A little while before lockdown started, I was in a play called Teenage Dick at the Donmar, which was a retelling of Richard III as a high-school drama. The theatre posted a picture of the big dance sequence from the end of the play on social media recently. It was my favourite bit of the show, and probably the best bit of theatre I’d ever seen. I saw that picture and thought: wow, we had no clue back when it finished in February that everything would change so much. I miss it a lot, and theatre in general. Key workers are the most important people in all of this, but the entertainment industry also contributes so much to society and needs to be protected.
I find watching things really helps with my own writing – it’s all intertwined with work. Succession (HBO/Sky Atlantic) was the show I’d been most keen to watch; 10 minutes in, I was like: it’s so weird to be watching the best show ever made, and know that as you’re watching it. I blitzed it very quickly, so now I can finally understand all the memes and parodies on Twitter. It’s so specific about the media world, with all of the jargon, but you still understand it, which I think is a sign of exquisite writing. Kendall (Jeremy Strong) is so interesting. He’s someone with immense privilege, but he messes up every opportunity, which is addictive to watch. During his rap I was like: “Someone make him stop! Make this end!” I paid about £24 to download the two series because I had a feeling I’d want to rewatch it.
As an actor, I would love to open a script and see: “The helicopter lands, and the whole family gets in.” That would be the best job ever. But the show also has so many disturbing scenes, such as [Logan’s humiliation ritual] Boar on the Floor, which made me think of Laura Wade’s play Posh, about the Bullingdon club. My head goes mad thinking about the things rich people have learned from their schools and their parents – watching that it made me so glad I was born poor.
Like everyone else, I watched Tiger King (Netflix). I really enjoyed it, but I didn’t leave thinking about those beautiful, big, gorgeous tigers that were killed. I was just thinking: “free Joe Exotic”. But then I guess that’s what carefully crafted documentary storytelling does. I tend not to watch things that are doing the rounds because it feels a bit culty, but I watched it because it was just such a hit – there wasn’t even a big social media campaign, it was just word of mouth.
I really regret watching the true crime documentary Don’t Fuck With Cats (Netflix) – it freaked me out so much that I had to watch [the Cher film] Burlesque as a palate cleanser. It sounded fairly harmless because of the title, but it was so dark. I’m obsessed with reading about narcissists and sociopaths, but it seemed they forgot that there was this poor guy who was a very real victim here. It was a definite mistake. I wasn’t OK for a day afterwards.
Susan Wokoma is in Netflix’s Enola Holmes and Amazon’s Truth Seekers, both released later this year
