Chiwetel Ejiofor, 43, shouldn’t be sitting opposite me in a proper posh North London kitchen talking about his role in Netflix’s latest comic book-turned-cinematic action drama, The Old Guard, but that’s precisely what he is doing. “No. I dare say, were it not for the pandemic, I would, right now, probably be filming the sequel to Doctor Strange somewhere… I am very excited to get back into all that, naturally, when I can. Although it has been delayed until later this year, I think. As has the rest of, well, everything!”
Still, despite not being back in the blockbuster saddle as the this-time-rumoured-to-be-more villainous Karl Mordo with fellow Marvel time and space bender Benedict Cumberbatch, the British actor and Academy Award nominee (Twelve Years A Slave) seems to have emerged out of full fat lockdown if not grinning at the terrible surreality of it all, then certainly with a fresh perspective on life. Specifically, his own.
“At first I feared the new normal,” explains Ejiofor, whose whole demeanour – from the indigo chore jacket and loose stone-grey T-shirt to his eloquence and almost disarmingly locked-on engagement – is pleasantly business-casual this afternoon. “I’ve spent most of the pandemic up until now in New York and watching as at first denial hits, then comes the realisation of the severity of the situation. It was very discombobulating. But the human animal adapts, we evolve; that's the beauty of it. As time goes by one doesn’t feel quite so panicked or anxious.
“The thing that has kept me awake at night, other than the obvious worries over the illness, is the feeling of, well, if everything is changing, am I part of that change? Do I need to engage with people, friends, family in a different way? How have I been utilising my time? For many years, being a working actor, I have existed and lived in a sort of bubble already, in my own permanent state of travelling isolation. So having this moment of reflection, of realising that there are people I can reach out to, has been huge for me.”
We’re assembled (socially distanced, naturally) to discuss Ejiofor’s latest role in Netflix’s fantasy action drama, The Old Guard, directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood and starring established names such as Charlize Theron and Matthias Schoenaerts, plus relative newcomers Kiki Layne, Marwan Kenzari and Luca Marinelli.
The comic book, written by Greg Rucka and illustrated by Leandro Fernández – despite only being created in 2017, it already has a large cult following – centres around a tight-knit group of immortal, ancient mercenaries, who have slashed, shot and generally rampaged their way through time, making a knack of being there just as the historic chips go down.
On film, led by Theron, once again back doing her own version of “gun-fu” as the 6,000(ish)-year-old Andromache of Scythia (fear not, her pals call her “Andy”), we watch as the team of ancient, tooled-up, mostly unsmiling warriors embark on a mission that not only will save civilisation, but also potentially save their own skin (surprise: not all immortals are, you know, immortal). Cue big, gun-blasting set pieces, a rule-breaking rookie (played superbly by Layne) being hazed to their very particular Can’t Die Club and a drug-pushing super villain who must surely be based on abhorrent real life pharma felon Martin Shkreli.
The film, already out on Netflix, isn’t going to win any Academy Awards, unless perhaps for Number Of Rounds Fired In A Single Scene (“Around 3,000,” guessed Schoenaerts when asked recently), but nevertheless it’s a total hoot. Sure, some of the dialogue is about as blistering as (duh) a graphic novel, but the sooner you allow your mind to make the leap and surrender to the whizz-bang adventure of it all, the sooner you can lie back and watch the bonkers concept spill over.
Saying this, Ejiofor’s character, Copley – a man treading a fine line between what he feels is right and wrong – is a much-needed anchor to all the silly gunslinging and miraculous wound healing. With this, the actor has previous: whether playing stomach-churning tragedy based on real life events in 12 Years A Slave or Keira Knightley’s squeeze in Love Actually, informed audiences recognise Ejiofor as an actor well known for his intellectual, considered approach to the craft.
