Lennie James

Presenter0:00

Hello, 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.

Presenter0:46

My castaway 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. He 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. Lenny James, welcome to Desert Island Discs.

Lennie James1:57

Thank you very much. A pleasure to be here.

Presenter1:58

So Lenny, let's start with that BAFTA winning role, starring role in Mr. Loverman. Characters need to challenge and scare you or scared you into playing Barry.

Lennie James2:07

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 more 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

Speaker 12:17

Yeah.

Lennie James2:28

was most certainly one of those who had a complicated internal monologue.

Presenter2:32

Yeah, like a cup 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, he's and and then living a completely different interior life.

Lennie James2:40

Be a nice

Lennie James2:45

Yeah, and the programme is about the, 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 Bernardine Evaristo, who wrote the novel, did such a fantastic job. I just wanted to do justice to it.

Speaker 13:00

What the he

Presenter3:13

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?

Lennie James3:22

Um on one level I don't know, um because it's early days, um 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 and I think

Presenter3:40

That kind of thing. I mean, that must be amazing.

Lennie James3:41

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 may well have not responded to someone reaching out in the way that they now wish they had. It's very weird because the conversations don't always last. So it's not long conversations. Some people just want to say...

Speaker 13:53

Hmm.

Speaker 14:05

Hmm.

Speaker 34:18

Yeah.

Lennie James4:25

Thank you and they don't want to say anything more.

Presenter4:27

But it's an understanding.

Lennie James4:28

But it's an understanding.

Presenter4:29

Yeah, that passes between the two of you. How important is music in your life, Lenny?

Lennie James4:34

Uh it's vital. It's the pulse. It's um central. I write to music. Music kind of soothes me, I suppose.

Presenter4:42

Well, that's perfect. I mean, this these are the perfect qualifications for putting together your list of eight 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.

Lennie James4:47

A

Lennie James4:52

Yeah.

Presenter4:53

So let's get started with your first disc today then, Lenny James. Number one, what's it going to be and why?

Lennie James4:59

It is Touch the Hem of His Garment by Gene 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 socialized with the church. Sometimes Fridays would be prayer meetings around 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 Cirrillo. One of them, I think it was Don Stewart, had a singer called Jean 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.

Presenter5:56

That may

Presenter5:58

I see. Okay, I've got a picture in my mind's eye now before we hear this.

Lennie James6:02

Yeah, and we used to meet at, 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. Oh, right. 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.

Presenter6:13

And they would come.

Speaker 36:33

Yeah.

Presenter6:33

Yeah, well come on.

Presenter6:38

She had been sick.

Presenter6:40

Sick no very long.

Presenter6:42

She heard about cheating on past in that way, so she jarred. Uh

Speaker 16:49

Yeah.

Presenter6:49

Are they really? Order. Yeah.

Presenter6:51

Uh Why

Speaker 16:52

Why she was pushing her way through?

Presenter6:53

You about to push it hard.

Speaker 16:56

Someone asked her.

Presenter6:56

Come on in.

Presenter6:58

Yeah.

Speaker 16:58

What are you trying to do?

Presenter6:58

Right

Presenter6:59

Uh

Speaker 16:59

Uh

Presenter6:59

Uh

Speaker 17:00

She said if I could only touch the hymn of this garment, I'd be made whole right now.

Speaker 17:08

Good.

Presenter7:08

Right up.

Speaker 17:11

Uh

Presenter7:12

Yeah.

Speaker 17:12

Yeah.

Presenter7:19

Ah I could only attack the camp of your garment. I'll be made whole right now.

Presenter7:28

She's been a man here. Uh

Speaker 17:30

Here and they are.

Speaker 17:32

Auntie, she had no full despair. Yeah.

Presenter7:37

Uh Doctors, they did all that they could, but the meditation

Presenter7:43

We're doing all good.

Presenter7:45

Missy test it!

Speaker 17:47

Yeah.

Speaker 17:47

Hey, Mince Ya. But all of us he turned around and I know somebody touched me. She did

Presenter7:54

Only touch the hymn of your bomber. Do I be paid home right now? She's still down.

Presenter8:03

TOUCH THE HEM OF HIS GARMENT by Jean Martin. So 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 you know her story and and tell me about her as a person?

