Lennie James, 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.

0:45My cast away this week is the actor and writer Lenny James. This year he took home the Best Actor trophy at the BAFTAs for his starring role in Mr Loverman, playing a British Caribbean patriarch who's secretly in love with his male best friend. It was the latest achievement in a career which has been as varied as it has successful. His first play was published and won an award while he was still in his teens. His breakout role was as a small-time gangster in the film Snatch. For over a decade, he played Morgan Jones in The Walking Dead. He was a bent copper in The Line of Duty and wrote and starred in Sky's BAFTA-winning Save Me.

1:20He also found a way to tell his own story. Born in Nottingham and brought up in South London, in his teenage years, Lenny spent time in care. When he was at drama school, Lenny tore out the biography page from the folio of his play because he didn't want to be judged on his experience of growing up in care. Later, he would write about it in his BAFTA-nominated screenplay Storm Damage, which he dedicated to his foster mother. He says, I'm not really interested in playing characters I can do standing on my head. I don't want to get bored and I don't want to get lazy. So they have to challenge, they have to scare.

1:54Lenny James, welcome to Desert Island Discs. Thank you very much, a pleasure to be here. So Lenny, let's start with that BAFTA-winning role, starring role in Mr Loverman. Characters need to challenge and scare you. What scared you into playing Barry? His complexity, really, and making him real, not making him a caricature. And I love characters who have an interest in internal monologue. I'm much more interested in, on one level, what my characters say to themselves as I am what they say to the rest of the world and to the other characters. And Barrington was most certainly one of those who had a complicated internal monologue.

2:32Yeah, because he's presenting this exterior of this very kind of proper, you know, stylish kind of patriarch, quite well-to-do. You know, he's done well in life and then living a completely different interior life. Yeah, and the programme is about, on one level, the secret that Barry holds, that he's been having a 60-year relationship with his best friend, but also the kind of damage that secrets do, what it costs you to hold a secret, but what that secret does to the people that live with you and love you and exist because of you. And Bernadine Evaristo, who wrote the novel, did such a fantastic job.

3:11I just wanted to do justice to it. It's a story that challenges a lot of cultural expectations. I mean, what impact do you think it's had with audiences and what feedback have you had? On one level, I don't know, because it's early days. but I can only kind of answer in relation to the responses I've had from people stopping me in the street or people sending letters or messages through friends. Oh, what kind of thing? I mean, that must be amazing. I think overwhelmingly, or at least the ones that I remember most or struck me most are people who find a way of saying thank you for telling the story for I suppose seeing them seeing their story particularly West Indian men of a certain age or the sisters or mothers of men of a certain age who may have lost someone or you know may well have not responded to someone reaching out in the way that they now wish they had.

4:18It's very weird because the conversations don't always last so it's not long conversations some people just want to say thank you and they don't want to say anything more But it's an understanding It passes between the two of you How important is music in your life Lanny? It's vital It's the pulse, it's central, I write to music, music kind of soothes me. Well that's perfect These are the perfect qualifications for putting together your list of it eight discs for the island, you know, because you're going to need all of that. You're going to need the shift in energy and the soothing and everything.

4:53So let's get started with your first disc today then, Lenny James. Number one, what's it going to be and why? It is Touch the Hem of His Garment by Jean Martin. When I was at home with my mum, me, my brother and my mum, we lived mostly around the church, around the Pentecostal church. and we went to church Tuesday evenings, Thursday evenings and twice on Sundays. We socialised with the church. Sometimes Fridays would be prayer meetings round at somebody else's house. So there was a big focus on the church and every year a big evangelist would come over from America. It would either be Don Stewart, I think his name was, or Maurice Cirillo.

5:39One of them, I think it was Don Stewart, had a singer called Gene Martin. And my mum was a very, very religious woman. Every now and then that religious kind of front would drop. And Jean Martin was one of the men that made that drop. And Muhammad Ali was the other. I see. OK, I've got a picture in my mind's eye now before we hear this. Yeah. And we used to meet, we used to go to Westminster Central Hall. And all of the sisters in the church would just, this man would come on stage and he was a bit like Teddy Pendergrass. and he would come down onto the stage and they would just be drawn towards him in a very unchristian way and he would sing kind of gospel songs and I guess that was the soundtrack of my childhood.

