‘Why are our black boys hurting each other?’ Letitia Wright on the deaths that inspired her directorial debut

The Black Panther star made her name with intense roles in indie films before Marvel came calling. Now she’s telling her own stories, starting with a cast of ‘young kings’Days before we meet, Letitia Wright found herself cheek-by-jowl with a far-right march in London. This is the year when St George’s flags have been displayed in suburban windows and tied to lamp-posts, and when thousands of people – some more intimidating than others, especially to people of colour – have marched on the centre of the capital and beyond. A friend of Wright’s was visiting the city, and they had moseyed down to the South Bank, unaware of what awaited them. “It was jam-packed,” she says, recalling their struggle to get out of the fray. “I was in the middle of it, and then I was out of it. They were doing their thing – and I was doing mine.”The actor has played refugees twice: once in the BBC Three drama Glasgow Girls, where she portrayed a Somali teenager, Amal, and then in the 2022 film Aisha, where she took on the role of a woman from Nigeria navigating Ireland’s often Kafkaesque immigration system. With this insight – and as a black woman – how does it feel to see far-right rhetoric being spread in the way that it is now? “Sometimes people need to see the humanity behind these things that they assume the worst of, which isn’t true,” she says. “And I’m an immigrant, my parents are immigrants … It’s an interesting conversation. And it’s interesting to see [it unfold] in a country that has done so much to other countries historically …” She was close to the London Eye when she caught sight of the march, but also a rainbow in the sky. “I try and find the peace,” she says, sounding – understandably – a little exhausted by it all. Continue reading...

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