Lennie James8:20

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. She 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.

Speaker 18:33

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 18:47

Yeah.

Presenter9:08

Okay.

Presenter9:35

So this is how you ended up growing up in London? You're very much a Londoner?

Lennie James9:38

And then you

Lennie James9:39

Yeah, we started off in Battersea in South London and ended up in Streatham and Tooton.

Presenter9:44

So it was just you, your mum and your big brother Kestor. She 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?

Lennie James9:54

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.

Speaker 110:15

Okay.

Lennie James10:24

They were presents in my life, really.

Presenter10:26

And 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 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.

Lennie James10:46

Oh, they were amazing.

Lennie James10:48

Abram, I don't know how she did it.

Lennie James10:50

I genuinely don't.

Presenter10:54

You take your time.

Lennie James10:57

It was the time of the the catalogues. And me and my brother were allowed to go through the catalogue and pick one thing. I remember getting what I'd wished for most Christmases.

Presenter11:09

Then she must have been paying it off the whole rest of the year.

Lennie James11:11

I genuinely don't know how she did it because she

Presenter11:13

Does she

Lennie James11:14

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 um

Lennie James11:32

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.

Presenter11:52

Putting your best face forward.

Lennie James11:53

Putting 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

Presenter11:54

Forward

Lennie James12:12

Her bring us up.

Presenter12:15

And what about, you know, the creativity that you've obviously gone on to exhibit in your life? Was there w did you see part of that in her? Was she a creative person?

Lennie James12:24

She used to sing at church on her own, um and I have a very strong

Lennie James12:30

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 so 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 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

Speaker 112:53

Yeah, but it's

Lennie James13:16

Ninety nine percent of people would have picked my brother over me.

Presenter13:19

Oh, really, Caster why?

Lennie James13:20

He was a huge I mean and is still a huge personality

Presenter13:25

And he's not much older than you, right?

Lennie James13:27

He's two and a half years older than that.

Presenter13:28

Okay.

Lennie James13:29

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.

Presenter13:37

But he was the extrovert and you were very

Lennie James13:38

He was very much the extrovert until I was 14, 15. My nickname when I was growing up was my family name was Bunting from the nursery rhyme Cry Baby Bunting and it was because it was what my brother used to sing at me when I was a baby because of I was always crying apparently. Not much has changed. So my brother grew up with my mum saying to him look after Bunting and when we

Lennie James14:09

Lost her he very much took that on board.

Presenter14:13

All right, Lenny, let's have some more music. Your second disc today. What are we going to hear next?

Lennie James14:17

My second disc is For My Brother and it's I Found Lovin by the Fat Back 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.

Presenter14:32

Is it in the eighties?

Lennie James14:34

This is the 80s.

Presenter14:35

Okay.

Presenter14:36

It's important for setting the scene, I think.

Lennie James14:38

Yeah, late 70s, early 80s. Okay, well 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 you know that had you what you what you what you what you want which I nicked for save me but whenever I hear I Found Lovin' I think of my big brother and this one's for him.

Presenter14:42

Okay, we're there.

Lennie James15:33

To sell found

Presenter15:49

The Fat Back 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 eleven. What do you remember about that time?

Lennie James16:01

I stopped talking and so

Lennie James16:04

Right, I had the view of the back of my brother's head again,'cause he kind of stepped in front of me and kind of looked out for me.

Speaker 116:09

Mm-hmm.

Lennie James16:12

And I remember her.

Lennie James16:14

Social services got involved because it was just me and him now. And um 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 and then there was talk of us going to America to be with my uncle Nat. Me and my brother had a talk.

Lennie James16:42

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

Lennie James16:51

It was me who said it or my brother who said it, but we didn't want to leave our mum alone here.

Lennie James16:57

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 kids' home. And we were in a temporary kids' home for about a month, and then they found a long stay place for us.

Presenter17:17

So you said you'd just retreated into silence, understandably. You know, you mentioned that the social workers and people, you know, around you, how did they respond to that?

Lennie James17:26

There were a few, quite a few visits to child psychiatrists and child psychologists and everybody wanted 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 were 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?

