Susan Wokoma interview: 'I talked myself out of Shakespeare ever being a part of my career'
Susan Wokoma is beaming from ear to ear as she meets me backstage at Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre. It’s pouring with rain outside but the miserable weather hasn’t dampened her spirits as she gears up to play Bottom in Dominic Hill’s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. “It’s actually really exciting it being this weather... you’ve got to be ready for it,” she says.
The past few years have seen her go from strength to strength — from playing demon slayer Raquel in Netflix’s Crazyhead to Cynthia in E4’s Chewing Gum and, most recently, Mabel in Matt Berry’s Year of the Rabbit. These TV roles have cemented her position as a sitcom star. Now, with comedy firmly under her belt, she’s turning her attention to the stage and revisiting Shakespeare.
“A few years ago, if somebody had told me I’d be playing Bottom in an open air theatre while also playing a Victorian wannabe cop in a comedy with Matt Berry, I would have said that both of those things were nonsense,” she says.
The 31-year-old, who was born to Nigerian parents in Southwark and made her TV debut at 14, studied at Rada and is no stranger to classical theatre. However Shakespeare used to feel somewhat alien. “That’s when you learn about all the rules, like the iambic pentameter and stuff like that,” she says. “All of that really scared me, which I’m sure wasn’t the point. There was a lot that I was learning about the way that I was naturally built, even physically, that didn’t align with Shakespeare. So I just kind of, in three years, talked myself out of Shakespeare ever being a part of my career. Not in an angry way. I just went, ‘Oh well, I guess that isn’t me.’”
But that all changed when she joined Phyllida Lloyd’s all-female Donmar productions of Julius Caesar and Henry IV when they transferred to New York in 2014. “It was a real turning point in my career, in terms of my confidence, and working so closely with women like Frances Barber and Harriet Walter who would explore the language with me in a way that was totally accessible. And Phyllida, who just wanted us to represent women who aren’t represented on stage normally. Ever since then I’ve been itching to have another crack at it.”
Five years later, and Wokoma is taking on the gender-flipped role of Bottom in Hill’s production. “I have to stop myself from thinking about how I’m going to do it differently, because the moment you start thinking about how you are going to be interesting, things fall apart.Weirdly I do [relate to Bottom] and I tend to choose characters that aren’t like me because, for me, that’s more interesting. We’ve been exploring the fact that Oberon makes Titania fall in love with Bottom as a punishment — we sometimes forget that. So the punishment isn’t that she’s falling in love with a donkey, it’s unrequited love.”
Wokoma says Hill’s contemporary take on the comedy has come with lots of conversations about adapting it for today’s social climate. “For instance, you have Francis Flute... he dresses up as a woman for the play within the play, and I think that for too long you’ve had a lot of productions where a man putting on a dress, with the high voice, seems funny. So those conversations have come up where it’s like, ‘I hope we aren’t laughing at a man in a dress, because actually, that’s not funny.’”
When she’s not working you might find Wokoma partying with Crashing co-star Phoebe Waller-Bridge, or hanging out with friend Deborah Frances-White, host of The Guilty Feminist podcast — on which she often appears.
Her latest TV stint, in Channel 4’s Year of the Rabbit is as Mabel, a Victorian woman who has her heart set on becoming the UK’s first female copper. “The main thing was the time period, because I’ve never been involved in anything like that. I was really, really interested in how I, as a black woman, would fit into that. And the answer is really easily — it’s not a big deal at all.”
Wokoma recently filmed her first drama, Dark Money, which airs on BBC One in July. “The subject matter is so harrowing... but when I read it I thought this is a story that needs to be told,” she says. The four-part series follows a London family who find out their young son has been abused by a Hollywood director. Wokoma plays Sabrina, who shares a son with patriarch Manny Mensah. “I feel like the fact that I’ve done Dark Money has opened up things a bit — how do people know that I can do drama if they don’t see me do it?” she says.
She also has a talent for screenwriting. After joining the writer’s room for the second series of Netflix’s Sex Education, and contributing to the Dave comedy Porters, she’s concentrating on her own material. “I’ve got my film, commissioned by BBC Films, called Three Weeks, a comedy drama about abortion. It still is taboo and that’s one reason I wrote it. I always believe the best way to tackle something is through comedy. Fleabag is a masterful example of that.”
A Midsummer Night’s Dream is at Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre, NW1 (openairtheatre.com), until July 27
