O-T Fagbenle is on his knees in a bloodied toga, singing a cappella and begging Jourdan Dunn for one more chance. The supermodel looks wholly nonplussed, so Fagbenle – playing the eponymous deluded narcissist in the new E4 comedy Maxxx – sweeps out imperiously, only to creep back to tug the trailing toga fabric free from the door.
Comparing Maxxx with Fagbenle’s best-known role in The Handmaid’s Tale, where he plays June’s (Elisabeth Moss) husband Luke Bankole, offers a fine illustration of the actor’s versatility: the gentle, measured Luke, risking his life to try to save his wife and child, could hardly be further from the self-absorbed clown that is Maxxx. But Fagbenle has been quietly doing eye-catching work for years on both sides of the Atlantic, notably in Looking, Andrew Haigh’s underseen HBO drama about gay life in San Francisco, and the BBC’s fine Zadie Smith adaptation NW, as well as lead roles in thrillers including Sky One’s The Five and BBC One’s The Interceptor. You will have seen him in something, just nothing like this.
Once one-third of the fictional boyband Boytown (signature hit: Can I See Your ID?), Maxxx is now a bankrupt, pill-popping joke, getting bottled off at nightclub PAs. His desperation to win back Dunn (gamely playing herself) drives him to plot an unlikely professional comeback. What ensues is a wincingly funny portrait of a man prepared to do anything and everything in order to clamber back up to the stars. It is a mordant, unhinged and probably pretty accurate depiction of life on the margins of celebrity.
“Maxxx is like the dude who took Beyoncé to prom,” says Fagbenle after the scene has wrapped. “His memory of the relationship is a lot sweeter than reality, and reality for Maxxx yesterday involved him shooting a music video and getting covered in dove shit. I didn’t love [filming] that, but you’ve got to go for it.”
You certainly have to when the show is one you are writing, co-directing and headlining. Fagbenle’s brother Luti, whose music videos for Drake, Jay-Z, Beyoncé and more have had more than 4.5bn YouTube views, is exec-producing. Their fraternal dynamic feels, aptly enough, like Bros gone right: respectful, self-aware, rooted in genuine talent. Even months later, when Fagbenle arrives at Channel 4’s HQ looking a legitimate star in tailored check suit, suede shoes and fedora, his relaxed demeanour belies a relentless work rate: “I landed at 2am, was up at eight to record the Maxxx theme tune at my brother Rockwell’s studio … But I have all the problems I’ve asked for.”
Maxxx’s problems are more severe. He cuts a tragic, even sympathetic figure because, Fagbenle feels, his aspirations hit close to home. “We all know people who think ‘likes’ represent genuine popularity. Those ideas of presentation versus reality, of chasing the one thing you think will give you meaning when it does the opposite, fascinate me.”
So should Fagbenle prepare for a backlash from Brosettes, Directioners or the BTS Army? “Hand on heart, it’s not based on any particular pop star,” he laughs. “If anything it’s more my own failings and insecurities, those times where I’ve chased vacuous things or felt depressed because I didn’t feel valued. Ambition can make you do and say crazy stuff. And I’ve got hung up for way too long on a couple of bad break-ups. Basically, I looked at all the ways I’m a fucking idiot and wrote about that.” Fagbenle is no one’s idea of an idiot: engaged, opinionated, casually referencing Walt Whitman, Abraham Maslow and Steven Pinker in his answers. But ambitious? Absolutely.
The fourth of 12 children, O-T (short for Olatunde) had to make himself heard. His siblings include TV producer Luti, music producer Rockwell XL, singer Tito, women’s basketball star and Olympian Temi, and Daps, who has directed videos for artists including Migos and Stormzy … Even those out of the public eye are singers and dancers on the quiet. It must have been a noisy household, I suggest. He shows me a video of his recent birthday gathering: “It is,” he cackles, “a lot.”