Lennie James18:10

And uh

Presenter18:15

Yeah, that said everything.

Lennie James18:17

Yeah, and he goes, he'll talk when he's ready.

Lennie James18:22

And then you'll be asking him to shut up.

Lennie James18:25

And um

Lennie James18:27

He was kind of right.

Presenter18:28

He's right.

Presenter18:29

So Kester wasn't much older than you, but he'd 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.

Lennie James18:37

So

Lennie James18:39

Stayed at the sa we stayed together, stayed at the same school, stayed in the same neighbourhood.

Presenter18:44

That must have been good continuity.

Lennie James18:45

Yeah, kept all my same f friends and moved into 8 North Drive, which was a huge Georgian mansion and there were eighteen kids.

Presenter18:48

Some

Presenter18:57

And how was that for you?

Lennie James18:58

If I had to be in a kids' home, we lucked out and we were in a good kids' home. The staff stayed, they were attentive, there wasn't a big turnover, there were lots of families there, they kept the kids together, and um they cared about us and they looked after us.

Presenter19:17

And Kesto was determined to do what your mum had asked him to and to put you first. How did he do that?

Lennie James19:24

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. So he made... choices like that. He stayed on at 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.

Presenter20:18

Yeah, so so circumstances changed because by the time you got to that point, coming up for sixteen, 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. Tell me about her.

Lennie James20:33

A lot like my mum, she came to England from Jamaica to be a nurse. I went to live with her. About ten 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.

Presenter20:53

So how old were you when you first met and what do you remember about yourself?

Lennie James20:55

When 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.

Presenter21:19

How did you feel about that?

Lennie James21:21

I was sorry my house was going to be gone. In fact, I wrote a letter.

Lennie James21:25

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? You 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.

Speaker 121:34

Mm-hmm.

Presenter22:23

And this was what inspired storm damage.

Lennie James22:25

Yeah, 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.

Presenter22:43

Lenny, let's take a minute for some music. It's your third disc today. What are we going to hear next?

Lennie James22:48

It's the specials with It Doesn't Make It All Right. And I could have picked any song. I remember being in the kids' home. This is 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.

Presenter23:22

What was it about at that grab chain?

Lennie James23:22

Yeah.

Lennie James23:24

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.

Presenter23:32

Did you have all the gear? Did you end up with Ruby?

Lennie James23:34

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...

Speaker 123:52

Brilliant.

Speaker 123:56

I hang it

Lennie James23:59

It was the start of understanding myself and realizing 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

Lennie James24:19

The specials were saying it. I 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 not. 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. I took it really seriously. And I wrote a poem that was my version of It Doesn't Make It All Right by the specials. And he read it and he read it out in class and moved me from CSE to O level. And yeah, and that was the specials.

Presenter25:23

Talk about music changing your life.

Lennie James25:24

Ah yeah.

Lennie James25:28

There is

Lennie James25:32

It doesn't mean that you're no good

Lennie James25:40

Just because.

Lennie James25:41

There's a r

Lennie James25:46

It doesn't mean

Lennie James25:48

It's undisturbed.

Lennie James25:50

Does I make it home?

Speaker 125:52

Go.

Presenter25:55

The specials and it doesn't make it all right. Lenny, how did you get into drama? Was it through school?

Lennie James26:02

There was a theatre in 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.

Presenter26:24

Why do you think you did that?

Lennie James26:26

I don't know, I just fancied it and didn't really think.

Lennie James26:30

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 kids home they were a bit reticent of him coming and staying at the kids home so one of the other families took us in and there was just a new circle of friends. Okay. And among them was a couple of girls who one of them I quite liked and she wanted to be an actress. Oh, okay. And she was going to go and audition for this summer play at the cockpit theater in Marlebone. And I, 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. She said, Lenny, you're going to do this again. And 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. It's where I kind of solidified.

Speaker 326:51

Uh

Presenter26:59

Out

Presenter27:48

Yeah.

Speaker 127:48

Uh

Speaker 128:03

No.

Lennie James28:25

What acting was about for me and what was important about it.

Presenter28:29

And what was that? What did what did it mean to you at that point?

