Shifters star Tosin Cole: 'You have to trust your ability. Like they say in basketball – shooters gotta shoot.'
I’d been told before we meet, that actor Tosin Cole will probably only talk about his starring role in Netflix’s Supacell and the transfer of Shifters, Benedict Lombe’s gorgeous love story in which he co-stars with Heather Agyepong, from the tiny Bush theatre to the West End: nothing personal or political. But we meet as a wave of racist violence sweeps the country, and if feels foolish not to ask the 32-year-old British Nigerian actor about it.
“I want to answer this, but I want to answer it right,” he says eventually. “How can we put faith in people [in authority] who let these things happen? We need to see real consequences for wrongdoing that is actually quite disgusting. When ugly things like that happen it makes me think we have a long way to go as human beings.”
Politicians talk all the time about diversity and inclusion, he adds, but “actions speak louder than words”. He goes silent again, wary of offering up any statement that could be misconstrued or twisted. “I feel we live in an unforgiving era, of cancellation, so I’m careful. But I’m also aware one must be a good human being, be a good person, be a professional and also try and be a good example.”
This caution comes from being in the public eye for half your life. Cole was born in Florida and raised in New York then moved to south-east London aged eight after his parents split up (something else he doesn’t like to talk about), living sometimes with his father and sometimes with an uncle and aunt. A grime MC in his teens, he got into acting through the youth theatre group Intermission and quit school before his A-levels for parts in Hollyoaks and the EastEnders spinoff E20.
Since then he’s been an assistant to Jodie Whittaker’s Doctor Who, an X-wing pilot in Star Wars: The Force Awakens (after losing the part of stormtrooper Finn to John Boyega) and a Wailer in Bob Marley: One Love. There’s been weightier work too: ear for eye by debbie tucker green (who spells her name and play titles all in lower-case) and the role of real-life activist Medger Evers in Chinonye Chukwu’s hard-hitting civil rights drama Till.
“I was scared of that one,” he says. “I was just coming off a comedy [the 2023 reboot of House Party] and I had to learn an accent in five days. I thought, I need more time to prep and I said no… But sometimes you’ve got to trust your ability. Like they say in basketball, shooters gotta shoot.”
Despite his wariness Cole is a warm and friendly presence. He’s also extremely handsome. We’ve met in a producers’ office overlooking Charing Cross Road. Supacell, in which he plays one of five black south Londoners suddenly imbued with superpowers, is riding high on Netflix. Shifters – which time-travels through the relationship of Cole’s Dre and Agyepong’s Des when they reunite at his grandmother’s funeral – is about to open at the Duke of York’s round the corner. Idris Elba, Maya Jama and Little Simz have all signed on as producers of the West End run.
“It’s the raw, authentic journey of a friendship and a romantic relationship, very layered and complex but heartfelt,” he says of the play. It’s also your West End debut, I say. “Yeah,” he grins. “Tick that one off the list.” The show is directed by Lynette Linton who has scored a string of critical and commercial successes since taking over the Bush in 2019, from Red Pitch (which transferred to @sohoplace) to Sleepova to recent hit My Father’s Fable. The day before I met Cole, it was announced that Linton will direct Lily ‘Emily in Paris’ Collins in her stage debut, in Beth Wohl’s play Barcelona: it’ll follow Shifters into the Duke of York’s.
“She’s levelling up, getting more opportunities on bigger platforms,” says Cole of Linton. “She’s a pleasure to work with. So fun, super clear about what she wants, but also very collaborative. And she’s from round the ways [Linton was born in Leytonstone] so she has a language and an energy I’m familiar with.”
In Shifters, Dre is Nigerian and Des shares Lombe’s Congolese heritage, but while this has personal significance (they argue a lot about food and music), it has no social or political weight. “They could be Australian, Chinese, whatever,” Cole says. “It’s just people going through real life, stuff that’s universal. We all know what it’s like when your relationship or your family life’s not going right, when you are suffering grief. I’ve had middle-aged white men crying to me [after the show] because they lost their mother or their grandmother. People connect to this deeply.”
Shifters is only the third play by a black woman ever to be staged in the West End, after Yasmin Joseph’s J’Ouvert and Natasha Gordon’s Nine Night: a sign of progress, arguably, but also of how slow it is. “We normally don't get the opportunity to tell our stories in the West End, in the bigger stages,” Cole says. “We take every win we can, but it’s still a long way from being normalised. You know, I've been lucky enough to work consistently throughout my career, so that that must say something. But the fact that we’re still talking about representation shows we’ve still got a long way to go.” A pop-up bookshop promoting black writing, Shifting the Narrative, will be installed in the Duke of York’s foyer for the first week of the run.
Supacell, created by rapper turned filmmaker Rapman (aka Andrew Onwubolu), marks another step forward. The five characters who suddenly develop superpowers include a gang member and a drug dealer but also a nurse and a divorced dad struggling to make ends meet. Cole’s character, Michael, is the story’s moral and romantic heart, a delivery driver who must unite the quintet to avert the death of his fiancée. The show’s white characters are peripheral but the council estates and high streets of south-east London play a major role.
“I grew up on those estates, and if you’d told me at 13, 14 that I’d be filming there, and be where I am, I’d be like, no way,” Cole says. “I read the script, I’m turning the pages and just laughing to myself. It was like a homecoming. I’d been in the States for a while. I hadn’t used my own accent for a long time. Usually you watch sci-fi and it’s non-relatable, but this is very grounded. You get to ask the question: if I had powers, what would I do? I’m super glad to have done it and delivered something entertaining.”
Although he lived with his family early in his career, Cole has his own place in south London now, but won’t tell me where, or if he shares it with anyone. He has hinted in the past that Intermission – which aims to help underprivileged youths “make positive choices to become the best version of themselves” – stopped him potentially going off the rails, and he has condemned the axing of similar youth programmes and clubs by Tory governments. Today, he seems loath to revisit any of that ground.
Perhaps tellingly, Cole says he struggled to relate to the vulnerability of both Michael in Supacell and Dre in Shifters, having always felt the need to present a particular image – presumably a tough or taciturn one – to the world. “I’m navigating what society says you should be as a man in 2024,” he says, suddenly voluble.
“Obviously my cultural upbringing plays a part in it, and race plays a part in it, and my environment plays a part in it. Before, I was projecting on myself what everyone wanted me to be as a man and how I should turn up for them. I was acting, had too many faces. In becoming older and understanding life, understanding myself more, I can be what I think is right, rather than what people want me to be.”
Our last few minutes together are jocular as he talks about his grime years (“I had my borough on smash”) although he won’t reveal his MC name. We cover his now-withered trainer obsession and his more mature enjoyment of food, basketball, and hanging out with friends.
We properly bond over shared memories of living on the Walworth Road. As we part he gives me a friendly handshake. “That was proper fun, I hope we get to do it again,” he says. “Maybe next time I’ll be more open.”
Shifters is at the Duke of York’s Theatre from August 12 to October 12; buy tickets here