Already an accomplished alto saxophonist, the 18-year-old Fagbenle did lighting for a school play and decided that day to audition for drama school. Although few teenagers – and even fewer BAME candidates – were accepted back then, he got into Rada where, sure enough, he was the only black person in his year. It’s a professional experience he has got used to: “Every time I go on set I play Spot The Black Person.” His first acting job saw him asked to “whiten up” in order to accentuate the blackness of his on-stage brother against his own mixed-race ethnicity. The reason given? “Up north they might not be able to tell the difference! My first job,” he says in disbelief. “I was panicking about representing a false idea of the truth to fit with someone’s stereotypical understanding. I’ve had a number of experiences like that.”
The sort of experience that could have derailed a young actor instead hardened his resolve to make it his way. After building a steady career on screen and stage (his performances in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom at the National Theatre and Trevor Nunn’s production of Porgy and Bess were particularly acclaimed), he decided to realise a long-held ambition to direct. A few short films followed, but more substantial material proved harder to come by, so instead he wrote something himself, working on Maxxx’s scripts with improv comedians in Toronto while filming The Handmaid’s Tale.
On the surface, Maxxx and The Handmaid’s Tale don’t have much in common. Maxxx prods at issues but ultimately plays it for laughs, while comedy is in short supply in the dystopian future where the US has been taken over by a totalitarian patriarchy, and fertile women – or “handmaids” – are put into childbearing slavery. But both examine toxic masculinity, albeit from different angles. With Maxxx, which was written just as the #MeToo movement was kicking off, Fagbenle “wanted to see a man out of time, trying to reconcile [his personification of masculinity]” with the expectations of the modern world.
In the era of Trump, The Handmaid’s Tale retains an electrifying currency: the donning of scarlet cloak and bonnet among pro-choice campaigners in the US has been adopted by protesters worldwide, while the show’s setting, Gilead, has become shorthand for any patriarchal regime. “We live in extraordinary times,” says Fagbenle [speaking before the current coronavirus outbreak]. “I’m generally an optimist, although there’s no silver lining to the environmental crisis. But it’s a privilege to be part of something that asks big questions.”
Fagbenle feels that the show has largely addressed accusations of gratuitous violence that circulated after a brutal second season. But its repurposing of slave narratives for the predominantly white women of Gilead, and not entirely convincing presentation of a colourblind world, remains troubling for many. “There’s work to be done,” he admits, “but there’s been a diversification behind the camera which there wasn’t earlier on, with black writers and black directors. If they continue to challenge themselves to do that, they’ll be over the humps.”
Fagbenle also pushed to make Maxxx as diverse as possible on- and off-screen, interviewing widely for cast and crew. “I don’t need to give anyone a leg-up, I just have to make sure they get in the interview room; when you do that, you find talent. If you just say: ‘We should make sure we get some black people in,’ nothing will happen.”
One fascinating exchange on the show sees Maxxx’s strait-laced black manager Tamzin (played by Pippa Bennett Warner) refuting the idea she might be “urban”. “It’s a really interesting question I wrestle with all the time,” says Fagbenle. “Is black a colour, a culture? Can a white person be urban? I wanted Maxxx to be funny but also explore philosophical things. And to have two love interests who are darker-skinned black women; you don’t see that so often.”
It has also allowed Fagbenle to overturn a different sort of expectation, acquired over years in British TV. “I became the professional boyfriend or husband,” he sighs. “Lazy thinking. Different opportunities exist in theatre, but there’s still a dearth of big, expansive characters for minorities and for women on screen. I trained classically for the most exciting texts known to man, and then you get the ‘charming guy in the bar’. Where’s the complexity? I wanted to write a role no one would cast me in: the maniacal egomaniac.”
His next project would have Maxxx drooling: playing agent Rick Mason – an ally from Scarlett Johansson’s character’s past – in Marvel’s Black Widow. “But we flirt, too,” he adds. “The fan scrutiny hasn’t been too crazy, although my poster hasn’t been released yet so we’ll see how that goes.”
My poster hasn’t been released yet? He laughs hysterically. “I’m really not someone who fantasises about being more famous, I’m not like Maxxx! Although maybe we all are to an extent; I hope this speaks to the narcissistic, egomaniacal and unnecessarily long-winded fool in all of us.”
Maxxx starts Thursday 2 April, 9.30pm, E4. All episodes will be available afterwards on All 4
