Adeel Akhtar, actor

0:00Hello, I'm Lauren Laverne and this is the Desert Island Discs podcast from BBC Radio 4. Every week I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, book and luxury, that they'd want to take with them if they were cast away to a desert island. For rights reasons, the music's shorter than on the original broadcast, but you can find a version with longer music tracks on BBC Sounds. Listeners will also get access to episodes 28 days earlier than everyone else. I hope you enjoy listening.

0:46My cast away this week is the actor Adeel Akhtar. He's a double BAFTA winner who made history with his first award, the first person of colour to take home the Best Actor Prize. In acting circles, he's known as Ideal Actor because of his versatility and ability to play ordinary people dealing with profound experiences. His on-screen CV includes roles in some of the biggest TV hits of recent times, Harlan Coburn's addictive Fool Me Once, the BBC dramas Sherwood, The Night Manager and Killing Eve, and playing the British Prime Minister in the Netflix hit series Black Doves. He's also starred in films including Four Lions, the critically acclaimed Ali and Eva, and the one-off drama Murdered by My Father, for which he won his first BAFTA.

1:30His parents came to the UK from Pakistan and Kenya, and though he knew from a young age that acting was his calling, at first he followed his father's wishes, studying law before pursuing his dream. It wasn't an easy route to the top, but luckily easy wasn't and still isn't what he's looking for. He says, if somebody offers me a part which terrifies me, I'm probably going to do it. That fear and terror crystallises your focus. It makes you just go for it. Adil Akhtar, welcome to Desert Island Discs. Hiya Lauren, how you doing? I'm good, how are you? Good, you're alright, thank you. Excited to be here.

2:05Excited to be here. Good man. So Adele, let's start with that terror. What happens once you've said yes to the scary part? When does the fear start to subside? Yeah, I'm not sure if it ever does. With age, I've been able to sort of temper it a little bit. So the fear doesn't feel too overwhelming that I can't do what I need to do. But I did a play at the National called The Estate, where that was happening. so that bit before you go on stage is terrifying and if somebody said that they had an Uber waiting a sort of a backstage You'd think about it I wouldn't even think about it, I'd just jump in but luckily no one's done that yet but that fear is what you need and then a forthright step in that direction usually pays off quite well a friend of mine said you just have to leap so yeah, got a leap So a leap.

3:04And what about taking that leap? I mean, preparation-wise, how method are you? How do you like to do it? How do you work? Yeah. I mean, I went to drama school in New York and I went to quite a method-y school. Oh, yeah. They did this thing called the coffee cup exercise where you had to drink an imaginary cup of coffee. What are you laughing for? Sorry. It sounds like a good idea. Yeah. Drinking an imaginary cup of coffee. This is why I'm not an actor. But it went on for a long time. It went on for, like, weeks. I had to feel the coffee weeks I had to feel the coffee smell it and then taste it and it was really useful for this thing called sense memory which is a Stanislavski thing so you have sense memory stuff getting you into the right zone but then when you're on set you're just like I'll just drink a cup of coffee you didn't say that to them at the time though did you?

3:58no but I think you have to go through that learning process to work out what you need to do and what you don't need to do. To answer your question, there's some things that are very useful and other things you can just speed up a little bit. So, Adil, there's a lot made in the criticism of your work, the positive criticism of your work, made of your lugubrious eyes. And I know that even your wife says that you've got a sleepy face. A sleepy face, yeah. So I wondered what you thought of that. Would you agree? Do you agree with this? I mean, it's the face that I was born with, yeah. I mean, I do have a sleepy face.

4:29but you know what's even funnier? Me in the mornings. Imagine a sleepy face. Even sleepier. Even sleepier, if it's possible. Has it helped you in any of your roles? I'm thinking of the lawyer you played in Show Trial. He was an insomniac, no? Right, yeah, he was, yeah. Some of the jobs that I've got as of late, you know, I have this dishevelled quality, I think is the best way to describe some of the parts that I've done. I think I've cornered that bit of the market of, you know, dishevelledness to the point where it's actually written in stage directions. And I don't know if they've added it in, but it's like a really bad runner.

