Latest news with #JeanCharlesDeMenezes
The Guardian
18 hours ago
- The Guardian
‘I have to forgive': 20 years after Jean Charles de Menezes was shot by police in Stockwell his cousin looks back
Patricia da Silva Armani was living with her cousin Jean Charles de Menezes in a flat in south London two decades ago when he was shot seven times in the head by firearms officers at Stockwell station. Her younger cousin was a chatterbox and a dreamer, she says, 'always with plans'. The pair had grown up together as part of a large and close family. Two years after De Menezes had moved to London for a life that Brazil was unable to offer, 'Paty', as he affectionately called her, had been encouraged to follow him to his two-bedroom flat on Scotia Road, along with their younger cousin Vivian Figueiredo, then 20. De Menezes, 27, intended to work another six months as an electrician in London before returning home to Brazil to rejoin his girlfriend, Adriana, she says. They had talked it over during what would turn out to be their final hours with each other in the home they shared. 'I love you,' De Menezes had said as he gave Da Silva Armani, then 31, a hug before leaving her side for the last time to go to work. Within 48 hours, De Menezes, on the way to a job in Kilburn, was lying dead on a tube carriage floor. Police officers had mistaken him for Hussain Osman, one of the four men who attempted to blow themselves up on London trains and a bus the previous day in a failed copycat of the 7/7 bombings that had killed 52 people and left hundreds more wounded two weeks earlier. Da Silva Armani collapsed as she identified her cousin in the police morgue on 23 July. But she became a key player in the campaign for justice after compelling evidence of catastrophic police errors and New Scotland Yard's dissemination of misinformation emerged via leaks to the press. More would come out in two damning Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) reports, the Met's trial and conviction under health and safety laws, and the formal inquest into the killing in 2008. It was in Da Silva Armani's name that the campaign then vainly sought to challenge the Crown Prosecution Service at the European court of human rights after a decision was made not to charge any officers over the killing. It is evidently then with some trepidation that she answers the question as to whether she still believes the firearms officers, whose claims that they shouted a warning of 'armed police' was not believed by the jury at the inquest, should have been prosecuted. 'You may be surprised by my answer: no, absolutely not,' she says. 'Because the whole situation led them to this. I take many years to get this conclusion. Many, many years. It's not easy. You are the first person I said it [to]. 'The big mistake was in the communications and surveillance and that they allowed Jean to go into the station. When Jean was allowed to go down the escalator at Stockwell station he was already dead. The shooters had no choice, no choice.' It is not a position that everyone remembering De Menezes at Stockwell station at 10.05am – the time of his death – on Tuesday will back. It has taken a lot of tears and reflection to get to this moment, she says. She certainly believes that those at the top of the Met then – namely the late commissioner Ian Blair, made Lord Blair of Boughton in 2010, and Cressida Dick, who was running the operation on 22 July 2005 and who rose to lead the Met in 2017 – acted shamefully and should have been held to account for their failings. De Menezes had only been followed by surveillance officers from the flat on 17 Scotia Road that fateful day as a result of Osman having put down number 21 as his address when registering at a gym – the flats shared a communal entrance. Osman's membership card had been found in the detritus left when his homemade bomb failed at Shepherd's Bush tube station. There was only one officer in the van outside the property. He was urinating into a plastic container as De Menezes left and had been unable to get an image or a proper look. Dick then decided not to suspend the bus services for fear of alerting the terrorists to their watch. De Menezes got on a bus, got off at Brixton and then got back on when he realised that the tube station was shut. It was wrongly interpreted as possible anti-surveillance measure. Dick would claim that she was led by the surveillance team to believe it was likely to be Osman, who was later arrested in Rome, that they were following. There was a far greater level of doubt than that among the surveillance team. She wanted the firearms team to stop him before he got to the tube station but they were not yet in position to intervene. The armed officers arrived around two minutes after De Menezes at Stockwell. Some accounts had Dick telling her subordinates to stop the suspect from getting on the tube 'at all costs'. She denied that language. But the officers running into the tube station said they fully believed that the man they were engaging was a terrorist about to blow himself up. The two shooters, C2 and C12, claimed in their formal statements that they had shouted 'armed police' to De Menezes as