Birmingham-born actor David Harewood is renowned for his versatile work in television, theatre and film. After graduating from Rada, he established himself in the public eye in the 1990s, securing roles in television series including Fat Friends, Robin Hood and Hustle. In 2012, he was awarded an MBE for his services to drama. Perhaps best known for his performance as tough-minded CIA boss David Estes in the US political thriller Homeland, he has since gone on to play another spy in the BBC critically acclaimed drama The Night Manager. Next year he will join Alicia Vikander and Christoph Waltz on the big screen in Justin Chadwick’s forthcoming drama Tulip Fever. Harewood currently appears in the second season of Supergirl on Sky, and will present the documentary Will Britain Ever Have a Black Prime Minister? on BBC2 on 13 November.
1 | Book
Truth Is a Total Defense: My Fifty Years in Television by Steven Bochco
I’m reading this at the moment. Steven Bochco is a hugely successful American TV producer. He created LA Law and Hill Street Blues – a groundbreaking show which had many story lines, several leading characters, and changed the dynamic of TV drama. It kicked off the modern golden age of television – he basically invented the modern hour-long TV drama. He has some great anecdotes in this book about actors and their behaviour – he wrote for the first season of Columbo and apparently Peter Falk wasn’t well behaved. Bochco has a nice turn of phrase and a way of bringing the industry to life in a way that I very much recognise.
2 | Game
A few weeks ago I went to an “escape room” with some other cast members [Harewood is filming Supergirl season 2 in Vancouver] and it was really good fun. You go to a warehouse, choose from different experiences, such as zombies, and you have to make your way out of a room. There are obscure questions and puzzles, and you work out the clues from the things around you – such as a calculator and paper, or things written on the wall in red, like blood. The room we chose was difficult, I think only 5% had ever got out of it. We didn’t get out of it.
3 | TV
I am really into Westworld right now: it’s become my new go-to fix. The writing and acting are second to none. It’s such a clever take on the original movie, trying to work out who’s human and who’s not. It’s about an amusement park where visitors can enjoy the wild west, and there are robots that you can talk to, have sex with, shoot, kill, beat up – anything. But unbeknown to the park’s creators, the robots are developing awareness and intelligence. There are shots of the robots with flies crawling over them; apparently they have a fly-wrangler on set, who freezes the flies and puts them on people’s faces, where they slowly start to thaw. It’s bizarre but looks incredible.
4 | Film
I’m looking forward to seeing this adaptation of a play called In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue, by Steppenwolf [theatre company] writer Tarell Alvin McCraney. I saw a trailer and it looks like a beautiful film. It stars Mahershala Ali, who is one of the great actors at the moment. It’s a coming-of-age story about being black and gay in America, which is a sensitive subject matter, and a guy coming to terms with his sexuality. With black masculinity, we’re taught to be macho and tough, but this looks at the soft, sensitive side of the black character that you rarely see.
5 | Documentary
This is a shocking, hard-hitting Netflix documentary by Ava DuVernay, which looks at the incarceration of black American men. The 13th amendment to the US constitution abolished slavery and said all men were created equal, except criminals. What the system has worked out is that when people are locked up, you can put them to work, so the more people you lock up, the more money you make. There are private prisons springing up all over America, and they’re full of black men. In 1960, there were around 200,000 black men incarcerated each year; now it’s 3 million. It’s a kind of genocide – the removal of a generation of black men from American life.
6 | Restaurant
It’s so rare we get time off the job, but the other day we went to this Mediterranean restaurant and had a nice night out. It has beautiful food and fresh, home-made pasta. I do like my red wines and had some really lovely Italian wine; rather too much, to tell the truth. The place feels rustic and the atmosphere is great. We were with some actors from other TV shows filming here – Supernatural, The Flash. We talked about how Vancouver is different from LA and how we all miss the sunshine: in the time I’ve been here, it’s rained every day.
7 | Experience
Later this week I’m going to this flotation experience: you get into a big tank of warm water with Epsom salts, and it’s very good for you. You float for about 90 minutes in the dark and you can’t hear a thing. It’s meant to be extremely relaxing, like meditating in water. It should be quite rejuvenating and because I’ve been working so hard, I’m very much looking forward to it.