5:10Maybe it's just writing down observations. Right, it's saying what they say, really, really dishevelled. And it's like, oh, nice. But it's good, it keeps, you know, pays a bill. Well, do you know what? Being adept at being dishevelled is probably good for the desert island. So I think today it's going to come in handy. You're going to be even more dishevelled. Yeah, being on a desert island, that's true. All right, Adeel, it's time for your first disc. What's it going to be and why? This is The Weight and it's a cover by Aretha Franklin. This is a cheeky one because I love covers. But also, I was out of work for a few years and when work started happening for me, I got a job in LA and I was with my wife and my little babies in the back of this car driving through LA and it was actually The Wait by the band.

6:00So the original track. The original track that we would listen to a lot and it just reminds me of a slight upturn in my career driving with my family through LA. But this is Aretha Franklin's version. Yeah, but you're not going to let me play half of this and then half of the original, are you? No, it's got to be one. But Aretha never made anything worse. I would have thought the band would be pretty happy with Aretha covering their stuff. I think they would be. Must have been delighted. They would have been really happy with it. I pulled into Nazareth I was feeling about a half past day I just need some place Where I can lay my head Hey mister can you tell me Where a girl might find a bed He just clinned and shook my hand And that was all he said Take a lot of money Take a lot for free Aretha Franklin and the weight.

6:59So, dear Lactar, you were born in Hounslow, West London, in 1980. Your father, Humayu, is from Pakistan and your mother, Mumtaz, from Kenya. How did the two of them meet? They met in an airport, Heathrow. My dad was an immigration officer and my mum was a passenger handler because back in the 60s you used to greet people off the plane. and my dad would sit stamping passports and he would make excuses. He would, like, stop my mum's passengers to try. So that he could talk to her. So he could talk to her. Take massive cues for me. Massive cues, just to have a little chat with somebody we fancied.

7:41And my mum got really angry about it. She was like, this fellow keeps stopping me and I'm really annoyed. And that's how they met. And that was it. So he was the one who really caught it. He wrote poems for her, didn't he? Yeah, bad ones. Have you read them then? No, according to my mum, it was not great poems that he would write for her. And I think that added to her annoyance of him. But also, listen to this, right? She had this tiny Volkswagen Beetle, so she saved up enough money. So imagine, she's come from East Africa, 17, 18, found a way in this job, saved up all this money to buy this Volkswagen Beetle and then my dad says she needs to get it repaired and my dad says, oh I'll drive it, don't worry and he drove it and crushed it yeah, crushed this Beetle how were they together?

8:36and then they stayed together but that's been a common theme every time he's in, there's always some sort of ding on the car but yeah, then they got together So tell me a little bit more about both of them. Starting with your dad, what kind of character is he? How do you describe him? Determined, obviously. Yeah, determined. Not great at driving. Willful. He came over from Pakistan in his 20s, worked really hard, became an immigration officer and then became an immigration lawyer and was educated in Pakistan. So it was like shadow of sort of empire and, you know, academia was like the main thing in his life.

9:14and in some ways it wasn't, you know, quite moderate upbringing, in other ways very traditional. My mum, on the other hand, followed the line a little bit in regards to how my dad wanted to bring us up, like I went to a boarding school, but my mum, on the other hand, was kind of always looking for clues as to what I was really interested in and wanted to do. So, for example, at a very young age, if I said, I'd really like to do this poetry-drama course sort of thing, she would kind of encourage that. And she sounds really dynamic. I mean, coming here at such a young age on her own and spent her early years living in the YWCA, I think.

9:54What did she tell you about that time? Yeah, so when I was a teenager I found this little newspaper clipping of a story that said a woman was found unconscious in the YWCA and she regained consciousness in hospital. And I brought this newspaper down to my mum and I was like, what happened here? What is this story about? and it was a gas leak in the YWCA and she would have only been in the country like two years, two, three years and this tragic thing happened and luckily she came through it but I don't know why am I saying this? I suppose that's essentially a kind of description of what my mum's about really.

10:33She's had to deal with so much and being a product of immigration and having travelled so far from Kenya to London and then when she got to London, it being so difficult for her, but never once felt sorry for herself. She just sort of cracked on with things, really. What made her decide to emigrate? Why did she decide to move in the first place? Her father had died and the older brothers, as was tradition, were trying to look for a husband for her and she wasn't having any of it. So she just got a bit of money from her mum and then jumped on a plane and came to London. All right, I do like that.