they rushed at him and that he had risen from his seat towards them. None of the 17 members of the public on the carriage heard any such warning. The jury at the inquest later said they did not believe the officer's testimony and returned an open verdict after being prohibited by the coroner from an unlawful killing verdict. The operational failures were followed by false claims from Blair and his press office that De Menezes had failed to respond to a police challenge and had been wearing suspiciously bulky clothing. It took a leak from a secretary at the IPCC to ITN's News at Ten to reveal this as a falsehood. Despite all this, when giving evidence at the inquest, Dick would not countenance suggestions from Michael Mansfield QC, representing De Menezes' family, that errors had been made. Her only concession: 'In any operation some things that in an ideal world would happen, don't happen.' Da Silva Armani says that the 'arrogance' of the two senior officers is what remains with her today. She has learned more recently that the JusticeforJean campaign's meetings were infiltrated by undercover officers for purposes unknown. She will give evidence at the public inquiry into the so-called Spycops scandal. And yet, she says, she will not give into hate. Blair passed away earlier this month. 'I felt nothing, it was strange'. One of the officers, C12, spoke for the first time earlier this year for a Channel 4 documentary. 'Everything told me I was going to die and that is why I acted like I did,' he told the programme. Da Silva Armani says she 'saw sadness in his eyes', as she struggles to hold back her own tears. She could not watch the whole interview and felt only pity. 'I have to forgive him,' she says. A few weeks ago, her 10-year-old daughter had held back from joining her classmates having their photographs taken with the police officers at the school summer fair in south Croydon. 'Because of our cousin', the young girl had told her concerned mum. 'I said to her: 'Listen to me, what happened with your cousin is an isolated case,'' said Da Silva Armani. 'The police is good. The police is here for our protection, to serve us' … We should not generate hate.' Her daughter joined her friends.
The Guardian
20 hours ago
- The Guardian
‘I have to forgive': 20 years after Jean Charles de Menezes was shot by police in Stockwell his cousin looks back
Patricia da Silva Armani was living with her cousin Jean Charles de Menezes in a flat in south London two decades ago when he was shot seven times in the head by firearms officers at Stockwell station. Her younger cousin was a chatterbox and a dreamer, she says, 'always with plans'. The pair had grown up together as part of a large and close family. Two years after De Menezes had moved to London for a life that Brazil was unable to offer, 'Paty', as he affectionately called her, had been encouraged to follow him to his two-bedroom flat on Scotia Road, along with their younger cousin Vivian Figueiredo, then 20. De Menezes, 27, intended to work another six months as an electrician in London before returning home to Brazil to rejoin his girlfriend, Adriana, she says. They had talked it over during what would turn out to be their final hours with each other in the home they shared. 'I love you,' De Menezes had said as he gave Da Silva Armani, then 31, a hug before leaving her side for the last time to go to work. Within 48 hours, De Menezes, on the way to a job in Kilburn, was lying dead on a tube carriage floor. Police officers had mistaken him for Hussain Osman, one of the four men who attempted to blow themselves up on London trains and a bus the previous day in a failed copycat of the 7/7 bombings that had killed 52 people and left hundreds more wounded two weeks earlier. Da Silva Armani collapsed as she identified her cousin in the police morgue on 23 July. But she became a key player in the campaign for justice after compelling evidence of catastrophic police errors and New Scotland Yard's dissemination of misinformation emerged via leaks to the press. More would come out in two damning Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) reports, the Met's trial and conviction under health and safety laws, and the formal inquest into the killing in 2008. It was in Da Silva Armani's name that the campaign then vainly sought to challenge the Crown Prosecution Service at the European court of human rights after a decision was made not to charge any officers over the killing. It is evidently then with some trepidation that she answers the question as to whether she still believes the firearms officers, whose claims that they shouted a warning of 'armed police' was not believed by the jury at the inquest, should have been prosecuted. 'You may be surprised by my answer: no, absolutely not,' she says. 'Because the whole situation led them to this. I take many years to get this conclusion. Many, many years. It's not easy. You are the first person I said it [to]. 