6:33There was a woman in the Bible days She had been sick, sick so very long She heard about cheating, was passing that way So she joined the gathering crowd While she was pushing her way through Someone asked her, what are you trying to do? She said, if I could only touch the hymn of this garment I'd be made whole right now She stood there crying Oh Lord, oh Lord, oh Lord, oh Lord If I could only torture him of your God, I'd be made whole right now She spent her money here and there Until she had no more despair The doctors, they did all that they could But the medicine was to no good When she touched him, the slaves didn't see But all of them once he turned around I know somebody touched me She said it was I Only touched the hem of your garment So I'd be made whole right now She stood there crying out Touch the Hem of His Garments by Jean Martin.

8:06So, Lenny, that track was for your mum, Phyllis. Tell me a little bit more about her story. She was a nurse who came to Britain from Trinidad and initially settled in Nottingham. How much do you know about her story? And tell me about her as a person. It's weird because I was 11, nearly 12, when we lost her. So a large chunk of what I know about her is what different family members have told me. I was kind of too young to kind of know for myself, even though I was a real mummy's boy. I used to curl up behind her, lay my head on her thighs behind her legs, yeah, and on the couch. And she came to England from Trinidad on her own to be a nurse in Nottingham.

8:55she saved up for years and years to pay back her fare which she had to do on pay back the boat fare and then also pay for my dad to come over okay and now because I've got no memory of my dad that it's what I've been told and initially I was told that he after my brother and myself were born when I was about a year old, he left and we never saw him again. Much later on, I found out from a cousin that it was actually the other way around and my mum left. She took us and left Nottingham and came to London. So this is how you ended up growing up in London. You're very much a Londoner. Yeah, we started off in Battersea in South London and ended up in Streatham and Tooting.

9:44So it was just you, your mum and your big brother, Kester. She'd broken up with your dad. You only found out that later. What did you know about him when you were growing up? What did she tell you, if you asked? She didn't tell us very much. And I kind of grew up knowing it was not a taboo subject, but that she didn't leave any room for us to miss him. My kids now find it quite difficult to comprehend, but I didn't grow up with any real sense of an absence of a father. That's not really my experience. I had my mum's brothers were around, my Uncle Aubrey and my Uncle Nat. They were presents in my life.

10:26And it sounds too also that she filled up your life in lots of other ways because it must have been very difficult to make ends meet for her. You know, single parent with you and your big brother and just the three of you. And obviously she had ill health as well throughout the time. So, you know, not always able to work. But you say that Christmases were magic with your mum. Oh, they were amazing. I don't know how she did it. I genuinely don't. You take your time. It was the time of the catalogues. Me and my brother, we were allowed to go through the catalogue and pick one thing. I remember getting what I'd wished for most Christmases.

11:09And she must have been paying it off the whole rest of the year. I genuinely don't know how she did it because she was ill most of the time, So couldn't really work. So we were, you know, were at the mercy of social services and the welfare, as we called it back then. But I didn't grow up feeling or thinking I was poor. I mean, she was incredibly proud. She used to say, no one needs to know how many shirts you have, as long as your shirts are clean every time you walk outside the house. And she had a real sense of people, of not wanting people to know her business. Putting your best face forward.

11:53Putting your best face forward. She was a stickler for us being polite and well presented and doing well in school and being respectful. and I think that was a lot to do with why we spent so much time in the church. I think the church was a community that helped her bring us up. And what about the creativity that you've obviously gone on to exhibit in your life? Did you see part of that in her? Was she a creative person? She used to sing at church on her own and I have a very strong memory of that, of her singing at church And I have very strong memories of her being at the sewing machine. She also used a child mind.

