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Have that Voice told me to jump off, terms which I've already done it. Please welcome David Herwood! Prepare to super start him and hit US down at home, and run by most influential voices on race and mental health. I remember reading about a moment when you come home, you find your father's typewriter with one letter written on the typewriter.
I said, Hills. I didn't quite know what it was, but I knew something was off. I hadn't seen Dad for a while. In the morning I got up, my mum said, don't go into the kitchen and go straight to school.
That night, that's when my mum told me that I'd be. David Herwood was the first black actor to play this part. The hostility that I was met with as a young black actor was ferocious and newspapers, just dismissing me. It looks more like my ties in the room, what's he doing on the stage?
So I really did feel like I was an anomaly. The whole thing is stressed, the smoke, the overthinking, just ended up making me smile. That's what led to me just falling into psychosis. I was lying bare and I just heard this voice in there.
So he was minding me, even though I'm spitting to you from beyond the grave, I need you to close the gap between good and evil, so you're going to sacrifice yourself to my aunt and you're going to be an angel. And that wasn't like I was eventually a section. I just remember lots of flashing lights, and then being in the back of the police wagon, without it continued, I'm not even sure I would have been here today. Without further ado, I'm Stephen Butler, and this is the Dirova CEO.
I hope nobody's listening, but if you are, then please keep this yourself. David. What do I have to understand about your very earliest years to understand the man you are, the perspective you have, and the work you do today? What is the most important context?
Well, that's an interesting question. What do you need to know about me then? That I was probably naive, open, innocent, and probably more conflicted than I thought I was. I was a vessel, and internet vessel was just been poured so much.
I felt like false information, wrong information, that at some point it had to smash, break. I grew up with some, and they weren't many black people on television. And they weren't many black images that on television, or anyway. And I think that seriously, what's the point of this advantage?
I grew up with a false sense of myself, and that false picture has only recently emerged. Does that make sense? Not entirely unless I get further context. What was the picture of yourself you grip with?
I would say, I think I was just way too naive, and way too hard. That's an interesting question. I really thought about that. But I think it's only in recent years, and I'm having asked myself some of the questions that I've been asking myself for these last couple of years, and I've really started to get a real grip of the person I am.
So who did you think you were when you were younger? What did you think of the world in yourself when you were younger? That was so naive and ill-informed. I think I was.
I didn't really think it was important. I didn't think my colour was important. And that's why I say I was naive. I didn't think my colour was that important.
I had no concept of myself as a sort of young black man. And that's why I say I grew up in a time where there weren't any images of myself. So I couldn't really structure my identity around a sort of solid identity. And even my mother was always sort of trying to steer me into a more Afrocentric mindset.
I got back to Birmingham where I'm from, and I look at how many of us are in interracial relationships of that generation. We were constantly told to assimilate. It was all about assimilate, assimilate, assimilate. You're not even my, you know, I heard the phrase, once a time, you're not black, you're normal.
Which is so bizarre. It's so bizarre. So that your identity as a black person was sort of ironed out. You just, you just, you British, you're British.
You're British. And so when I came out of drama school, I think, and the world said to me, you're black, it was a real sort of wake-up call for me. And seriously contributed to what happened two years after I left. Going back to your mother and your father, how is their relationship and your experience with them shaped the man that you are today?
Who were those people? Wonderful people. You know, very, very, my mother was extremely strong. And my dad was a kind of a quiet silent type, really.
Very proud. Didn't really speak much. Didn't really, it wasn't particularly involved in our education. It wasn't particularly involved in shaping who we were.
He, you know, he was pretty much hands off. You know, he was a long distance lawyer driver, so he was away a lot. And when he came back, he would sort of sit and watch the telly and in peace and just, you know. I have to try to talk to him when I was a kid, but he was a very difficult man to sort of open up.
Whereas my mother was, my mother was always sort of talking. And sort of cajoling and very welcoming of her friends. And she was just a really wonderful character. It's still very, very funny.
But, you know, she tells me now stories that she used to, you know, some of the fights that she had, some of the battles that she had. When I was writing my book, you know, as I said, we were the only black family on that street. She was constantly in conflict with, with neighbours, with racists. And she didn't back down.
She was very, very sharp and fearless. Sounds like my mother. Mm, fearless. Your father, you write a lot about how hardworking he was.
The lack of affection, you've described it, the lack of openness. As you look back now, was there a cost to that, to him and to the family, to you? I think so. I think so.
I think the fact that he didn't, it's difficult because it feels like I'm criticising him. And I don't really want to do that. But I think he was a loving home. There was a lot of laughter in the house.
He loved all the British sitcoms and other time. One of my favourite sounds was the sound of him laughing. I loved hearing him laugh. He was my mum laugh.
The house seemed full of laughter when I was growing up. So there was a lot of humour in the house, but there wasn't necessarily a lot of tenderness. And, you know, I kiss my kids every morning when they go to school. I don't know why, it's important to me.
Maybe it's just become habit. But I want them to know how much I love them. And I want them to know how much respect I have for them and how proud I am. It's important for me to do that.
And maybe it's because my dad didn't do that. Not because he purposely didn't do it. I just don't think he thought it was that important. Maybe.
Do you think he knew how to do that? I don't know if he did. I don't know if he did. But I think that's kind of true of a lot of me in that generation.
That's showing emotion wasn't very easy for them. And also, I think this is really interesting. A friend of mine tells me this story of... It's very particular to the 60s and 70s, which is why I'm a director.
And I'm fascinated by this period of late 50s, 60s, 70s England. Because I don't think people understand the level of racism that was present in this country. He's got goosebumps down the case. Or they don't understand it.