11:14Let's take a minute for some music. Your second choice to do, what's it going to be? If I think about the household, like Dad would still be listening to traditional Cavali songs, a bit of Nat King Cole sometimes and a bit of Bob Marley. He had a massive reel-to-reel and all these amazing sounds are coming out of his room and my mum would be downstairs in the kitchen listening to this radio station called Sunrise Radio, which is in Southall. and she'd be listening to all the Bollywood tunes coming out there. But one thing that brought our family together was songs that we could all share in. And I remember singing this song with my mum in the car and it's only recently I've realised the weight of what this song represents and Harry Belafonte and what he represents as a person and an artist.

12:01Just the thought now in my 45-year-old brain thinking back to me and my mum singing this song in the car I don't know, it's a very moving thought. So this is Jamaica Farewell by Harry Belafonte.

12:37is down, my head is turning around I had to leave a little girl in Kingston Town

12:47Harry Belafonte and Jamaica Farewell. Adil Akta, you once said that the process of acting has parallels with the journey someone takes when they emigrate. Tell me a bit more about that. I think it's like this idea that there's nothing on the horizon to fix your gaze. So all you have is this sort of desire to push forward and when I think about I'm doing a spot of writing at the moment and when I think about the creative act it sort of feels all it is is blank horizon. The blank page. The blank page right but this is kind of higher stakes and it seems like the most purist form of love actually this is sort of promised to the future because I am the sort of product of what that, I should apologise for it if I'm the product of it but my kids as well You know, this kind of, they're sort of a product of me and my wife and these beautiful mixed race kids that are product of this story of immigration, which I find like a wild thing to think about.

13:46I mean, it is so interesting in your story, you know, so many different kind of pit stops. So you were born in Hounslow. Then when you were two, I think the family moved to Chalfonts and Peter in Buckinghamshire. That's right. So two quite different environments there. What was behind the decision? My mum and dad wanted to move out of the city in Hounslow and maybe afford a better life for me and my sister. And when they moved to Chalfant St Peter, they sort of took a little temperature gauge of what the culture was and worked out how they would fit in. And because of their ability to assimilate as well as they did, they protected me and my sister from maybe overt and less overt forms of sort of racism, I suppose.

14:31So that wasn't something that you experienced growing up? I mean, there would have been moments, I mean, sort of strange moments when you're a kid, like stone throwing, but it's in the hazy sort of recesses of your brain. So kids throwing stones at you? Yeah, yeah. So it's like this thing of going, well... And it's a really difficult thing to sort of pick apart if it's what you think it is or if it's just kids being kids. But I think the bigger thing for me was the fact that my mum was there to make sure that whatever pain or discomfort I was going through was kind of minimised. So she shielded you?

15:11Yeah, physically and yeah, actually yeah. Did you discuss kind of race, culture, all those differences and challenges as a family? Yeah, I mean I would have discussed it quite a bit with my mum and dad but the good thing about the way my mum and dad brought us up It was something that was acknowledged, but then they sort of gave us the tools to try and work through it. And the thing which allowed us to sort of work through it was this, again, coming back to like the idea of like what the immigrant story is or whatever. It's just sheer will. It's like we're going this way. The movement is happening this way and you have to sort of go with it.

15:54Just don't stop. But then it's a certain amount of pressure to have to, you know, be the result of all of that. Like you say, that propulsive move forward and carry it forward. Did you feel that? 100%. I mean, yeah, my dad, yeah, when I was, when it was university time, to the point where my dad said that I had to be a lawyer. And that is the sort of pressure I think you're talking about. There wasn't really space for me to think about doing anything in the arts or being creative, because that seemed to be sort of quite frivolous. But to answer your question, yeah, that is quite a pressure to sort of have on your shoulders when all you want to do is do a bit of acting, you know.

16:34Adil, I want to find out what happened next, but first I'd like to hear some more music, if you wouldn't mind. Your third choice today. What is it and why are you taking it to the island? I'm taking this song to the island, Daniel Dilko by The Idols, and I managed to get my hands on some tickets to see The Idols. And I phoned up a mate of mine and I said, look I've got some tickets can you come see the idols with me they cancelled phone up another mate they cancelled phone up another mate they cancelled and then I hadn't been in touch with K Tempest for a very long time I was in one of their videos years ago so we're like friends but then we hadn't seen each other for a long time and I asked K if they wanted to join me and 100 % in let's go so we went and I remember being in the crowd, Joe Talbot on stage and I remember Joe saying to people, because at Punk Gigs there's lots of beers flying about the place and I remember Joe going, alright let's calm down and let all the people on the walls come to the front of the stage and Kay bought me a t-shirt, I mean I'm just saying buzzwords now but it was just a beautiful, and I sometimes wear that t-shirt underneath all my clothes sometimes just because it reminds me of what a beautiful night that was.