'The big mistake was in the communications and surveillance and that they allowed Jean to go into the station. When Jean was allowed to go down the escalator at Stockwell station he was already dead. The shooters had no choice, no choice.' It is not a position that everyone remembering De Menezes at Stockwell station at 10.05am – the time of his death – on Tuesday will back. It has taken a lot of tears and reflection to get to this moment, she says. She certainly believes that those at the top of the Met then – namely the late commissioner Ian Blair, made Lord Blair of Boughton in 2010, and Cressida Dick, who was running the operation on 22 July 2005 and who rose to lead the Met in 2017 – acted shamefully and should have been held to account for their failings. De Menezes had only been followed by surveillance officers from the flat on 17 Scotia Road that fateful day as a result of Osman having put down number 21 as his address when registering at a gym – the flats shared a communal entrance. Osman's membership card had been found in the detritus left when his homemade bomb failed at Shepherd's Bush tube station. There was only one officer in the van outside the property. He was urinating into a plastic container as De Menezes left and had been unable to get an image or a proper look. Dick then decided not to suspend the bus services for fear of alerting the terrorists to their watch. De Menezes got on a bus, got off at Brixton and then got back on when he realised that the tube station was shut. It was wrongly interpreted as possible anti-surveillance measure. Dick would claim that she was led by the surveillance team to believe it was likely to be Osman, who was later arrested in Rome, that they were following. There was a far greater level of doubt than that among the surveillance team. She wanted the firearms team to stop him before he got to the tube station but they were not yet in position to intervene. The armed officers arrived around two minutes after De Menezes at Stockwell. Some accounts had Dick telling her subordinates to stop the suspect from getting on the tube 'at all costs'. She denied that language. But the officers running into the tube station said they fully believed that the man they were engaging was a terrorist about to blow himself up. The two shooters, C2 and C12, claimed in their formal statements that they had shouted 'armed police' to De Menezes as they rushed at him and that he had risen from his seat towards them. None of the 17 members of the public on the carriage heard any such warning. The jury at the inquest later said they did not believe the officer's testimony and returned an open verdict after being prohibited by the coroner from an unlawful killing verdict. The operational failures were followed by false claims from Blair and his press office that De Menezes had failed to respond to a police challenge and had been wearing suspiciously bulky clothing. It took a leak from a secretary at the IPCC to ITN's News at Ten to reveal this as a falsehood. Despite all this, when giving evidence at the inquest, Dick would not countenance suggestions from Michael Mansfield QC, representing De Menezes' family, that errors had been made. Her only concession: 'In any operation some things that in an ideal world would happen, don't happen.' Da Silva Armani says that the 'arrogance' of the two senior officers is what remains with her today. She has learned more recently that the JusticeforJean campaign's meetings were infiltrated by undercover officers for purposes unknown. She will give evidence at the public inquiry into the so-called Spycops scandal. And yet, she says, she will not give into hate. Blair passed away earlier this month. 'I felt nothing, it was strange'. One of the officers, C12, spoke for the first time earlier this year for a Channel 4 documentary. 'Everything told me I was going to die and that is why I acted like I did,' he told the programme. Da Silva Armani says she 'saw sadness in his eyes', as she struggles to hold back her own tears. She could not watch the whole interview and felt only pity. 'I have to forgive him,' she says. A few weeks ago, her 10-year-old daughter had held back from joining her classmates having their photographs taken with the police officers at the school summer fair in south Croydon. 'Because of our cousin', the young girl had told her concerned mum. 'I said to her: 'Listen to me, what happened with your cousin is an isolated case,'' said Da Silva Armani. 'The police is good. The police is here for our protection, to serve us' … We should not generate hate.' Her daughter joined her friends.
The Guardian
11-07-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Former Met police commissioner Ian Blair dies
Sir Ian Blair, the former Metropolitan police commissioner, has died at the age of 72. Blair led Britain's biggest force from 2005 until his resignation in 2008 after losing the support of the then-mayor of London, Boris Johnson. He was lauded for making changes to the force but was also criticised over the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes in July 2005 shorting after the London bombings. In 2010, he became a crossbench peer in the House of Lords. More details soon …
Daily Mail
10-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
He's been in everything from EastEnders to Star Wars, yet this Essex-born actor barely gets recognised – do YOU know who he is?