And the idea of being othered, that you would leave your house and literally take your life into your hands. But I remember randomly getting off of us and instantly being chased by a group of skinheads. And you would just automatically find yourself running. Now, to have come here from the Caribbean with ideas of streets of paved with gold, England being the mother country, to have come here with that idea and to be met with that amount of hostility, to be met with that amount of abuse, that amount of rejection, I think it's seriously damaged, not just my father, but many people who came here in that generation, that window of generation, because it's fascinating to me how many Caribbean parents do not want to talk about that period.
Just do not want to go there. Because I think it was horrific. And I think it damaged him. I haven't really thought about that before.
Well, you know, you consider that before, but I do think that that was a tough period for a lot of us. And whereas in America, movies have been made, plays have been written about that generation, about that period. We've not really looked at it. I have to be completely honest.
I grew up in 22, I was born in 1992, came to the UK when I was two years old from Botswana. I always saw my mum have this, I'll describe it as this like combative, I'd say slightly combative attitude towards people. And this like general belief that other people were racist. And I never understood it.
I never fully understood it. I just thought she viewed the world as big, big racist. And as I've done this podcast and specifically spoken to people from the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s and early 90s, my mind has been blown because I didn't get it. Of course, you know, and it's interesting because I listen to the wonderful Chris and the world that he was talking about.
I know that. I remember it. Growing up in those, just after Chris, five years after Chris, but which is why he's such a legend for me. Why him and still Regis, they are legends because as kids, I watch them playing football, knowing full well that 50% of that, the crowd, were giving him so much abuse regularly.
And yet he was able to play football, smile, score goals, play aggressively. I was in awe of those guys because I just thought, I would be scared. As a kid, I was scared. And that's one of the things I've touched upon in my book, is owning up to that idea that I was terrified growing up in those days because you just never knew where a brick would come from, where a car would suddenly be walking down the street, whistling yourself, having a great day, mixing a note from a car.
From a car, just monkey noises, would just come from nowhere. And you were just tight and tense up. So I grew up in that environment. And went away, which is probably goes back to that.
Your first question about what you need to know about me. That's the environment I grew up in. So I was trying to form a sense of myself. It's constantly being sort of, growing up at a period where you're othered, where you're in fear and not understanding who you are, was destabilizing, I think.
And I'm in a sense lucky that my house fell down when it did. And I was able to put it back together again. Where a brick would have come from. You talk about a story being, I think, five years old, where a brick comes through the window and your family home.
Tell me about that. Well, I write about it in the book. And how Saturday mornings was always cartooning. Saturday morning cartoons back in the day, again, you two.
You have to know that. But it was always Tom and Jerry and Telling a pew. I loved Tom and Jerry. It was great.
It was just on constantly. So you would sort of run down and watch Telling. And my mom's famous for her breakfast, English breakfast, bacon, extra chips, all English, which we used to love. And I remember my mom calling us down for breakfast and running downstairs and then hearing this smash.
And we ran into the lounge and there was an English breakfast covered in glass because a brick had come through the window and just glass all over the kitchen table. And we just once stood there and shook. And mom said, glad to make sure it's back up the road, back up to bed. But that was a sort of way it came from, in the way it came from.
But we were targets. Your mom's reaction that I read about this seemed uncomfortably calm. Well, what are you going to do? And she wasn't always calm.
And there was times when she did grab people by the colors and have people at the wall. She was fearless. And she never called my son. I'm just like, get that name again.
And she was fearless. But at the same time, you're powerless in that setting because you don't know who threw that brick. And you're almost, I think back to it now, I think she used to sort of walk me to school and be waiting at the school gate to walk me home. And for me, that was great to see my mom's face at the end of the school.
But I realized later, maybe once you did that, because when you did go home on your own, years later, it was a bit of a minefield. You had to be careful. You were a target. People don't understand that.
Especially people that have an experience, race, the idea of leaving the school gates and the journey home being anxious and looking over your shoulder. Anxious, that's a good word. Which, I didn't realize at the time, but I think it was a huge amount of anxiety. And then the thing about it, the amazing thing about it is you might go a week without it.
You might go two weeks without it. You might go three weeks without it. And then you relax. And then you're normal.
And then carry casual Wednesday afternoon, middle of the day. Yeah. And suddenly you're right back to being scared. And I don't really think, you know, I think my whole sense of self, because you do your best to sort of, you do your best to normalize that stuff and think, I'm not going to let it affect me.
I know it's how this amount of my mother's words ringing my head. Don't let it affect you. Hold your head up. Be strong.
So you keep thinking, no, no, I'm going to, I'm not going to let this affect me. Is that good advice? Well, you know, I think yes. Yes, but it doesn't always work.
It doesn't always work. And it crystallized for me when, rather foolishly, I was a lead, I was on the way, I was a lead, a 90 fan. And always used to watch watching the lead, a 90-level champions back then. And they came to Birmingham one year to play Birmingham City.
And like a jackass, I thought, oh, I'm going to sit in the lead then. And back in the day, back in the day you could, a half time you could literally walk into the ground. So I thought, you know, I'm going to be about nine times, I'm going to, and I, half time I, I thought I'm going to sit with the leads fans. I'm not going to sit with the leads.
I'm not going to sit with the leads now, but I walked into the leads. And at first it was just a couple of monkey noises. And then it became like a chorus of monkey noises. And then it became a chorus of goonigga.
And then it seemed like thousands of people were screaming abuse at me. And I heard these are words in my mother's words. I hold your head up, I'm scared. So I thought, I'm going to take my seat and I kept walking down the touchline, but it got so loud.
And then in the end I thought, I don't want to sit with these people. So I turned around and walked away. And they cheered, I remember them cheering. But I remember I was really shaken.