12:38So there were always little kids around the house when we were kind of growing up. But I spent quite a lot of my childhood, or I remember spending quite a lot of my childhood, at her feet when she's at the sewing machine. And I would take the little bits of material and make clothes for my action men and my Steve Austin action figure, bionic man action figure. And that's how I kind of learnt to sew. But if you bumped into me and my brother when we were kids and said one of these two was going to turn out to be an actor, 99 % of people would have picked my brother over me. Oh, really, Kester, why?

13:20He was a huge, I mean, he is still a huge personality. And he's not much older than you, right? He's two and a half years older than me. So in school terms, that was three years, but it was two and a half years older. And we were very close growing up and we're still close now. But he was the extrovert. He was very much the extrovert until I was 14, 15. My nickname when I was growing up was, my family name was Bunton from the nursery rhyme, Cry Baby Bunton. And it was because it was what my brother used to sing at me when I was a baby because I was always crying, apparently. Not much has changed.

13:59So my brother grew up with my mum saying to him, look after Bunton. And when we lost her, he very much took that on board. All right, Lenny, let's have some more music. Your second disc today. What are we going to hear next? My second disc is for my brother and it's I Found Lovin' by the Fatback Band. And my brother used to be a bouncer at Streatham Ice Skating Rink and so I would be able to go ice skating for free. Is this in the 80s? This is the 80s. Okay. It's the... It's important for setting the scene I think. Yeah, it's kind of late 70s, early 80s. Okay, we're there. And he was a bouncer at the rink and he was always a very popular guy and people used to follow him and then he started DJing but it was old school pub DJing and it was the early days of rap and it was soul music and my brother was a full on soul head and I Found Loving was like his signature track and later on it was kind of the Steve Walsh version that had you what, you what, you what, you what, you what which I nicked for Save Me but whenever I hear I Found Loving I think of my big brother and this one's for him.

15:23Since I found you I've been in love with you I've found you Since I've found you I've been in love with you I've found you

15:49The Fatback Band and I Found Loving. So Lenny, when you were growing up, you knew that your mum had health problems and she died when you were just 11. What do you remember about that time? I stopped talking and so I had the view of the back of my brother's head again because he kind of stepped in front of me. and kind of looked out for me. And I remember social services got involved because it was just me and him now. And we went and stayed with my mate Michael Joyce's family around the corner for a couple of days and then had the funeral and the church came in and they looked after us for a bit.

16:32And then there was talk of us going to America to be with my uncle Nat. me and my brother had a talk wasn't much of a talk because we kind of agreed with each other that we didn't really want to go to America because I don't know if it was me who said it or my brother who said it but we didn't want to leave our mum alone here we didn't have much family in the UK we had some cousins in North London but my aunt had four daughters so she couldn't take us in. So the option was a kid's home. And we were in a temporary kid's home for about a month and then they found a long stay place for us. So you said you'd just retreated into silence, understandably.

17:21You know, you mentioned that there's social workers and people, you know, around you. How did they respond to that? There were a few, quite a few visits to child psychiatrists and child psychologists and everybody wanting to know why I wasn't talking. And I remember my meeting with a social worker and her trying to, because I would make myself known to my brother, speak through him. And we're in a meeting and the social worker was just encouraging me to, you know, doing all the right things, you know, saying that she was someone I could talk to and that I could trust and that they're very worried about me because you know if you know they need to know what I'm feeling and why won't I talk and I remember my brother going what do you want him to say and uh yeah that said everything yeah and he goes he'll talk when he's ready and then you'll be asking him to shut up.

18:26And he was kind of right. He was right. So Kester wasn't much older than you, but he'd taken on the role of looking after you and the two of you went to live in a children's home in Tooting. So you were able to stay together. We stayed together, stayed at the same school, stayed in the same neighbourhood. That must have been good continuity. Kept all my same friends and moved into 8 North Drive, which was a huge Georgian mansion. And there were 18 kids. And how was that for you? If I had to be in a kid's home, we lucked out and we were in a good kid's home. The staff stayed. They were attentive.

