Actor Omari Douglas was born in Wolverhampton in 1994 and trained at the Arts Educational Schools in London, graduating in 2015. Earlier this year he made his TV debut playing Roscoe Babatunde in It’s a Sin, Russell T Davies’s Channel 4 drama about the 80s Aids crisis. His theatre credits include Rush (King’s Head theatre), Jesus Christ Superstar (Regent’s Park Open Air) and Emma Rice’s Old Vic adaptation of Wise Children. On 16 June, Douglas will be in conversation with Davies for a Guardian Live event; next month he appears in Constellations at the Vaudeville Theatre in the West End.
1. Music
My cousin used to get me to watch Eurovision with her when I was little, so I’m keeping the tradition alive. I watched the final with some friends and it was the best ceremony in years. There were a couple of standout songs that I literally cannot stop playing: one is Sugar, the Moldovan entry – which is nuts – from Natalia Gordienko, and Loco Loco, by this Serbian girl group called Hurricane. The aesthetics were absolutely brilliant. Hurricane looked like they could have been on Real Housewives, and they did this incredible dance routine. So I’ve been blasting that out.
2. Documentary
1971: The Year That Music Changed Everything (Apple TV+)
I came across this music documentary when Lauren Laverne was interviewing [director] Asif Kapadia on her [BBC Radio 6 Music] show. She mentioned the title and I thought: “Oh, I’ve read that book, it’s by David Hepworth.” It’s essentially spotlighting what musicians were doing as artists in order to reflect that time politically, and it’s completely fascinating how those two things ran alongside each other. There’s a brilliant section about Oz magazine and the rise of censorship, and Marc Bolan, and how David Bowie went from being an underground figure to a global superstar.
3. Podcast
A few weeks ago I listened to this podcast about the musical version of Carrie, which was commissioned for the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1988. There was a hoo-ha about it; a lot of puritans were like: “We can’t believe the RSC are putting on a musical version of a Stephen King novel.” It transferred to Broadway and flopped. The podcast gives you lots of funny anecdotes about putting on the show; they speak to the cast and pick the production apart. I’m a musical theatre geek, so it was fascinating to hear it play out.
4. Book
I read this during lockdown and absolutely loved it. It’s about this post-grad science student in the US, and his life as a millennial queer black man navigating what is a very white space. Brandon Taylor writes fascinating, complex characters: he’s got a really good way of capturing everything that’s going on internally for people, and his attention to detail is amazing. He’s got a new book coming out later this month called Filthy Animals, which I’m looking forward to, and he puts out a really interesting weekly newsletter. His writing is so crisp and I love all his references.
5. Shop
Since we’ve been able to go into shops I went back to this vintage clothing store. It’s really well curated by a cool Swedish woman called Ameli Lindgren – I always ask her where she gets her stuff from and she’s just: “I’m not telling you that.” There’s a lot of pieces from the 70s in there: beautiful Missoni knitwear, Gucci jewellery. A lot of the clothes in my wardrobe are secondhand, and I’m not really interested in labels, but I appreciate the quality of the pieces. I managed to get a suit there for my cousin’s wedding, so it’s pretty good.
6. TV
I’m a couple of episodes into this. It’s a comedy about an all-female Muslim punk-rock band and Anjana Vasan, who’s an amazing actress, plays a misfit who ends up auditioning for the band. It’s captivating: they’ve been really brave in how they’ve told the story – it catches you off-guard at times. They’ll just throw a musical number in there, or there’ll be a big fantasy sequence. All the actresses are immensely talented because they’re playing all the music themselves and they’re singing. It’s fun and subversive and I’m excited to see where it goes.
