Saltburn star Archie Madekwe revealed how he experienced intense racism while in drama school.
While speaking with Cush Jumbo on her Sony Entertainment podcast Origins with Cush Jumbo, Madekwe said how he had to deal with difficult situations while at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA).
“So when I finally got into drama school, it feels like, as I said, that’s it. No more work. I’m an actor now. I’m a real actor. I’m an actor of colour, so that’s what I was going to say and for actors of colour, it feels like this stamp of legitimacy for a lot of people,” he said. “Before that, I would just be seen for Top Boy and now it’s like well, I can also do all the other things. I’m classically trained, I can do more than just that.”
“It really kind of felt like this stamp. Going there after having the experience I had at BRIT was so debilitating because all of a sudden every comment is about the way you look and the way you sound. You’re too urban, you’re too street, you’re too hood,” he continued. “Now, first of all, I’m thinking, what? Have you met me?”
“My friend Jordan, me and him are the only Black mixed-race people in the year and Jordan, being dark-skinned [and] Black, me being light-skinned [and] mixed race, me constantly being called Jordan, him constantly being called Archie,” he continued. “Jordan being told that he’d be all teeth and eyes on stage and look like a chocolate blancmange. And we could never do Chekhov, we could never do Shakespeare, because people wouldn’t cast us in those things. And I was hearing these things for the first time, and I was thinking, wow, is this the way people view me? I really didn’t think of myself like that.”
Madekwe said he “idolized” LAMDA “for years,” adding that the institution represents the British acting industry. Because of that, Madekwe was worried that the industry only saw him in limited or stereotypical roles.
“[T]hat’s when you start looking in the mirror, and you start trying to work out, like, okay, what do I present to the world? Like, what is it that I give off? And I didn’t really know what it was, I couldn’t find an answer to that question,” he said. “You’d hear a kind of comment like that and all your friends, your peers would look to be like, oh my God, are you okay? And then you just take it because you’re aware of how hard it is to get in. You’re aware of the statistics…You’re constantly reminded, it’s harder to get into than Oxford and Cambridge. You know, you’re constantly reminded how big a deal it is that you’re there and so you kind of put up and shut up and…you deal with it and you try and learn to deal with it, but it’s kind of eats away at you.”
Madekwe recalled when a student was put in darker makeup to play Aboriginal character Black Caesar in the play Our Country’s Good.
“I remember they had blacked up a white student to play Black Caesar, the Aboriginal, in the play. I was just so shocked and this was 2017 and there was someone that was not Black, painted brown, to play a Black student. I remember turning to the person next to me, watching it and saying, ‘Sorry, would you consider this blackface?’ And this white girl looked at me and said, ‘Uh, yeah, I probably would.’ And I was like, ‘Right. Okay,’” he said.
“So I walked out the next day. I said to my friends, ‘What the fuck? Why did you agree to do this?’ And everyone was nervous and scared. They were scared. If they said something, it would affect their casting,” he continued. “They were told that it was a whole range of things. They were just worried about angering the people on top and I said, ‘OK, yeah’ and I said, ‘oh, I don’t give a fuck. I’ll go right now.’ So I went to the head of acting and I said, ‘I would love to know what has happened. What was the thought process here?’ and the Head of Acting at the time who was a friend of mine said ‘I’ll let you know, I’ll go back and I’ll let you know the artistic decision. I’ve not seen it yet’ and I said, ‘there isn’t actually an explanation. I just think that I need to let you know that it’s unacceptable and if you have to choose a play with a black character, I mean you have so many white students at the school, there are many plays that are okay for that, but if you feel like you need to, just don’t paint him brown. Colourblind casting’s fine. Just don’t paint him brown.’”
He also talks about how teachers were referring students to him when they had questions about Black history and Black experiences. When he tweeted about his experiences, he was verbally ambushed by his principal, who said Madekwe should “learn to articulate” his experiences instead. He said he left the meeting feeling disheartened.
“It was the first time I’d ever had a feeling like this. I was 18, 19 trying to navigate it and I left the office after this attack feeling really disheartened and I remember walking out, my friends waiting for me eager to see how the meeting went and I burst into tears.”
Sony Music Entertainment reached out to LAMDA’s principal for comment.
Listen to Madekwe’s full story on Origins with Cush Jumbo.
The post ‘Saltburn’ Star Archie Madekwe Details Racist Experiences He Endured While At London Drama School appeared first on Blavity.