Lennie James28:32

It meant trying to conjure the truth. It was trying to bring something to life that wasn't there and make it real. And making it real was very important to Lucy and became really important to me. And it's also where I started writing.

Presenter28:54

Your play Trial and Error won a national playwriting competition and was published by Faber and Faber pleny you were 17!

Lennie James29:01

I was.

Presenter29:02

What was it about?

Lennie James29:03

It was a trial set up in a kids' 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 childcare system on trial. And I wrote it longhand. 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 into 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. I might be wrong.

Presenter30:09

So not a bad spring ball.

Lennie James30:11

Not bad springboard. And we won the kind of award for most promising playwrights under 21.

Presenter30:11

Not bad springboard.

Presenter30:17

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.

Lennie James30:30

Very smooth.

Presenter30:31

Yeah, it is.

Presenter30:33

Lenny, we've got to take a moment for some music. This next track, What Are We Gonna Hear and Why Are You Taking This One to the Island?

Lennie James30:39

It is Stevie Wonder and it's Living for the City. I couldn't possibly be on any desert island. I couldn't be in be in any situation where I'm playing music and not have Stevie Wonder.

Presenter30:51

But so difficult to choose which one.

Lennie James30:52

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, 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 and she got to go and see Stevie in the room with 50 other people.

Speaker 131:12

Uh

Speaker 131:31

See,

Speaker 331:34

A boy is born in Harddown, Mississippi, surrounded by

Speaker 331:41

For once it ain't so pretty. His parents give

Speaker 331:46

And love and affection to keep him strong.

Speaker 331:51

Moving in the

Lennie James31:52

Right direction, living just enough.

Lennie James31:56

Just enough for the sit tae

Presenter32:04

Stevie Wonder and Living for the City.

Presenter32:08

Lenny, you went on to get a place at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, and while you were there, one of your fellow students found a copy of your prize winning play in the library, but you weren't very happy about it. Tell me about that moment. What happened next?

Lennie James32:23

I had a

Lennie James32:24

Tough couple of first years at drama school. I was way out of my depth. I didn't have the points of reference that lots of other people in my year had. There were no Shakespeare plays on the shelves. There were no plays on the shelves of either the kids' home or my family home. And I kind of

Speaker 132:43

Hmm.

Lennie James32:46

retreated to quiet Lenny at times. One of the things that I grew up with when we were in the kids home is not letting people know that you're in a kids home because most people's perception of being in a kids home is not good. It's at one end Oliver twist and at the other end abuse and my home wasn't that. I hated people feeling sorry for me.

Speaker 133:11

Mm.

Speaker 333:14

Yeah.

Lennie James33:14

And at drama school, they very quickly put you in boxes. So, you know, you're the Juve lead, you're the ingenue. And, you know, I was the working class black kid. And that was enough of a stereotype both with teachers and students that I had to deal with. I just didn't want to give them anything more to play with. And I was d down on the actor's floor. And one of the

Speaker 333:19

Yeah.

Lennie James33:39

Geez is in my year. Matthew came down from drama school and he goes, Len, I didn't know you grew up in a children's home. And I was like, where'd you find that out? And he went, I just saw your play is up in the library and there's the biog at the back and it says so. So I snuck up and there were three copies. It was in an anthology of plays. I'm a bit ashamed of it now, but it made perfect sense to me then. I ripped out the biogue page out of all of the copies.

Presenter34:08

You returned to your care experiences when you wrote the semi autobiographical film Storm Damage in two thousand. That was BAFTA nominated. What were you hoping that audiences would understand about the sector by writing it?

Lennie James34:22

Not sure I thought that far ahead. The film ends at the funeral of a 16-year-old kid and a Windrush Generation elder talking to all of the kids who have shown up for this other kid's funeral and begging them to realize the worth of their lives. And that happened in the first couple of years of my foster family's children's home. And that's where the film started for me. I was like, what he's trying to say, it was around the kind of first wave of knife crimes and youth gangs and particularly in South London. And I wanted to offer a testament to my family and what they were trying to do within their community, but also get this elder's message across and what he was trying to say.

Speaker 134:57

I was

Presenter35:21

What did your foster family make of it when they came to see it? I know that your foster mum came to the screening.