You know Daniel Mays. He's that extraordinarily convincing character actor who's popped up in everything from EastEnders to Star Wars. He's famous, but not crazy famous – although the 46-year-old Londoner witnessed true celebrity once, in 2013, when he and Rupert Grint (Ron Weasley in all the Harry Potter films) popped out to Pret A Manger for a sandwich during a break from rehearsing a play. 'These girls spotted Rupert and it was pandemonium. Any body part they could have yanked off him as a souvenir they would have. Actors want to have an impact but I draw the line at dismemberment.' We meet in a central London cocktail bar where, despite being 6ft 2in tall and looking dapper in an overcoat and cap, he goes largely unnoticed. Mays may not be instantly recognisable, but few could match the extraordinary range on his CV. Born in Buckhurst Hill, Essex, to an electrician dad and a bank clerk mum, he went to the Italia Conti stage school aged 14 and four years later won a place at Rada. One of his first roles after graduating was as Kat Slater's boyfriend in EastEnders. He has since shone in everything from TV cop thriller Line Of Duty to his Olivier-nominated stage turn as Nathan Detroit in the musical Guys & Dolls. Right now he's in Suspect: The Shooting Of Jean Charles De Menezes, a four- and five-star rated Disney+ drama about the 7/7 London tube bombings of July 2005, and the subsequent police killing of the 27-year-old Brazilian electrician who was misidentified as a terrorist at Stockwell tube station. Mays hopes it will have a similar impact as ITV's Mr Bates Vs The Post Office. 'The important thing about this story is that [de Menezes's] family are still fighting for his name,' says Mays. 'Loads of people, mates of mine and colleagues, were under the impression that [de Menezes] vaulted the barrier and ran down the escalator. And it didn't happen. You think to yourself, 'How has that cemented itself in people's heads?' Dramas like this and Mr Bates can hold people to account, set the record straight.' He loved playing principal forensic investigator Cliff Todd, the first on the scene at Aldgate station after one of the four 7/7 bombings. Todd visited the set during filming. 'It's easy to forget, as we get on with our lives, that there are ordinary people out there who get the calls no one else wants and they have to respond,' says Mays. Next up is the much-awaited Netflix movie adaptation of Richard Osman's 'cosy crime' bestseller The Thursday Murder Club, due to screen on 28 August. 'Surprise, surprise, I play a police officer,' says Mays. 'I should just join the force at this rate.' Produced by Steven Spielberg, it has Helen Mirren, Pierce Brosnan, David Tennant, Ben Kingsley and Jonathan Pryce among a stellar cast. 'Even though I've been in this industry a decent amount of time, I still got butterflies on set with that level of acting royalty,' he says. 'But David Tennant is the one guy who gives me nightmares.' He's only half-joking. In 2020 May and Tennant both appeared in ITV's Emmy-winning drama Des, about serial killer Dennis Nilsen. Tennant played Nilsen, Mays was his nemesis, DCI Peter Jay. 'David was so convincing I had a nightmare I was trapped in an attic with him,' he recalls. 'I actually woke up screaming. For me there's acting, then there's David Tennant acting.' Mays has spent 25 years on our screens, but despite attending Rada alongside Ben Whishaw and Maxine Peake he had early doubts. Were there enough roles for a working-class Essex boy? He felt guilty just thinking about it – his mum had taken a second job in a cardboard-box factory to help him pay for drama school. 'It broke my heart a bit to think I'd let my parents down,' he says, 'But my Rada tutor said, 'You'll get loads of work playing angry young men on the edge' and he was right.' First came EastEnders – and despite the soap's producers offering to expand his part so he could join the cast permanently, Mays declined, leaving after four episodes. 'No disrespect but I wanted to try new things,' he says. Luckily, the very next job was in the 2001 Hollywood film Pearl Harbor, directed by Michael Bay. 'The scale of that thing! I watched with my jaw on the floor while Bay was on a crane directing a scene involving a whole bloody air force! I had to go and see Ben Affleck about a scene and his trailer was the size of a small village – a real eye-opener for someone starting out.' Now, if he's not sure whether to accept a role, he talks to his friend Stephen Graham (who he starred with in the Disney+ smash hit A Thousand Blows earlier this year) and fellow London actor Eddie Marsan. 'Who wants to be a professional cockney?' asks Mays. 