“It was really the director, Gina Prince-Bythewood, who excited me about The Old Guard,” Ejiofor tells me. “I loved her film Beyond The Lights with Gugu Mbatha-Raw and I was excited about her taking on a project of this size, excited about her as a storyteller and a black woman making this type of film. As soon as I met with Gina and began talking about Copley, we could see we were both interested in his morality, his at best ethically ambiguous way of looking at the world. This really grounded all the fantasy and made it unlike any other graphic novel adaptation. For me, if anyone has the mentality of ‘The ends justifies the means’, as Copley does, then don’t do it. But he lives in that grey area, as do many people in real life. I felt there could be a moment of empathy for him during the film. The decisions he makes and his background made him neither an outright villain nor particularly heroic. He’s complex.”
As the first black woman at the helm of such a big budget superhero film, Prince-Bythewood has added narrative layers that go beyond all the surface pyros and trigger pulling. A cornerstone storyline that runs throughout The Old Guard is the relationship between two of the male mercenaries, the characters played by Kenzari and Marinelli. To show a queer couple – immortal, happy – right at the very centre of such a big budget release is refreshing, while her decision to cast two strong female leads (Theron and Layne) on the frontline feels deft, original and, somewhat sadly, still surprising in 2020.
As a viewer, however, one wishes for more of Ejiofor on screen; just as his character starts getting unwound, in comes the band of immortal do-gooders with yet another ice cold line and a sack full of bombs. Yet, as the actor himself agrees, there’s no such thing as having too much Charlize Theron kicking villainous ass.
“I envy Charlize, you know? I’ll admit it,” he chuckles. “She is able to do something that I have never quite managed to do and that is tell narrative through physicality. That is really difficult and this isn’t the first film she’s shown she can do this – take Mad Max: Fury Road, for example. There is an exquisite poetry in seeing Charlize wield a four-foot axe – and with humour too, I might add. To put all the nuance of a character into a very complex fight sequence using only choreography is quite astonishing.”
Perhaps due to the chaos unfurling in the real world, I admit to Ejiofor that at times I found some of the overblown violence, the choreographed skull splattering, a little gross. “I wouldn’t call it gratuitous, though. Would you? There is a lot of violence but, what with things like the swords and the immortality concept, it is, for me, very much tongue in cheek. In this way it is true to the source material – a graphic novel.”
So far as comic book adaptations go, this is far from Ejiofor’s first rodeo. Was he surprised to find how popular the Marvel films have become, if not always critically then certainly their seemingly unstoppable mass appeal? “Things such as Doctor Strange and the Marvel films have just become really big, haven’t they? They just blew up! I remember reading Alan Moore when I was growing up, reading his books, such as Watchmen, V For Vendetta, and getting really into 2000AD when 2000AD seemed like a long way into the future. I was nerdy. And now that nerdy thing, that niche thing I was into as a kid, has become so huge.
“I remember going to the bookstore in Richmond, a Waterstones perhaps, as a teenager and asking the guy behind the counter if they had a graphic novel section. He thought I meant porn. He looked at me in disgust, saying, ‘We don’t do that sort of thing here, sir.’ Yet in a way the success of Marvel is unsurprising. The graphic novels, the fantasy, the format of the comics lend themselves completely to cinema. Before you even start shooting, the entire narrative is already storyboarded for you.”
Some, I suggest, feel the endless Marvel conveyor belt of huge-budget, domineering releases has killed cinema’s soul. Or at least killed the idea that anything made by independent cinema might actually be seen by a substantial audience.
“The industry will always need an engine; now more than ever, post-Covid,” argues the actor. “If you don’t have an engine, there will be no industry at all. It’s going to need these big films, the likes of Marvel, the James Bond franchise and so on. I think that sort of rhetoric about what is considered cinema and what isn’t, being too picky and so on, is just barking up the wrong tree. The industry is in deep trouble at the moment, many jobs, theatres, venues are on the line. So let’s focus on survival, rather than this sort of finickety artistic debate.”
He’s right, of course. Unprecedented times call for unprecedented measures. As the Black Lives Matter protests raged outside last month, Ejiofor was one of many actors, producers and directors who stepped up and demanded immediate action from the gate-keepers of his industry.