Lennie James35:27

She was

Lennie James35:29

Proud.

Lennie James35:30

Um

Lennie James35:32

She actually wrote me a fan letter. It was lovely.

Presenter35:36

Lenny, let's have some more music. Your fifth choice today. What are you taking to your desert island next?

Lennie James35:41

It is Any Old Time by Billie Holiday and this is the song that my wife Giselle would have played at our wedding. We did get married but it was when we were spending time living and based in America and it was for all the romantic reasons of insurance and green cards and it all happened at the LA County Court. Literally you go up to the eighth floor, you open up and it's hatches, matches and dispatches. It's births, marriages and dispatches. No Billy holiday. No Billie holiday and it was me and Giselle and our three kids who are our witnesses and then we went and ate at our favourite restaurant.

Speaker 136:11

It's births, marriages and deaths.

Presenter36:13

Happy holiday.

Speaker 336:23

Any old time you want me, I am yours For just the asking, darling Any old time you need me, I'll be there With love that's lasting darling

Lennie James36:40

All through the years we'll

Speaker 136:42

Stand together. Sharing the tears and stormy weather and the sunshine

Speaker 136:51

Will be yours and mine.

Presenter36:54

Any old time, Artie Shaw and his orchestra with Billie Holiday.

Presenter36:59

Lenny, your career was going really well here in the UK and then you and your family decided to make the move to LA. Your portrayal of Morgan Jones in the apocalypse drama The Woking Dead and Fear of the Woking Dead has won you fans all over the world and many awards and nominations too. What's it like living with a character for such a long time?

Lennie James37:19

It is a singular experience to be on the biggest television show in the world, to be on a show that there wasn't anywhere in the world you could go where it wasn't playing and people didn't know you. It was it was a trip.

Lennie James37:40

The Vatican Yeah.

Presenter37:43

By who?

Lennie James37:44

By a Vatican Guard. We walked down the wrong corridor and this guy come running after us and we thought, Oh, we're in trouble. We've gone down the wrong corridor And he went, Are you mister Lenny James from the Walking Bed? and I was like, This is surreal.

Presenter37:55

Yeah.

Presenter37:59

Alright, Lenny, let's have some more music. And this is your sixth choice. Tell me about it. What's next?

Lennie James38:04

This is For Me For Medabla by Charles Asnaval

Presenter38:08

So why this one?

Lennie James38:09

Because it's the family song. When it's played in my house, we all sing. And I have a very

Lennie James38:20

I have a

Lennie James38:23

Very strong image of my kids and my wife singing loud with huge smiles on their faces when this song is played. And because it's in French and English, it is apt for our family.

Presenter38:43

You became a dad very young. You were twenty three, I think, and you've said of all the things I do, being their dad is probably the most important. I know they're grown up now. Does it still feel that way?

Lennie James38:52

Oh without question. It's um best thing I ever did. That at 23, having left drama school at 22, I was now making decisions for this kid who needed me to get it right and get on with it.

Presenter39:15

Uh

Speaker 139:16

Uh

Speaker 339:16

You are the one for me, for me, for me, for me.

Presenter39:19

Milablo.

Speaker 339:22

You are my love, very, very, very, very tabloid.

Speaker 339:29

And je voudre pour a jour enfa te le dier ta le

Presenter39:41

Oh yeah. Charles Asnavaux, for me, for me dabla, for your girls. Lenny, you created Save Me in twenty eighteen. It was another huge success, a BAFTA winner. What's it like juggling the roles of writer, showrunner and lead actor on the same project?

Lennie James39:59

We had a rule on set. If I was in the scene and I was there, if anything came up, they had to ask the director. They couldn't go, oi Len, what about this bit? Can I just change it? What can I do? They had to go through the director. And if there was an issue that the director couldn't address, then myself and the director would leave, we'd have a conversation about it, we'd come back and he or she would relay it to the cast or the crew.

Speaker 140:10

Can I just change it? What can I do?

Speaker 140:12

Victor.

Presenter40:27

There's still quite a lot of like switching in and out, of like switching hats for you, metaphorically speaking, though, isn't there? How are you with that?

Lennie James40:34

There it is.