And I remember to say, this groundsman, or warden, you know, the member of staff, as I walked out the ground, he looked, he shouted, you're right kid. And I just went, I was not going to walk home. I was really shaken by it. Because I don't exactly what my mother told me to.
But it didn't work. In your early teens, after that, your father's mental health began to deteriorate. Were there any events that led up to that? I remember reading about a moment when you come home, the lights are on and as you find your father's typewriter with one word written on the typewriter.
Yeah, just said, illness. My dad was a prolific sort of organizer. And he started this dark league. And I thought we saw my type writing out the results and writing out the who played who and who had won and who was going through to next round.
And who knew the trophy and who was going to, where they were going to play and what times they played. And he just, he loved the darts. But he just took too much on. And he was constantly sort of working at this, organizing this whole thing and organizing the trophies and the season organizing the meeting, organizing that he was just always, I think he was just doing it all on his own.
And I just think he just took on too much. And I didn't necessarily, I didn't necessarily see it coming because I was quite young. But it happened very, very quickly. And I was usually here, my dad goes to work in the mornings, which is he was keys, jingle, jangle downstairs.
And I was sort of my alarm to get up for school. There's my dad here in my dad come downstairs and think, well, I've got to go up in there. I forgot what they said in here. I kept hearing arguments in my mom's dad's bedroom.
And I thought, it's just not right. I haven't seen that for a while. I haven't heard the jingle, jangle downstairs. Something's off.
I didn't quite know what it was, but I knew something was off. In the morning I got up and my mom said, don't go into the kitchen, get changed up in the bedroom, and go straight to school at the front door. And I did. And then that night, that's where my mom told me that that had been sectioned.
So it happened really quickly. And they sort of kept me away from it. But it doesn't be nice to me, my brothers were holding my dad down in the kitchen because he sort of lost it. How do they explain being sectioned to you when you're in your any teens?
Because I would have no idea what that meant in my any teens. I didn't really. It was just, you know, dad's not well. Far's not well.
He's been taking to the hospital. And it was always that gig. It was always that sort of that gag at school, you know, the men in the white coats will check your way, you know, you're crazy. You're not going to be crazy or you're going to be taken away.
And that's what happened. My dad was taken away. I didn't see it, but I knew he was. I knew that he'd been, I know now, obviously, I know in other recent years, I know that that's what had happened to him.
He'd been sectioned. I mean, I was sectioned. I suddenly realized that I suddenly went, especially when I was right in the book, I thought that's what happened to him. And now it's only once I'd written my book and really understood what that was like, having your liberty taken away from you.
Because I think that in prison is about the only, in prison, the only times when your liberty has taken away from you. And it was only then when I started asking myself, sort of looking at my dad's life and sort of retrospect and thinking, because he hated it, but dad hated it. And it was never the same again when he was released. It was never the same again.
And I don't think, I think he had a really bad time in there, a really, really difficult and bad time, which I don't think he ever forgave my mother for. Understanding what you understand now about the nature of mental health and what causes it and your own experiences with mental health. When you look at how your father became to be sectioned, have you got any suspicions about why that happened beyond that he took on too much at the darts? I do think that there was a lot of resentment anger built up in him.
And you've got to wonder why, and this is why I only found this again, once I started writing my book and started looking at mental health. And the numbers are black. Black people are overrepresented in the mental health system in this country. And what I realized is that it was a Jamaican psychologist who actually performed this study and he realized that black people, there's way less mental health in Africa amongst black communities.
There is mental health problems, way less psychosis. But there's more when they are transmitted to a Western culture. So there's more mental health, episodes of mental health in England amongst the black community and in America amongst the black community. And I think there's something about, I call it in my, and this is one of the things that my therapist talks about when you're in a white space.
And that's not a derogatory term, but England is essentially a white space. And I'm sure you've been in rooms where you're the only best color. The higher up ladder, you're on the group top opposite of the room with the higher up ladder, you get a less on your own people you see. And I think, you know, my thing, I think my dad had found it very difficult coming from the Caribbean and coming to England.
And dealing with a completely different mindset. I think he'd found out difficult and resentment to build up. And I think I was going to say a point earlier on that illustrates this, but a friend of mine, usually told me that his dad used to work on a sample line in the days of in the 70s when Jim Davidson was doing his chalky routine. That he was only black person on the sample line.
Every Monday morning, after new faces or whatever it was that Jim was on the comedians or everything. Doing his chalky thing. Every Monday morning, he would be chalky. And his dad would laugh and take it.
And you know, throughout the week, they'd be calling him chalky, they'd be like, chalky, chalky, chalky, chalky. He's chalky. He's dad would laugh. And then he on Friday night, his dad would get drunk and beat the fuck out of him and his mother.
And I think that was just a build up of resentment. I'm having to live in this place where, yeah, everyone's calling me this name. Everyone thinks it's funny. And I'm laughing, but there's a build up of resentment that he then takes out on his family.
I'm not saying my dad had that level of resentment, but I think there was just something about being here that he started to find difficult to live with, cope with mentally. When I read through your book, and also a lot of the stories you've told me today, I mean, I remember one particular story where you got a girlfriend in school and then you come in to school the next day, her father has said that she can't be with you because you're black. This constant, constant rejection, social rejection. You use that when everyone in the way of rejection and it feels so apt because that's really what's, I think in a psychological level, going on even going to the football and then being rejected socially from that crowd.
And it's constant throughout your story. You know, I read these studies about labeling theory where when the world tells, when you tell somebody they are something, and these studies, they eventually become it. So, you know, there's the famous prison study where they said, you're the guards, they had to stop the study because the guards were so harsh on the prisoners. And labeling theory says exactly that.