Dated 23 June 2020 and addressed to “The UK television and film industry”, Ejiofor was a signatory on a letter that stated, “While messages condemning racism and advocating for solidarity on social media may inspire hope, the UK industry must put its money and practices where its mouth is. A direct line can be drawn from the stories and voices that are silenced and ignored to the discrimination and biases that are pervasive in the entertainment industry and larger society. This moment in history presents an opportunity for you to be a positive partner for change.”
Today, sitting at the kitchen table with his loyal, if a little anxious, dog, Clay, occasionally shuffling at his feet, the actor is no less hesitant about what needs to be done in regards to banishing racism from the ranks of the film industry and beyond. He recognises that this is a fight for justice and equality that has some way to go yet.
“Anti-black racism has been one of the fundamental parts of modern history in the Western world. It is baked into the cake of the occidental world in a way that few other things are. It’s like the flour in the cake. And this anti-black racism is heightened by colonialism and by the slave trade. So the profitability of black and brown bodies has become essential to how the West has worked. Dismantling these systems is the work of several lifetimes – my life, yes, but also those that come after me.
“The thing is it is very difficult to do this. All these systems need to survive is a sort of apathy from the white community. This is why these white supremacist power systems continue to be considered the norm. The white people, whether they’re good natured or whether they’re not, will by and large let it run. They won’t get involved. They won’t care about it enough. So, yes, white people will turn and say, ‘Oh, this is a terrible thing. Systematic racism is awful, isn’t it?’ but unless those same white people actually start to get involved, then the system will stay. This is why education is so important.”
As a young boy, I wonder, was Ejiofor taught about colonialism at school in Britain, about the history of black Britain? “Ha! We did the Restoration [1660] on the Friday, came back to school on the Monday and started the First World War. That’s how I was taught. And I went to Dulwich College, a very good London school. That was the curriculum. No British imperialism or imperial adventure. Hardly any empire. You know, Salman Rushdie had a good quote, “The people of England don’t understand their history because most of their history happened overseas.” What was happening in the empire was and still isn’t taught. And those that were there, the witnesses, are decreasing in numbers.
“My own grandfather, for example, worked for the Mining Corporation in the north of Nigeria as an accountant. So when he was alive he would have told you, firsthand, where the money went. It went straight to Whitehall, to the foreign office. Everyone on the ground knew the deal. But today? The truth is purposefully obfuscated. Michael Gove recently mentioned not being critical of Britain in the education system – but this is just propaganda. And this is why people don’t know the background to certain statues or why people don’t understand that in a liberal democracy having statues of slave traders is an objective harm.”
What does the actor think of the current government and their reaction to something like the Black Lives Matter movement? Does he trust Boris Johnson to do the right thing? “I think that this entire political class belongs to a different era. The idea of a professional politician doesn’t mean anything to me. Who would you want in charge? Perhaps, like me, you’d want a type of politician that isn’t working the system for continual political gain, but is someone who is more representative of the broader spectrum of multicultural Britain, someone from the grassroots. The way the party system works, how people are elected to power, doesn’t seem vastly democratic to me. These men and women who all went to one or two schools and one or two universities seem desperately out of touch to most people.”
As the day yawns into early evening – the actor’s dog yawning along with it – before we both say our goodbyes, I want to get a sense of whether Ejiofor is optimistic about Britain's future in regards to the dismantling of these racist power structures.
At times, I say, he seems almost resigned to the fact change is going to be glacially slow. “Look, I know what non-representation feels like, as do so many black people in this country. To walk into a room and not see anyone who looks like you? I had to go to America to get the work I wanted, rather than get the support and work I wanted in the UK and that, to me, was shocking. Shocking.
“I also know what it feels like to be considered ‘other’. I grew up in the 1980s in Forest Gate, East London. Back then there was what is termed in America this notion of white flight – inner city, once predominantly white communities becoming more diverse. Let’s just say where I lived in the East End the white community wasn’t going particularly quietly.
“At times I remember I would have to come home from school through National Front marches, with my father holding my hand as we’d bolt across the road. I know what lack of representation means. I know how it can fester and build ideas of the ‘other’, how it can create xenophobia and what that feels like... a fear of the stranger. So am I optimistic? Yes… Yes, I am. Just cautiously so.”
The Old Guard is out now on Netflix.
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