'No one. So if you can, you pick and choose parts carefully. I've played so many angry young men on the edge but I've taken risks, too.' He was Samuel Pepys in The Great Fire (ITV, 2014); gay rights campaigner Peter Wildeblood in the drama Against The Law (BBC, 2017); and Edward Bancroft, British spy and confidant of US founding father Benjamin Franklin (played by Michael Douglas) in Franklin (Apple TV+, 2024). Acting opposite the Hollywood legend was, Mays says, an unforgettable experience: 'Michael Douglas has earned every right to swan around giving off a 'been there, done that' aura, but he doesn't. If anything, it was me in my trailer going, 'Oh my god, I'm about to do a scene wearing stockings opposite Michael Douglas!'.' Franklin was a multimillion-dollar production. Its most iconic scenes were filmed on location at the Palace of Versailles, and Mays had the use of an apartment in the beautiful Montmartre district of Paris. His wife Louise and children Mylo, 19, and Dixie, 12, came out to stay. It was, he says, a magical time. A far cry from the situation in which he and Louise met 20 years ago, when Mays was starring in Top Buzzer, a short-lived MTV comedy about a drug dealer. 'Stephen Graham was in it and day one he starts this rumour that I am the love child of actor Jim Broadbent,' says Mays. 'All the cast and crew came up to me to ask if it was true.' One of them was the show's make-up artist Louise Burton. 'She told me, 'I didn't think you looked like Jim Broadbent's love child', but she also declined to do my make-up and got an assistant to do it instead.' Why? Because Louise fancied Mays and thought it would be unprofessional to work so closely with him. Eventually they began dating and, five months later, Louise became pregnant with Mylo. Mays admits that becoming a dad at 25 was a shock. 'It wasn't the plan at the time,' he says. 'I was a young actor starting out and it was all supposed to be about me! But becoming a father means you are not the most important person in the room. The only thing I could do was grow up quickly – and 20 years down the line I can honestly say it was the best thing ever. It forced me to get a work ethic and that's how I see my role now: to provide for my family.' Married in 2018, he and Louise live in North London. He plays golf in his downtime and walks his miniature maltese, Missy. If The Thursday Murder Club is a hit, and a second Richard Osman book is filmed, it would mean more time with acting royalty – perhaps a meeting with Spielberg himself. 'I missed his first visit to the set because I was off that day,' he says. 'But I'd love to sit down with the guy and say, 'Listen, I'm the love child of Jim Broadbent and I'm ready to be a leading man.'' Stefania Rosini/Disney+ 2023, contour by getty images
Yahoo
30-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
The Talented Mr. Tovey: ‘Drama has the amazing ability to connect people'
There's a haunting moment in the third episode of new Disney drama+ Suspect: The Shooting of Jean Charles De Menezes when it becomes slowly and harrowingly clear that the Metropolitan Police have, to put it bluntly, fucked up. We see a bomb expert decked out in full body armour, boarding a Northern Line train at Stockwell tube station to rifle through the clothing of a man shot dead by the force at point-blank range just minutes before. Through the narrow lens of a helmet, we see a pair of uncertain eyes peering at the man's ID. That one piece of evidence provides the first inkling that De Menezes was not one of the men involved in the previous day's failed attacks on the capital. The bomb expert's fears are confirmed just minutes later when further tests come back entirely negative. The Met now have one hell of a problem on their hands. This is the real-life situation that unfolds in the drama, which takes a bold and brave look at the events 20 years ago that led to the fatal shooting of the 27-year-old Brazilian electrician on that fateful morning on 22 July 2005 – and the subsequent aftermath that concluded with a divisive open verdict in December 2008. Few real-life figures come away from the drama smelling of flowers, but a rare redeeming face comes in the form of Deputy Assistant Commissioner of the Met Brian Paddick, who is shown as one of the few who stood up to question the official story and when exactly the team of Sir Ian Blair – the then Commissioner of the Met – realised that the wrong man had been targeted. Paddick, who was essentially demoted to a desk job for daring to speak out, is portrayed in the show by Russell Tovey, a real-life friend of his who conveys the dogged but impressively measured approach that Paddick took in his pursuit of the truth. 'Drama has the amazing ability to connect people, and you look at shows like Mr Bates vs The Post Office and Adolescence as recent examples of ones that have had an amazing way to educate and open discussion,' explains the Essex-born actor when we meet in London just weeks before the drama's release. 