Your teacher says you're a dean, you're going to be a failure. The chances are that actually lower your performance, your belief. How do you stop that happening when society has rejected you for years and years growing up at the most formative time? I think, you know, I was lucky because I do think that I lived amongst a lot of people who, you know, didn't define you that way.
So I think that was, I was very lucky for that. But I think that person had to, I think that house had to come down, which is what I think my breakdown was all about. The more I learned about it, the more I realized that that image of that young boy, I had to start again, I had to rebuild my image of self. And that's what I've sort of, it's interesting because even though I happened 30 years ago, I'm only now just dealing with it because I only found the records and we did that documentary.
I only, all this is recent. And I think if I'd have talked to you last year, I'd probably be in tears by now because so much of this is recent for me and having to deal with a lot of it. I just, I spent the last 30 years in this sort of cocoon, not really dealing with a lot of this stuff. And it's only since reading my medical records and doing that documentary and uncovering all that trauma.
As I say, the first thing I read when I opened my medical records from 30 years ago, which were the medical records that the BBC found in the bowels of the Wittington Psychiatric Hospital. I had no idea they were gonna give them to me, no idea. I had no idea they even found them. The first thing I read was patient believes he has merged hearts with a young black boy.
And I just thought, why is that? Why, I just looked through the medical records and it's all to do with my race and my identity. All of it, I was just confused. I'd sort of lost touch with my identity, going to the drama school and playing Romeo and pushing him and doing all these, doing Malia, and Dostoevsky doing all these European romantic playwrights and Shakespeare and all these different characters and thinking, my character, my color doesn't matter.
I can do all these wonderful things. And then I came out of drama school and every newspaper article was all about my color. Every job I went through was all about my color. I could go for these jobs and not these jobs.
And it just, it was like I hadn't, it was like I hadn't dealt with my core identity as a young black man. And it all started to just, I started to overthink it. What was your core identity that you hadn't dealt with as a black man? I think just understanding myself, as your first question was, understanding myself in the world and knowing, I haven't confidence in myself.
There's too many questions about my identity. I think one of the things I did when I sought a therapist after my documentary was I sought out, I've had therapy many times in my life. I sought out a black therapist, I'm a black male therapist. And that has been really strikingly revealing to me because some of the questions I had, he would kind of say, well, why do you think like that?
And he would question why I think like that. And it found it remarkable how he was able to make me understand that a lot of things that I'm as long as my fears, I'm insecurities, I'm only natural. Maybe potentially because I have, maybe grown up predominantly in a white environment. And maybe I didn't, maybe I wasn't comfortable with myself.
I'm much more comfortable with myself now. What were those fears insecurities? You know what I'm saying? You know, there's that image of a strong black man.
Greater dancing, greater sex, greater chatting with me up, greater this, greater that. And I felt maybe that I didn't always live up to that. And if you have that idea that you can only be one way, there's a black man with the world is telling you that, you could only be this way, then you sort of don't feel like you measure up. And actually I've learned, yeah, you can be vulnerable.
That's okay. You can be sensitive, that's okay. You, it's okay to be not be, you know, darkest look fly, you know, who just beats down all the girls, dances fantastically, does it, you know, he's the alpha black, it's okay not to be the alpha black guy. It's okay.
And that's taken me a while to sort of understand about myself. I think Jay-Z, it's interesting, I think there's something about Jay-Z talks about the gold silver bronze, gold gold gold gold, the book will have you black. It's very funny book. We talked about the gold silver bronze black man in the gold born in the ghetto, black wife, black friends, you know, silver born in the ghetto, black wife, went to university, bronze born in the ghetto, white wife.
You know, you sort of get less and less, you sort of like, less and less. That's the copper. The more you take it, yeah. And then you see the effects of that in schools where you go, where you have teachers will tell me that you know, you get a really intelligent black kid, but just to fit in with these peer groups, you won't work as hard because he fears the more intelligent he is, the less black he is.
The brighter he is, the less black he's seen. And I hate that. Isn't that fully being rejected by the white community, but also the black community? That's exactly what I had.
So, you know, when I came out of Rada, so I had this sort of, when I started being an actor, you know, black community like, you're gonna be, what? That's too white. You're too white, man. And then I went to Rada and kind of did all these checks and all these plays and I came out speaking like this and everybody went, you're way too white.
And so you get rejected by the press and critics because you're black. And then you're also being rejected by the black community because they don't look or seem to sound like, you know, man from the end, you don't sound like, you don't talk like that. So I really did feel like I was an anomaly. At age 23, I think it's age 23, you that's around the time you were sectioned.
Yeah. This is a very strange way of asking the question, but in hindsight, knowing now what you know about why you were sectioned, what was going on in your life, your mind, your environment, the press, professionally, what would you have had to change, avoid, do differently before then to have avoided that happening? That's a million dollar question. It's really is a million dollar question.
And I'm not sure there was any, anything I could have done. I think that I think I had to come down. I'm a great believer that in trauma, there's a lesson, that there was something in that for me of value. I don't think anything, I don't think, I mean, I was very lucky that I came out of it, but I do believe, and as I've got older in my life and having written the book and having had so many people tell me since writing that book, as so many people say, thank you, I'm not crazy.
Thank you, you really articulated everything that goes on in my some of the frustrations that comes. I've only given voice to a thing, to things that a lot of people experience, I took it to an extreme, I think. And I think it's probably, as an artist, as an actor who's benefited from my work, it's enabled me to take things, perhaps a step further than maybe what some people can take things. I think it's given me a perspective.
I think there's something, I think there's something of value in it for me. I don't, I think it had to happen. I don't think I could have done anything to stop it, which is both scary and worrying. What do you remember about that time?