17:53And I think it's about kindness. I think this is what I'm trying to say. And this track in particular? This track in particular because it's about showing love to immigrants. And it's a really thrashy song, but it sometimes can make me cry because I think about this outpouring of love to immigrants.

18:20My blood brother is an immigrant A beautiful immigrant My blood brother is Freddie Mercury A Nigerian mother of three Danny Nadelko by Idols. Adil Akhtar, you mentioned that your parents sent you to boarding school. So this is when you were 11. You became a boarder at Cheltenham College. Did you enjoy it? I think at the time you sort of normalised lots of things. And I made some friends there. A little bit homesick at the start. And then it was more the idea of like I was a sort of minority there a little bit. And it's only with age and stuff like that, you can sort of see how that might affect, you know, a kid's development or their sense of who they are.

19:22Tell me about that. What happened? How did you feel? I mean, well, recently, you know, I got an award there recently, and at the run-up to the ceremony, we all got in a room together, that a lot of British Asian actors and directors and people who work in radio and TV. And it was there to honour Mira, Mira Sayal. And it was the first time I had been in a room with predominantly British Asian people. And, I don't know, there was an unspoken sort of feeling amongst all of us of a sense of achievement and pride, almost. And when you're a minority, that's quite an important feeling to foster. But you need to have the feeling to recognise it, you know.

20:17And I think when I was at boarding school, what I didn't realise was that I didn't really understand what that feeling was. That feeling of pride, do you mean? Yeah. And seeing yourself reflected back on yourself in some way. So from what I've read, it sounds like you've learned over the years how not to internalise other people's judgements. I wonder how you do that. You talked about approaching difficult interactions and people's ignorance with curiosity rather than being upset, necessarily. Yeah. And through that curiosity, I think you can settle in a place of understanding, which then leads to empathy.

20:59Yeah, I think that's what I meant by that. That's a tough thing to do, though, isn't it? Oh, yeah. You should have seen me this morning. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I'm not saying I'm great at it. I'm saying that's what I'm trying to do. Can you give us an example, though? I suppose a time I can think of is when I was going up an escalator and these boys were coming down and me and Lex, it was maybe like our second or third date, and these fellas shouted some stuff at me. And at that point, I had a big old beard and a little dishevelled. Trademarked, like. Trademarked, trademarked. and it was a time, you know, Osama bin Laden was in the news and shouted things like Osama.

21:39I mean, even before that, there was moments where people would just come up and sort of yank, pull my beard. Oh, my God, really? Yeah, yeah. And I suppose those are the moments where in the moment you react instinctively, but then if you give yourself a bit of a breath and can emotionally distance yourself from why somebody has the need to do that or say those sorts of things, it can give you a bit of an understanding as to what motivates them, what motivates like an impulse. Why would anybody see anything being so threatening to themselves or their identity that they would act in a way like that?

22:25happily you discovered acting at school which I think helped you fit in a bit more what was the light bulb moment for you? so I wanted to audition for Hamlet which is the big school production and I didn't get Hamlet but I got the Gravedigger great part I'm not knocking the part I'm not knocking the part I wanted Hamlet and I didn't get Hamlet but I did do the Gravedigger so I did the Gravedigger But then a bunch of us decided to put on a play called The Homecoming by Harold Pinter. And it was in a space about maybe a tiny bit smaller than this. And it was this moment where I was going for the big pot over there.

23:09Didn't get a good grave digger, which was fine. He's fine about it. I said, I'm fine about it, Lauren. I'm all right about it. I would say you look happy about it. Over it, actually. and then but then all these teachers came and sit down watch our sort of ramshackle little play that we were putting on they laughed at different points and took me serious at different points and I remember that being like a moment well a deal, disc number four, what is it? so we got First Big Weekend by Arab Strap and I went to a boarding school and they would have street lights out but I used to take a little radio into my room and out of this radio would be John Peel would come through.

23:51And so this was one of the songs that he put on and actually when we did The Homecoming, we took the lights out and we put blue lights in the theatre and we played this song. I don't know, it's a weird one because I was just a tiny little Asian kid at a posh school and I just fell in love with this song.