'I'm hoping this does the same thing and there's some accountability off the back of it. 'But I wanted to honour Brian Paddick too; I wanted to serve him and that character and what he went through in order to honour the truth. He tried to take accountability at the time but that risked his position, and it affected the rest of his life,' says Tovey, who has known Paddick for nearly 20 years. 'He was a public figure who was out in a high position and ran for Mayor, and I always found him quite commendable and heroic,' he explains. 'And of course, people have said we sort of look similar to each other, and when this drama was announced, I thought 'Surely, they're gonna let me play him?! We're both gay men and we've got grey hair – come on, who else is there?!'' In one remarkable moment in Suspect: The Shooting of Jean Charles De Menezes, Paddick puts it bluntly to his colleagues: 'It's like we're saying: 'Sorry we killed you, but it is your own fault.'' Tovey adds: 'Brian put his neck on the line, and when I've been talking to him about his career, it's clear that truth was the most important thing, which certainly feels radical in today's climate of post-truth and alternative facts. 'He wanted to tell the truth, hold people accountable, and I think that marked him out as being a troublemaker, which is just bizarre. For someone in that role to want to uphold honesty and truth and that be seen in some capacity as a negative is just shocking. When you watch it, you'll see that actually the want and need is for lies to be upheld and supported. This show will break that all open again, hopefully.' There's also the hope, Tovey explains, that the documentary will rehabilitate the image of De Menezes. Writer Jeff Pope toes the line with a forensic, near-journalistic approach that simply presents the facts of the matter, but this is a drama where those facts – and the horrific death of an innocent man – speak for themselves. For example, it's widely known that the police got the wrong man, but it's been largely lost that De Menezes did not jump the barrier and run from the police. The 2008 inquest revealed that he calmly tapped through the Tube barriers with an Oyster card and boarded the train. It was in fact the firearms officers who had jumped the barrier when pursuing De Menezes, but by that point the damage was already done. 'Ninety per cent of society who were following this story believe that those events were the reality,' reflects Tovey. 'There's a mural of Jean Charles outside Stockwell Station, and I bet people have walked past it and gone 'Didn't he run from the police? Wasn't he wearing a big, suspicious coat?' I've passed it hundreds of times, and every time I do, I just think how tragic it was. He was an innocent man, and I think there's going to be lots of people that will be blamed and held accountable, and when you watch this drama, you're going to see how the system works. 'His family have watched it, but they have been fighting for 20 years, and the offensiveness of the way they've been treated, and the memory of Jean Charles has been treated, is just disgusting. If this show can humanise this person's existence and show he mattered and was loved, then that's a real honour to be part of.' But the timing matters too, explains Tovey. It's a show that arrives at a time when we're in a 'terrifying' post-truth era. It's important then, he says, to tell the truth during a period when social media giants like Facebook have abandoned fact checkers, in a move perceived to be bowing to the Trump administration. 'I think, as human beings, we want the truth if it's being written down in a newspaper or if it's spoken about on a news channel. It has to be reliable, because what are we supposed to understand about the world if we're constantly being gaslit? Dramatising these events and upholding honesty just really matters.' The series is the latest hard-hitting project for Tovey, who tells me about the joy of receiving a Special Jury Award at Sundance Film Festival in January for Plainclothes, a real-life drama about a working-class police officer in 90s New York who is tasked with entrapping gay men in public toilets, only to find himself entangled in an unexpected relationship with one of his targets. 'Gay men were being targeted when they were cruising bathrooms, and the police would trap them and ruin their lives,' he reflects. It would be a bold and important story to tell at any time, but it seems more important in the time of Trump's America – when key rights for LGBTQ+ people are under threat like never before. 