Because it seems to be quite a blur when you recount the events, it's almost like you have these abstract memories of different moments. It's interesting that I do believe I started this process, thinking that it was gonna be fun. Because it's like manic depression, it is often psychosis, like it's often preceded with a mania, heightened adrenaline rush, dopamine. The dopamine levels in your brain are heightened, and it's quite exciting, because you're not getting sleep.
It's often drug induced, and you are really sort of operating at this quite high level. And I remember doing some pretty extraordinary things. I remember brief moments of real sort of mental acuity, and dare I say it, there was almost moments of fun, but it's usually preceded by a crash. So I sort of went into this thinking, I'm gonna remember all the fun things I did, some of the extraordinary things I did, and there were some really wild things.
I was experimenting with a sense of reality, what was real and what wasn't real. I think I could do anything. It was bizarrely exciting. Give me an example of something that you recount that is.
It's interesting because my, one of the consultants that was in the documentary tells me that, because I actually asked me for an example of the night. I said I was walking out of street one morning, I hadn't stepped on night, and there was a guy across the road, and he had this huge dopamine, huge, kind of massive musculative, and I'm normally quite afraid of dogs. And I just walked up to this guy, I said, what's that dog's name? Any gem or something?
I look at this dog and I scream at the dog's name, and I look at this dog quite aggressively in the right face, and the dog just literally lay on the floor and started well-ping. Well-ping on his back, just freaked out. And the consultant said to me, that often dogs can pick up some, some energies, disturb energies. And obviously this guy was really freaked out.
He said, what would be the dog literally well-ping and moaning on the floor? And I just fixed this dog with no fear and screamed its name right in his face, just freaked the dog out. And like you were sectioned, I read that you held the taxi and it was ultimately the exchange of the taxi driver. I mean, that was an extraordinary, and again, it was the voice of mind of the kingdoms in my head.
You hear voices, and one of the aspects of psychosis, which is what I suffer from, you can hear voices, you can have illusions, illusions, delusions that seem incredibly real to you. And I was lying in bed, and I just heard this voice in my head, looking around the room thinking, where's that come from? And this voice in my head. It sounds totally bizarre, but this voice was in my head.
And he went on to say, look, I'm gonna tell you who I am right now, because you're gonna be really scared, but you have to go to Camden. You have to walk into the store. Don't be surprised if it's open, it's three o'clock in the morning. Don't be surprised open.
Whatever you do, do not turn around. It was all these things I had to do. Whatever you do, don't do this, whatever you do, don't do that. But then go into the store, walk to the back of the store, there's gonna be one suit hanging up on Iraq at the back of the store.
You need to put this suit on, and when you turn around, don't be surprised to find out it's two o'clock in the afternoon, because I'm gonna close the space time continuum, and we are gonna close the gap between what's the whole thing? And it ended up being Martin Luther King. He said, he was Martin Luther King. And he said, when you, when you, could I play Martin Luther King as a kid?
It was my first, the first acting thing that I'd ever done. And he said, when you played me as a class of child, I entered your heart. And when I was, he said, even though I'm speaking to you from beyond the grave, I need you and two or three other people in the world to activate something and close the gap between good and evil. And he said, so you're gonna sacrifice yourself tonight and you're gonna be an angel.
And this voice was swear to you, was like, really my head. I'm sobbing in my bedroom, listening to this voice, it says, tonight's the night. And that was the night I was eventually sectioned. But I got up, got my clothes on, and walked all the way to Camden.
Obviously the shot was closed. It took a good morning, and I'm out of my nuts. So, and I was exhausted, and I thought I got to go home, and flagged the cab down, and I didn't have any money. And I don't remember, I just remember this drive looking around, and then the drive pulling over, and then for lots of flashing lights, obviously the police, and then being in the back of the police wagon, and then sitting in a cell, at all these was just, I'm in and out of, what seemed like a dream for me.
I was in and out of, I remember being in the cell, and then going to Magidite's course in the morning, and not remembering my name, didn't remember my name at all, didn't know who I was, couldn't remember who I was. And the deutious listeners were talking about, my mom and then said, my dad's name is Romeo, I went, Romeo, hang on there, I played Romeo, they could take me here, I used my career to get back to who I was, then left, went to court, and I had no idea what was happening in this court. I mean, I was, the judge was speaking at me, and I was just a mess, and I walked out of court, and again, lucky, but some woman who'd been in the court, walked out and said, said to me, are you okay? And I said, I don't think so, I don't know, I don't know why, I mean, she said, where do you live?
And I said, I can't remember. She said, what's your name is Chew station? I said, I'm you know, I'm Iber Lizzington, and she flagged the cab down, gave the driver 10 pounds to take him to Iber Lizzington, and I got out of Iber Lizzington, walked home and my friends were waiting for me, because they'd been looking for me all night, confined me. And that's the day that they knew something was, even though they'd been sitting with me, and visiting me for the last couple of weeks, because they knew something was off, then you wasn't well.
And that's the weird thing about mental health, especially psychosis, you see somebody acting very strangely, something you love, your husband, your mom, they just suddenly start acting out of character, becoming obsessed with something. It's like they just suddenly change. And you know something's wrong, but you're sort of desperately hoping that they sort of come back. And that's sometimes, you know, they don't, then you have to make that call to have them sectioned.
And luckily for me, my friends would been there, because if they weren't there, I think I would have been in real trouble. I would have been in real trouble. If that would have continued, I'm not even sure I would have been here today. So I was very lucky.
How long did that process last before you were sectioned of the sort of the sort of gradual deterioration? Well, I think it was happening for a while, because I remember working and not feeling great. So I'd say at least two or three months, there was a slow progression of not sleeping, overthinking, trying to hide that, drinking to sort of self-medicate. And it wasn't well, but I thought I could handle it.