24:16The morning we went downstairs to buy some drink. We had intended to watch a football in the afternoon, but we passed out by then and slept right through it. I winked to find the Englishman 1-2-0. Then we went to get the train home, had a few in the station bar. We had some stuff left for the previous night's supply, so we got home and decided to go down to John's Indy Disco. Same story, it's Friday, lots of hugging, lots of dancing, etc. We couldn't sleep again, so we went to the park to look at the tune. Arab Strap and the first big weekend. So, ideal actor, off you went to university to study law.

24:53You know, your dad was a lawyer. His dad had been a lawyer, I think, and he was pretty determined that you were going to become a lawyer too. How did you feel about his intentions for you? Yeah, I was kind of what I had to do. You know, that was just the culture within our family. So you'd accepted it, yeah. Yeah, yeah, he sort of filled my UCAS form out for me and was like, this is what you're doing sort of thing. and I get it now because I've got a nine and a seven year old and the only thing that you want to do is protect them and love them and that's the way that my dad could protect and love me by sort of saying it worked for me and that was going to be the start of the rest of my life being a lawyer.

25:32Well it wasn't all you'd been studying though was it because by this point you had spent a few summers performing with the National Youth Theatre now your dad didn't know about this but your mum did talk me through that shout out to my mum for doing this round about the time when I did the homecoming I was like I love this I want to do more of it and I found out about National Youth Theatre round about the same time I said to my mum there's a place that you can go to in the summer where they do courses and if you do a course then sometimes you can do a bit of theatre in the West End or whatever and she then told my dad that I was going on like a summer camp you know summer camps where you had like quad biking and stuff like that that type of archery that type of thing and he went for that, he bought that yeah so Adele, in 2002 just before your finals, you went to New York, now you were going with your then girlfriend, she had an audition at the Actors Studio which is the drama school that Robert De Niro, Paul Newman Jane Fonda all went to but your arrival in the city did not get off to a good start.

26:43What happened? Just before I got on the plane, some security people took my passport off me and said that I'll get it back once I arrived at JFK. Once we landed at JFK, the plane sort of taxied off into a sort of secluded part of the runway and then we see this convoy of cars coming through. These fellows come onto the plane and they said that they were going to handcuff me but for their own protection and then took me into the airport and then questioned me. And that was the sort of scary bit because that went on a bit longer than it felt comfortable. How long do you think it was? I don't know, I mean, talking four, five hours of, like, not solid questioning but a lot of waiting.

27:28What kind of thing were they asking you? Just if I had any sort of affiliations to terrorist organisations and whether I was a practising Muslim or not. And this was during the time of sort of Guantanamo and things like that. So I was aware of what they were trying to get at and yeah, just sort of held my nerve and just answered the questions as honestly as I could and then got out of there. What kind of mental state did you walk out of the building in? I think looking back on it, I must have been in shock. I just knew that I had the audition the next day so I carried on with the audition. and obviously I mean your dad as we've heard was a lawyer and he tried to take legal action against the FBI but he was unsuccessful how did he react emotionally to what you'd been through he must have been really upset my dad has a sort of blind faith in the idea of doing good and the rule of law and I saw him in an office some a QC's office and he yeah I just saw this really proud man and not believe what he'd believed in for years and years and years.

28:38So he'd gone for advice, had he, to see if he could make a case? I mean, his expression of love was to protect me and do the right thing, and he wasn't unable to sort of do either. And so if you can't love your kid in the way that you should be able to, then it makes you kind of emotionally withdrawn a little bit. and I just saw him slightly, slightly beating at that point. Adil, let's take a minute for some music. It's your fifth choice today. What's next and why? This track is when I was studying in New York and I had got there and I'd lost all my music on my iPod and then a mate of mine said that he could put loads of music on my iPod and he did, so I started, and it was his dad's music library.

29:31So I started learning about music that came from New York at that time. So you've got Velvet Underground, Television, Patti Smith. But anyway, this, Mo Tucker, who's the drummer of Velvet Underground, sang this song and it just made me think, it doesn't matter how rock and roll anyone is is or this is kind of what underpins most people just like wanting to find that person that you can be with and close the door and make worlds with one two three if you close the door the night could last forever leave the sun shine out and say hello to never All the people are dancing and they're having such fun I wish it could happen to me But if you close the door The Velvet Underground and After Hours.