Lennie James40:36

I was all right. I found most of my best work in ignorance. So the fact that I'd never done it before really boded well for me. Well, and I'm good at taking advice.

Presenter40:44

Perfect.

Presenter40:48

Must be especially rewarding though to go up and and receive the BAFTA for best drama when you have done all those things on a project.

Lennie James40:57

It's weird. I mean, you would think that that was the proudest moment. Actually, the proudest moment happened on the first day of filming when you walk onto the set and there's all these people working. There's all these people who have come together to do this thing which was just a bubble in your head. And I never get over that. It's the second or third time it's happened. The awards were fantastic, and of course they were, but it was COVID. So I was in Texas in the spare bedroom on Zoom and didn't actually get my hands on the trophy until maybe six months later when I was back in the UK.

Speaker 141:18

It's the

Presenter41:40

Oh man. Lenny, it's time to go to the music. I'm dying to hear your next disc. Tell us what it is and why you're taking it with you.

Lennie James41:47

It's Oasis and it's champagne supernova.

Presenter41:50

Why this one?

Lennie James41:51

I love Oasis and I think Noel Gallagher is one of the greatest songwriters that there has ever been and Oasis were a band that I shared with my kids and we would jump around the house dancing and singing at the top of our voices to it when we would have our kind of regular jump-ups.

Speaker 142:14

Someday you will find me caught beneath the landslide In a champagne supernova in the sky Someday you will find me Caught beneath the landslide In a champagne supernova A champagne supernova

Presenter42:44

Oasis and Champagne Supernova. As an actor, writer and producer who's allergic to getting comfortable, I wonder what you've got your eye on next.

Lennie James42:52

I want to do something funny. I still want to be challenged. I still want the fear of getting it wrong and the joy of getting it right or some way towards getting it right. I feel like I've got some skills and I want to test myself against the big parts. I just did Cat on a Hot Tim Roof at the Almeida playing Big Daddy and I never would have guessed that I would end up playing that part and the kind of line of actors that have played that part before me. And I just loved it because it was like, I don't know if I can do this. And the I don't know if I can do this is what I'm in search of.

Speaker 143:20

Yeah.

Presenter43:39

Well, you have got another challenge coming up before any of that, which is of course life on the desert island. You're going to be cast away from friends, family and everything that you know, life as you know it. How do you feel about life as a castaway?

Lennie James43:43

You got

Lennie James43:52

I would absolutely cope, but I wouldn't love it. I'm quite good in my own company, but I don't seek it out necessarily. I'm very handy. I can build. I could catch fish and cook it.

Presenter43:57

Hmm.

Speaker 144:01

Mm-hmm.

Presenter44:11

Well that sounds like a pretty solid start then.

Lennie James44:13

Yeah, I've I reckon I could do that.

Presenter44:15

I was wondering if you might have picked up any skills, you know, spending so much time in a kind of post-apocalypse world on the Walking Dead.

Lennie James44:21

You would think so though. I've seen all manner of weapons. So I'd be able to possibly manage that.

Presenter44:22

Yeah.

Presenter44:29

In reality, are you always a bit too close to a catering table for it to actually be practically useful?

Lennie James44:34

I do have to say that when we were on Fear the Walking Dead, the catering was amazing. I swear to God, when they asked the the cast and crew about coming back for another season, the first question everybody had was are the caterers coming back?

Presenter44:57

Recommissioned.

Lennie James44:57

Pre-commissioned for the mm-hmm.

Presenter45:01

Well, Annie James, one more track before we cast you away. Your final choice to day. What's it gonna be?

Lennie James45:06

It's um Otis Redden and Tri Little Tenderness.

Presenter45:09

Buy this jump.

Lennie James45:11

Like I said at the beginning, I started off in the church and kind of the only thing that I took from that, because I don't have a belief in that way anymore, but the sound of gospel music, the sound of that definition of soul music, which is crying in tune, there are two great voices that make me believe in God and that's Aretha Franklin and Otis Redding. And Try a Little Tenderness is a work of art. And I couldn't imagine spending any time anywhere where I couldn't play this song. It is without question the most beautiful song that has ever been sung.

Speaker 146:01

Oh, she may be weary.