I'm trying to understand how much of that, you believe, is a physiological biological situation, or maybe predisposed by biology, versus circumstance experience and the things that you've been through. I think, and again, speaking to my consultant who was working on my documentary, it's a combination of both things. Your propensity, the chances of you having a breakdown are sort of reliant on levels of stress, lack of sleep, what's called ACEs, which are these fundamental, like people who experience trauma in life. I mean, for me, I think it was my parents' divorce, and not dealing with that at the time.
So much of it has been squashed, not dealing with some of the trauma that was in my life. Nothing a lot of it was coming out, slowly coming out then in that one slow progression of being deeply unhappy. Why? Why were you deeply unhappy?
I read that. I said, I came out of drama school, and the hostility that I was met with as a young Black actor was ferocious newspapers, newspapers, reviews, just dismissing me, completely dismissing me. And I'd sort of left drama school with a bit of heat, people like me were really excited to see what I was gonna do, and the school was very, very excited to, you know, because, you know, everyone was talking to this young kid, coming out of drama school, it's gonna be, you know, and I just got slaughtered, slaughtered, all about race, all about race. I played a Sloan in entertainment with a Sloan, Mrs.
Lonia, who is quite a devious bisexual character, is actually also a murderer. And the, I mean, there was one reviewer, the Black reviewer who said, who was outraged at taking the part, because I was letting the side down. And he said that people should go and demonstrate their disapproval, obviously a hair would choice of employment. And I tried to read it, I was like, wow.
And I noticed that night, people, Sloan has this really kind of tough monologue. We talked about abusing somebody, and in the middle of this monologue, I saw people get up and walk out. And I noticed they were black. And then the next night, more black people started walking out.
And it was always in the middle of that monologue that black people would get up and walk out. And it was really tough to deal with. It was really tough to try and they were sort of chipsing and as they walked out. And sort of, it was really disturbing me, because I had to get on with the play.
And I was only the second actor, it was another three. So the whole way through that play, I was sort of coping with what did they walk out? Get on with the play seems to be quite an apt metaphor for that period of your life. Yeah, and I wasn't really dealing with it, so dealing with the fundamentals.
So I think that's when the drinking started, to be able to get through the play, I started drinking. To be able to, I started self-medicating. So I was drinking a lot before, during, after the show, smoking, after the show. And the whole thing, the stress, the smoke, the overthinking, lack of sleep, lack of sleep, just ended up making me spiral.
How long from being section to getting back to acting, how long was that sort of recovery process per se? It was not quicker than I realized actually, which surprised me. I thought it was gonna be months, but it was, I was sectioned for about five days initially. And then again in Birmingham, for another five days.
And then the recovery was just about convincing my mother that I was okay, because she was convinced that it was acting. It was acting, exactly crazy. And then I was never gonna act again. And then I was never gonna go back to London again, I was never gonna get out and act again.
So she'd try to watch them like a hawk for about a month, maybe a month, six weeks. And eventually she allowed me to travel back down to London and get out in my career. I sat here with Maisie Williams, the young game of thrones actress. And she talked to me about how acting was a form of escapism in her life, because I had such little joy that acting became this place, almost this therapeutic place, where she could, I guess, in some respects abandon that identity.
I remember reading from this Swedish philosopher, which I wrote about, my book once upon a time, she said that when we, if we try to abandon ourselves, we'll ultimately just bear in my head about this two years ago. If we try to, yeah, yeah, it's so true. That's why we stayed with it. We try to abandon ourselves and we're successful.
We'll despair at the fact that we've abandoned ourselves in our identity. If we try to abandon ourselves and we're unsuccessful, we'll despair at being unsuccessful in our attempts to become other than we are. And he concludes in his big philosopher piece, that the only true way to be happy is to accept that which you, who you are, and to not abandon yourself. You know, that's his conclusion after this long study that he's done on people.
That kind of felt almost quite true when I think about what acting is in your respects. But for Maisie, it was this attempt to abandon herself and actually to not confront the issues. And then she ultimately had to at some point confront those issues and what had gone on in her family home, where her father had done to her. But acting was her escape at 12 or 13.
Is any of that reminiscent to, or does any of that ring true specifically this idea of like the role acting played in identity for you? Acting is the only space I feel 100% confident in. Why? Because everyone knows the lines.
Everyone knows where they're gonna go. Everyone knows the movement. Everyone knows the play. On stage, I just feel, that's probably my, that's where I'm at my happiest.
Why? I can't explain it. You become somebody else. You know, when you're, that's the true nature of an artist, like somebody who paints, I think.
You know, they wanna create something. And they have free to create. But I'm going to be tortured, but you can still produce an amazing piece of art. You said that I'm acting because I become someone else.
So what does that say about oneself? If I'm myself, I'm full of listening to curities, there's doubts, there's decisions to make, there's about which is what, which is my life, I think is so unique. I don't know what you're gonna say next. None of us know, that's what's so beautiful about it.
It's so fantastic about it. But on stage, it's a controlled environment. So for those two hours, I can be kinglier. I can be a fellow and I completely put myself into that.
And it's, that's, I feel, it's like, I guess you could say, who footballers say that? You know, on the pitch, no problems. George Best, on the pitch, a genius. Off it, an alcoholic.
Somebody who can't, somebody who can't cope, Maradona, on the pitch, a genius. Off the pitch, something else. You can't cope with life. Life is uncontrollable.
Life is full of contradictions, full of, difference, full of failures. It's exactly, it's just, it's, it's, it's very difficult to distill. Whereas on stage, you know, I can play that. And I can put myself into that, and pour myself into that character.
