The last show you loved
Michaela Coel’s I May Destroy You, which is genius. I love the fact that black creators now are finally getting to bring their stories to television. She had to fight to get control of her own project and she has found a style of storytelling that has never been seen before – it’s so raw and unfiltered.
Your TV guilty pleasure
I’m not guilty about anything that I watch. I watch some really shitty reality shows, such as Marrying Millions, where poor people marry rich people. It’s just terrible television, but it’s kind of addictive. This is the kind of TV that you watch to go: “My life isn’t as bad as I thought it was.” I have no shame in watching this stuff and judging people.
Your favourite show when you were 10
As a kid, I loved Kenny Everett. I thought it was hilarious because he was getting away with swearing on TV without swearing, or without people knowing it. Like the character that used to throw her legs open and her name was Cupid Stunt. It wasn’t until years later that I realised what he had got away with.
I also loved a sitcom called No Problem, with all the black celebrities at the time in it like Victor Romero Evans and Judith Jacob. It was about a bunch of kids whose parents had left them in England to go back to Jamaica. They’re all in their late teens and 20s fending for themselves. Shows like that shaped me and made me realise there’s room for us – that we can do good stuff on television and not just play the criminals or be the butt of the jokes.
The show you wish you could guest star on
I love the sketch show Famalam. I would have loved to be in a show like that when I was doing comedy in England, with black comedians and actors doing sketches that relate to us. I tried to sell that concept many times when I was in England and people wouldn’t believe that a show with all black actors could exist and do well. Before, it was just lip service but now there’s a real change happening and it’s being felt all over the world. Now they’re actually listening to what we’ve been saying for years. It’s vindicating that they’re acting on it rather than just talking about diversity and then doing nothing.
The show that should be cancelled
Mrs Brown’s Boys. I don’t get it. I don’t understand why this thing is still on, it’s so cliched and it harks back to the 70s, but obviously there’s an audience for it. At the end of the day, I’m not a snob and I think there’s something for everybody. I just don’t get it.
The role you wish you had never turned down
There are none; I didn’t get enough. As a black actor in England, there wasn’t enough work. I turned down a lot of stuff that I am glad that I did because I’m not playing a drug dealer or the security guard. But I also almost turned down this show that I’m doing now, Bob Hearts Abishola, and I would have regretted that. I thought it was going to be exploitative, being made by this white sitcom king from America [Chuck Lorre] who is behind The Big Bang Theory. But luckily, I’ve got people in my corner that called me from England and told me to do it and now it’s the defining thing in my career. People really enjoy it because it’s authentic, it’s heartfelt and it’s needed right now when white supremacy is on the rise.
Season two of Bob Hearts Abishola begins on 16 November on CBS in the US