19:08There wasn't a big turnover. There were lots of families there. They kept the kids together. and they cared about us and they looked after us. And Kester was determined to do what your mum had asked him to and to put you first. How did he do that? He had to make some decisions about what he was doing. He was quite a good footballer. I mean, he'd say he was a fantastic footballer, but he was good enough to maybe try it at different levels. But he took an apprenticeship as an electrician because at that time it was seen as something that was guaranteed work and he needed to work because he needed to look after bunting.

19:50So he made choices like that. He stayed on. You could either leave the kids home at 16 or 18 and he really wanted to get out there at 16. He wanted to be in charge of himself and start messing about. But he stayed until he was 18 and the idea was at that particular time that I would leave at 16 and the two of us would get a place together and that's how it would go. But circumstances rendered that not possible. Yeah, so circumstances changed because by the time you got to that point, coming up for 16, the children's home was being sold. And at that point, you went into foster care and your foster mum, Pam, I know has been hugely important in your life.

20:32Tell me about her. A lot like my mum. She came to England from Jamaica to be a nurse. I went to live with her about 10 years before that. She retrained as a social worker and became a kind of senior social worker for Wandsworth, dealing in the fostering and adoption areas. So how old were you when you first met and what do you remember about it? I was 15. The children's home was being Wandsworth had a famously low or non-existent poll tax and partly was that they sold off their assets and our Georgian mansion was worth a pretty packet so the children's home was being closed down and they ran a scheme which was for fostering teenagers and I was advised to join it.

21:19How did you feel about that? I was sorry my house was going to be gone. In fact, I wrote a letter to the council and I sent it to the local newspaper, the South London Press, venting my anger at my home being taken away from us and talking about how important it was not just to the kids living there, but the kids who had left, who had no place to come back to. They take it at your pace. So you decide when you're ready to go and visit them. You decide when you're ready to go and stay overnight. You decide when you're ready to go and stay for the weekend. And then finally they get to a point of kind of saying, are you ready to move in?

21:59You know, years later, when I left home, I got into drama school. and left home and my foster mother turned the house that she had fostered me into into a privately run satellite children's home and my foster brother and foster sister worked there and I went back and helped out at weekends and holidays and this was what inspired storm damage and I wrote storm damage about the first two years of my foster family's children's home and the kids that were there and the work that they were doing. I meant it as a kind of testament to them and what they had set out to do for our community. Lanny, let's take a minute for some music.

22:45It's your third disc today. What are we going to hear next? It's the specials with It Doesn't Make It Alright. And I could have picked any song. I remember being in the kids' home. It's before I got fostered. Being in the kids' home and Top of the Pops were on. and the day room, as we called it in the kids' home, was huge. It went from the front of the house to the back of the house. It's a television in one corner and I'm stood in the middle of the room and the specials are doing Gangster on top of the pops and it completely blew my mind. What was it about, that grab tune? It was the beat, it was the look of them, the mix of them just looked like me and my mates and literally everything changed.

23:32Did you have all the gear? Did you end up with a full through boy? I eventually had all the gear. I went to jumble sales and car boot sales. I went to hat shops and got myself my trilby. I adjusted my school uniform. I turned the trousers up to three quarters so that I could show off my white socks and loafers. I turned my school tie backwards so it just became a thin black tie hanging down. And also, it was the start of understanding myself and realising who I was as a black boy growing into a black man in England at that particular point. And it felt like everything I had to say, the specials were saying it.

24:20I was good at school, but I wasn't particularly good in English at all, really. and I was doing CSE English, which was one down from O levels. Although we were a top stream class, we were quite raucous. And in the end, the deputy headmaster had to come in and teach us because we were just going through teachers at a rate of knots and teachers just wouldn't teach us as a class. And he came in and he started talking about poetry and what we thought poetry was. and he said, bring in something that you think is poetry and I brought in some specials lyrics and read them out and then he said, write a poem.

25:04I took it really seriously and I wrote a poem that was my version of It Doesn't Make It Alright by the specials and he read it and he read it out in class and moved me from CSC to O-level. And yeah, and that was a specials. Talk about music changing your life.