And I feel great. It's the most freeing place for me. It's the most freeing thing I could, it can, I've ever experienced. And that's why I love it so much.
That's what Mazy said. She said it was, for her she said, actually, it was the only place she experienced joy. Yeah, I can completely understand that. But what, that, not to be repetitive, what is that saying about the nature of our, our life in terms of, why can't life be joyous as equally joyous?
What would we have to do to make our, our acting life when we're king? Well, that's the secret, I guess. And that's, that's the secret of sort of finding a place where you can be, and I'm sort of on the way, you know, where you can experience joy. And I think that's, that's a, it's a life on struggle.
But you have to work at it. 2019 was the first time, 2017, 2019 was the first time she really opened up about your experiences in terms of, to the press, I always, I mean, that was the shock of it. That is, I tweeted, 2017, randomly tweeted, as somebody's had a breakdown, I'm just gonna say, have a great, there was mental health there. As somebody's had a breakdown, I just wanna say, look after yourself today, get some help if you can, got on the plane, flew to America, got off the plane, 50,000 retweets, calls from I.C.V, calls from the BBC, calls from the Guardian, calls from the Independent.
Oh my God, you had a breakdown, and I just completely forgot I hadn't gone public with it. I've told everybody. It's been a bit of an anecdote for me. A bit of a late night drunk an anecdote for me, that I had a breakdown and spent time in the minute.
But it's only seen to do that, and I've really looked at it, and really understood it. That moment of oversharing has led to all of this, has led to my first book, it's gonna lead to my second book, it's led to this reckoning, which would not have happened, had I not sent that to me. 2019, you produced an documentary? Everybody talks about that documentary.
Really incredibly powerful. But just artistically brilliant in so many ways, but so many people talk about it. Even had members of my team put in big brackets, it is so good. When they were referring to a documentary, they don't usually do that.
It was really profound and important in so many ways. How did that change your life? Again, because, and this is really odd, but I'd seen that documentary almost a thousand times, because I watched it every day, a year before it went out. The night it went out, I was absolutely terrified.
And I, since I saw adverts for it, I panicked, and I was, maybe all the BBC said, I don't wanna go, I was really scared. And that was really unusual for me, because I've seen it, and I was happy with it. But coming public with it was a whole other thing, and I was really scared, really anxious. And I think the whole house picked up on it, because my kid went to bed early, my wife went to bed early.
You know, she went, she went, and she was like, she was, after we said she was writing that, the kids might get ribbed at school, or your dad's there, and I didn't even thought about that. And I suddenly thought, fuck, I'm letting people in here. And I was really scared. And I remember I had a therapy session online with my therapist, and when we finished it, it was kinda dark.
And I thought, well, it's got half an hour left to go. I'm not even gonna watch it, I'm just gonna go to bed. And I was just about to go to sleep. And every single device in my house was beating, everything was just buzzing.
And it was, I was like, how's friend went? And I jumped out of bed to go to the house, and it was my mom. And the first thing she said was, brilliant. And that really calmed me down.
I went, my wife went, she just watched it, she said, brilliant, well done son. Huge side relief. And then started looking at all these messages and emails, and they were all really emotional and moving. And went to bed and got up and went to take my dog and I could not walk 10 feet without complete strangers coming up to me in tears.
I swear to God, going, I'm saying Mr. Hairwood, thank you. And normally when you're an actor, people leave you alone. You know what it's like, when you're on the telly, people gonna go, that's that guy for telling.
But suddenly it was Mr. Hairwood, not the guy from the home, not the guy from Supergirl, or the guy from, it was Mr. Hairwood, excuse me, Mr. Hairwood, just wanna say, thank you so much.
Tears strolling down their face. My dad had a breakdown and we never talked about it. And just wanna say the fact that we all, suddenly started talking about it, we started talking about dad and I'm blubbing there crying. Then I go, thank you very much, walk up.
Somebody asks, excuse me, Mr. Hairwood, just wanna say, and I suddenly realized how common it is and how everybody was touched by it because you just don't talk about it. There's a shame attached to, particularly psychosis and particularly to being taken away. There's a shame attached to it.
For some reason, maybe because I'm an actor, I have no shame. So me, a recognizable, successful actor, talking about it, allowed them to talk about it. Gotta call from mine saying, phones ringing off the hook, people are talking about psychosis because they didn't, they didn't, now they understand what happened to their son. Now they understand what's happening to their, who's only just been section that morning.
And on this book tour, I constantly do signings and nearly every single time I sign, I go to one of these book tours, there's somebody who comes up to buy the book for it to get signed and they're crying and they go, I've just come out of a mental institution, I just wanna say, seeing you, it gives me hope that I can get better. Or there's a mother who says, my son's just been section crying, or eyes out, my son's just been sectioned, he was away at drama school, because it happens normally when kids go to university, or when they go away from home, and they might smoke, they might find themselves in the strange environment, that's what happens. And the amount of times I've had to come up and just hug, the stranger and just say they'll get better. I sometimes sit here with people and there's a moment where they let the wall down.
And the wall can be a number of things. Sometimes it's sexuality, sometimes it's something that they've been holding inside of them. You know, they've not told friends, but letting the world in and then feeling that feedback, that people didn't weren't attacking them, they didn't lose their job. And that sometimes can be quite liberating thing.
From then on, once we've let the wall down, whatever it is and really let people in and see our deepest and securities or our fears, life can feel different. We can be more open and honest and vulnerable. I can't say that happens because I then had three years of dealing with it. Yes, tell me about that.
Because I thought, oh, okay, I've let the world in. And as you say, where's that moment of relief? Yeah. And it was torture, because I couldn't cope with all these people coming up and saying, thank you so much.