Speaker 146:06

Them young girls, they do get wearied.

Speaker 146:10

Wearing that sling most shaggy dress, yeah.

Speaker 146:20

But

Presenter46:20

When she gets weary

Presenter46:25

Bye.

Lennie James46:26

I a little tenderness.

Presenter46:31

Otis Reading, and try a little tenderness. So, Lenny James, it's time. I'm going to send you away to the island. I will, of course, give you the books to take with you, as well as your discs. You can have the Bible, the complete works of Shakespeare, and another book of your choice. What's it going to be?

Lennie James46:45

I'd like the complete works of Tony Morrison, please.

Presenter46:48

We'll give you the collected works. Why why Tony Morrison? Why her?

Lennie James46:49

Thank you.

Lennie James46:52

Because there's no writer like her, because she tells a story of people who look like me like no one else has, and she gives us class and sophistication and nuance and complication that's outside of our relationship to white people. And she writes about our relationship to ourselves in beautiful shapes and forms. And she's complicated and she demands attention in her writing. And in Beloved, there is a moment when baby suggests all of the slaves have a day to themselves and they all go out into the woods and they stand behind the trees and she calls them in from behind the trees and tells them why they should love their skin. And it is the most beautiful piece of writing I have ever read in my life. And every time I go back to it, it fills me with joy, it makes me cry, it fills me with sorrow, but also fills me with pride. And I don't know another writer who could do that to me.

Presenter48:01

Boy, it's absolutely yours. You can have a luxury item, too, for pleasure or sensory stimulation. What are you going to go for?

Lennie James48:07

Probably a guitar.

Presenter48:10

Ah. Do you play?

Lennie James48:11

I

Lennie James48:12

Keep trying to learn and I don't. I give up and do something else. And I've bought a few guitars because I'm determined to get it done. But life, work, my own stupidity get in the way that I never get it done. And I think if I was on a desert island, I would have so much time to myself after I've built the hut and set the fire pit and put the food on. I could finally get to a situation where I could play some of the songs I'd like to play to myself.

Speaker 148:34

Yeah.

Presenter48:49

Oh, it sounds rather nice, your desert island, Lenny. It doesn't sound too bad. Absolutely, it's yours. I'll throw in a few changes of strings as well, just in case. And finally, which one track of the eight that you've shared with us today would you save from the waves first, if you had to?

Lennie James48:51

And

Lennie James49:04

I think if I wasn't on a desert island it would be try a little tenderness, but if I was on the desert island I'd like my kids and my missus with me, so it would be um for me for me d'Abula by Charles Asnavall.

Presenter49:19

Charles Hasnivore is. Lenny James, thank you very much for letting us hear your Desert Island discs.

Lennie James49:24

Thank you. This has been an absolute pleasure. Thank you.

Presenter49:40

Hello, it was lovely chatting to Lenny and I hope he's very happy on the island with his guitar. There are more than 2,000 programmes in our archive that you can listen to. We've cast many other actors away over the years, including Stephen Graham and Michael Sheen. You'll find the creator of the line of duty in there too, Jed Mercurio. You can hear their programmes if you search through BBC Sounds or on our own Desert Island Disc's website. The studio manager for today's programme was Jackie Marjoram, the executive production coordinator was Susie Roylance, the content editor was Mugabe Turia, and the producer was Sarah Taylor. Join me next time when my guest will be the journalist and TV presenter Lorraine Kelly.

Speaker 350:44

How did Bruce Springsteen become the boss, and what did it cost him to get there?

Lennie James50:48

Maybe I was the guy that gets the guitar, I get the car, I get the girl, then it adds up to a big so what?

Speaker 350:58

From the makers of the award-winning first season of Legend, join me, Laura Barton, for the story of my favourite artist, Bruce Springsteen.

Speaker 351:06

We'll get to know the life beyond the legend to discover how a scrawny, long-haired introvert from small town New Jersey transformed into the iconic rock star figure of his eighties glory.

Speaker 151:17

We're all going, he has muscles now, which was a little hard to take because we were scrawny. Do we have to go get muscles?

Speaker 351:24

Legend, the Bruce Springsteen story from BBC Radio 4. Listen first on BBC Sounds.