'Those rights are eroding, and I think what we have to do is make more and more content that's overtly queer and obvious and keep it visible and keep amplifying that because it's so easy to erase it and it's so easy to go back politically,' he says. Tovey was also part of Looking, Andrew Haigh's landmark show which marked HBO's first television series focused primarily on the lives of gay men. Would the network, in the face of the Trump administration, be brave enough to make such a show today? 'Right now, I'm sure there are multiple conversations happening where they're thinking of green-lighting queer characters or queer content, which makes it all the more important to say yes and do it,' he ponders. 'What's happening in the States is fucking terrifying, but it makes me more determined to tell gay stories and to play gay characters. If people are having to be brave, they should be brave right now because they're going to be on the right side of history, and I think I've always really run towards that.' Tovey, who won acclaim for his portrayal of Joe Pitt in the 2017 London revival of seminal gay play Angels in America, adds: 'When I was younger, people would tell me that I didn't want to be typecast in gay roles, and I'd just say that there are billions of queer characters around the world so how the hell can I be pigeonholed? There's so many stories to tell and every one I've done has been so varied, nuanced, and moved the dial somewhere along the line. I absolutely have to keep doing these roles.' Tovey's powerful response is bang on, and especially so for an actor of his range. One of his earliest roles came in The History Boys, which has allowed him to forge a strong friendship with Alan Bennett ('I saw him two weeks ago! He's 90 and still incredible!). But on the flip side of this, he's had forays into the world of comic-book drama with the DCEU's Supergirl. Later this year, he will return to the Whoniverse for The War Between the Land and the Sea, a Doctor Who spin-off series focusing on the threat of classic Who villain the Sea Devils. Its finer details are still shrouded in mystery. 'Err… what do you want to know?' says Tovey with a coy smile when asked about the series, with the air of a man only too aware that loose lips sink not only ships but TV shows too. 'I loved that role and I'm really proud of the time we had on it, so I hope that transfers onto the screen,' he diplomatically puts it. 'But we've got five episodes and [Tovey's co-star] Gugu Mbatha-Raw is in prosthetics, which is something I had to go through for Being Human, that whole thing of being in earlier than everyone else, so I felt sympathy for her! The whole cast is great, and Dylan Holmes Williams, who's directing it, is a superstar. It was a very, very special job, and I think if you meet people who have worked on it, I think that they will feel the same and say the same.' Tovey is incredibly busy outside of the acting world too. The keen art enthusiast and collector is currently wrapping up work on a children's art book that he hopes will impart his love of art to a new generation. His podcast TalkArt – which sees him grilling stalwarts such as Tracey Emin – constantly tops Apple charts across the globe. Is there anyone from the art world that Tovey would love to portray? 'Oh, [David] Hockney. Absolutely,' he says, without missing a beat. 'We wanted to interview him for the podcast, and he's evaded us so far, but I would love to play him. I think the story of him making art that was very coded and very queer at a time when it was still illegal, at the Royal College of Art, is amazing. His story too, coming from Bradford and Leeds and going to Malibu and living this incredible life where he's been surrounded by friends, muses and lovers. That story is phenomenal.' He adds of his passion: 'It's amazing, really, that I get to be a geek, have another passion project and do this stuff. I was at college when the YBA movement happened, and I remember seeing Damien Hirst's work [and] Tracey Emin's bed and just being shook by it. I understood what the word contemporary meant, and that working-class generation of artists gave me access to that world, and it felt like 'Oh, well they're in it, I'm allowed to be in it as well.' It makes me so happy. Going to see shows and meeting artists and visiting studios is such a dopamine rush. Art should be in the same conversation as storytelling in the way we view our world. It needs to be in the same discussion as everything else, otherwise it's othered, elitist and academic.' In a nutshell, then: Russell Tovey is a man finding himself, quite rightly, in strong demand across multiple genres and – as his art shows – multiple worlds too. 'Now I just wanna keep telling great stories and just playing fucking great characters,' he surmises. 'I've been really lucky that I've had so many amazing men that I've got to play.'