25:55The specials, and it doesn't make it all right. Lenny, how did you get into drama? Was it through school? There was a theatre and education group that came to our school that did a play that was around apartheid. And one of the things that you had to do was put your hand up if you wanted to go up there and act out a scenario with them based on the play that they had shown us. and for some reason I put my hand up. Why do you think you did that? I don't know. I just fancied it and didn't really think much more about it until I was hanging out with a bunch of friends in a certain group. We'd gone on a French exchange and because I lived in a kid's home, they were a bit reticent of him coming and staying at the kid's home.

26:46So one of the other families took us in and there was just a new circle of friends. and among them was a couple of girls who one of them I quite liked and she wanted to be an actress and she was going to go and audition for this summer play at the Cockpit Theatre in Marlebone and again, I got no idea what possessed me but I went down and auditioned and part of it was I quite liked her and I got offered a place and the girl that I liked didn't get offered a place and when I was doing the play I was coming out one day and it was a musical called Just Good Friends and the choreographer of the show stopped me when I came out and she said Lenny are you going to do this again?

27:33And I said I'm not sure, I had a laugh and she said I think you should, I think you can make a real go of this and in my head it was like she said you're good enough to be on the team and that resonated with me, that clicked I'd made a circle of friends who all wanted to do theatre so they were looking at the National Youth Theatre they were looking at the Lyric Youth Theatre they were looking at that and I just followed behind them and the most important place that I landed was at the Lyric Youth Theatre under the kind of guidance of Lucy Parker who was the director of the Youth Theatre and it's where I met my then girlfriend, now wife at 17 was in that youth theatre.

28:21It's where I kind of solidified what acting was about for me and what was important about it for me. And what was that? What did it mean to you at that point? It meant trying to conjure the truth. It was trying to bring something to life that wasn't there and make it real. real and making it real was very important to Lucy and became really important to me and it's also where I started writing. Your play Trial and Error won a national playwriting competition and was published by Faber and Faber. Lenny you were 17. I was. What was it about? It was a trial set up in a kid's home. Something had been nicked in a kid's home and we used to do we didn't do it often but it happened a couple of times and the kids set up a trial to find out who did it and in the process kind of put their kids home and the child care system on trial and I wrote it long hand wrote it upstairs in my new bedroom at my foster family's house and then I put an advert in the classifieds of the South London Press for someone to type it up and this lady came to the house and picked it up and took it away and she had to phone me up every now and then on the house phone to ask me certain words because I'd written it kind of colloquially so she would go do you mean in it are you trying to say something else and I'd go no it's in it and then I wrote it and I sent it in to the National Youth Theatre Texaco playwriting competition and it was a joint kind of win with Ed Kemp, who I think kind of runs RADA now, I think.

30:08I might be wrong. So not a bad springboard. Not a bad springboard. And we won the kind of award for most promising playwrights under 21. Fantastic. I mean, absolutely amazing. And also at that time to meet your now wife, Giselle, you once wrote, my wife and I had our first kiss in a rehearsal room for a play that I had written for her. Very smooth, Lenny. Very smooth. Isn't it? Yeah, it is. Lenny, we've got to take a moment for some music. This next track, what are we going to hear and why are you taking this one to the island? It is Stevie Wonder and it's living for the city. I couldn't possibly be on any desert island.

30:45I couldn't be in any situation where I'm playing music and not have Stevie Wonder. But it's so difficult to choose which one. It's impossible to choose. We had a friend who worked for Island Records and she had a spare ticket to go and see Stevie Wonder in the company of Jules Holland. It's that famous one where Jules Holland and Stevie Wonder are sat down at the piano and Jules is really, really nervous because he sat next to his hero. And our friend Sandra had a spare ticket for that and offered it to us. And me and my wife, we had our first kid by then. But so one of us had to stay at home and we flipped a coin and I made her flip that coin maybe 20 times before giving in because she won.

31:30and she got to go and see Stevie in the room with 50 other people. A boy's born in hard time, Mississippi Surrounded by four walls that ain't so pretty His parents give him love and affection To keep him strong, moving in the right direction Living just enough, just enough For the city