks before we started, so I arrived off the plane at 8am and went to the read-through at midday. And then we started rehearsing and then started shooting, so it was a vgery crammed schedule for me. But I found music incredibly useful - I got into a lot of Grime music, a lot of R&B, a lot of Kano, Dizzee Rascal, music that tells the story of that life, that talks about that urban environment, and what it’s like to live in that world. I found that incredibly useful. And also the week’s rehearsal was really useful. There were a lot of incredibly talented actors involved, and we all got to spend a lot of time with each other, talking about personal experiences, which really helped me. So did some of the cast have personal experience of growing up on a London estate, in that kind of environment? Definitely, yes. I’m not a Londoner myself, so for me it was about discovering a lot, but several of the actors said it was very close to their world. People they knew had been killed in gang violence. And that just added to the sense of responsibility of wanting to tell the story right. Where was it filmed? Mostly around Elephant and Castle, on the Heygate estate. That was incredibly informative, just being in that location, where you do feel very small up against these huge tower blocks. It helped me to figure out who Shanice was. What kind of response did you get from the people who lived there? Most people just asked if we were doing The Bill, because they’re so used to having that filmed there. But they seemed to be pretty used to things being filmed there - I think the estate’s used a fair bit. And it was very friendly, everyone was great. The main police character, who is the other lead character alongside Shanice, was played by Lennie James. Were you excited to work with him? Yeah, I learned a huge amount working with Lennie. He’s a wonderful actor, very generous and very natural. You really have to step up and raise your game when you’re acting alongside him, because he’s so good. It’s a pretty harrowing drama, and Shanice is at the centre of some big emotions. Did you find that emotionally draining? Absolutely! I got back from Australia and went straight into this, and the jet lag didn’t help, but I was absolutely shattered by the end of it. It really took a huge amount out of me. At the end of every day I’d just come home, have a bath, learn my lines and go to bed. There was no time for anything outside of it, it’s utterly all-consuming. So yeah, it took a huge amount out of me. So has making this drama had a lasting effect on you? I think so. I think it’s been hugely eye-opening for me, coming from the countryside. It’s really raised my awareness. We all live on the same planet, but we inhabit very different worlds. |
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