Normally you got that shield, you got that shield as a recognizable face. Well, people don't bother you on the train. People don't bother you in the street, but they were. And they were coming with these really emotional stories.
Some people, some people's parents died being restrained. I talk about seven policemen jumping on me and giving me what's called an emergency tranquilization. I talk about that in my book. How I survive that, I don't know.
Because countless people have died like that. Black people being restrained by police. The amount of criminalization of that, the criminalization, particularly black people, in that period of illness of psychosis is, look at the people in America. People shut because they're acting strange.
They're in the moment of medical crisis, but they happen to be naked running down the street screaming. You will get shot. People don't understand that people have been arrested. People have been, one guy knew he was having a break.
Now, I went to the hospital. They refused to treat him. Went to another hospital. They refused to treat him.
Stipe back on the door. They called the police. They got arrested. He got sent to prison.
It was only in prison that he got treated. So this whole book has really opened up the whole, how particularly people of color are criminalized at a moment of crisis by being arrested and then being treated. Like for me, it was only when I showed the book to my consultant. She said, do you realize you were given three times the legal doses of tranquilizers?
And I said, why is that? She said, well, it was, it's, and then like, again, once the book got out, I had somebody contact me saying, this is standard practice because most people are afraid of big black men. So most times a large black man is sectioned. You will get knocked the fuck out.
For no medical reason, other than we're scared of this big guy, let's just up the dose here. And that's what he was. So it just, all this stuff is coming out. All these stuff was coming at me.
And I couldn't really process it. And I remember going into my therapist and just crying my eyes out. It's too much. I can't cope with it.
And finally, like my medical records that I find in the documentary, I hadn't opened those notes for two years since I got them, since filming it. But before I wrote the book, I knew where they were. They were in my flat in Vancouver. And exactly where they were.
And once I decided to write the book, I remember flying back to shoots the next season of Supergirl and be fluent in quarantine because it was a couple years ago. So you had 14 days on your own. And the first thing I did, walking the flat, got my medical records out and I read them cover to cover. And that was really tough.
Because you're reading your disturbed self. Everything I'd said done was recorded. So I'm reading all the stuff I did and getting flashes and moments that I thought, that's where that memory comes from. Taking a piss in the middle of an office and just the most weird stuff that I did and said, is it scary to know that you're capable of getting to that place?
Yes or no? And again, I think of myself, thinking about the acting side of it. I've always had this ability to not method. I really throw myself into a character and I love that.
And I think maybe this part of me that having pushed myself, having let myself go, not many people go there. I literally went crazy. Cross the line into unacceptable behavior where your behavior is deemed. We have to take you away.
Unsafe for yourself and for others. Sectioned. I've crossed that line. So for me now, I think in acting, anything up to that line is fair game.
Fair game and I love it. And that's why I will push myself. And I look for characters who are like that who do push. That's why I don't know that's what makes acting so great for me.
It's so exciting because I can behave like somebody else. But even reading about psychosis, someone that's never been through it, it makes me realise that it's completely possible for me to find myself in that situation. And that's what, because I want to grab mental health. I thought something happened to other people.
And then you get flavour of it, right? You're like, fuck, we can all have mental health. And reading the stories of psychosis and how a very normal young man can quite quickly, apparently quickly. Very quickly.
Yeah. I mean, from what you described as a series of events over time, but apparently very quickly, fall into that situation, in some respects, makes me realise that, you know. We are very highly strong individually. I mean, the brain, you know how incredible that is.
Incredible muscle. And incredible muscle. There's thousands of firing electrodes, thousands every day, just going off in our brains. Some of the misfire and some of them very quickly can lead to you taking your life.
And I know how having been there. I'm just lucky that any doctor said it, that he said, you know, we're lucky David is a calm, essentially a clown, because my psychosis played out in all sorts of city ways. But I did everything that voice told me to do that. And I had that voice that told me to jump off to Thamesbridge, I would have done it.
I would have done it. So I'd met people who, the voice told them to throw themselves in front of that young girl in the documentary. Throw yourself in front of the next white van. She did.
And he hit her. You know, it is a very powerful thing. And it can happen to anybody. Where do you find yourself today?
So your three or four years are now from that documentary coming out and you've been on that journey so you describe it, rebuilding the house. Yeah, I think, you know, it's taken me this long to, I think I've come through, I think I was really in pain. I didn't realize it at the time, but I think I was really, when the documentary went out, I was very, very vulnerable. And it really was painful.
And I, it was uncomfortable. And I used, I would get very emotional. I'd be in Tesco's and somebody who'd come up to me as I bought my sausages and say, sweet documentary and I would just go. They'd go, I'd go.
Right. Being reminded of it, they would make me cry because they tell me about their uncle and they'd start going, I don't know, it's just something about the helplessness of seeing a loved one acting very out of character and something that I don't recover. We truly don't understand it. So I used to find it very emotional.
And I think I'd move through that period of vulnerability into a period of feeling. And I think I'm in that healing period now. I said, if you'd have done this podcast last year, I don't think I'd have got through it like this. And every now and again, I find a rising emotional level as I'm talking about it now because I know it sounds very weird.
I feel like everyone must be saying, I think, in cutties, not sort. But I've dealt with that. Was there ever any regrets about doing that documentary? Yes, really?
Yes. Which all disappeared the morning after I went out. The regrets were all the regrets were all the regrets were. And then I maybe afterwards there was like, maybe I've said too much.
Maybe people don't now seem, because since then I've done a lot more, a lot more documentaries. And more documentaries than I have dramas. And I've been back in England now for a year. And in America I was playing leading characters.