![]() This month, actor Peter Capaldi spoke out about the lack of opportunities for working-class actors these days, saying “there’s less and less of my lot in the arts”, and blaming “gatekeepers” who have left the industry full of “tedious” actors who “are not the real thing”. “You’ve gotta decide: am I buying eggs, or putting money on my Oyster card? And I had to make that decision many a time.” “I was shooting so much that I hadn’t been able to spend them, and I brought them back to London, exchanged them into pounds, then bought groceries and things. In the months-long gap between the pilot and shooting the rest of the series, “I took my per diems from the show,” as in the living-expenses allowance paid to cast and crew on location. Came back home, still couldn’t afford my rent or to pay off my credit card, was in the minus in my overdraft,” she says. Without the safety net of a wealthy background, Lynch had to be strategic. While temping as an NHS receptionist, she was cast as Rosaline Capulet in Still Star-Crossed, executive-producer Shonda Rhimes’s 2016 period drama about what happened next to the families of Romeo and Juliet. Early on in her career, while appearing in Fast Girls, a 2012 film about rival track athletes, and a 2015 stage production of Educating Rita, she worked day jobs to pay her rent. View image in fullscreen Jumper and dress by 16 Arlington ring and bracelet by Bulgari. You don’t wanna miss out on anything, you don’t wanna let anyone down.” You want to just” – she clicks her fingers – “go-go-go. I especially do, being from a working-class background. As an adult, her tendency to strive sometimes made her push herself too far. You want a teddy? I can buy that for you.’” Lynch is magnetic to talk to: wide-eyed and husky-voiced. “Back then, it was the size of friends’ houses and the very casual way I might be told, ‘Oh, you like that thing? Take it. She realised there were differences between her and some of her friends at primary school: they had au pairs (“I didn’t know what an au pair was!”) and their families went on the sort of regular weekend excursions she thought were reserved for proper holidays. Lynch grew up in the London areas of Hammersmith and Shepherd’s Bush, and has said that her class identity inspired her work ethic. It was shot in Jamaica, from which country Lynch’s family originate. Directed by Reinaldo Marcus Green with Kingsley Ben-Adir in the title role, the film focuses on a few years in the 1970s to tell the lesser-known stories of the man who became a legend in the decades after his death, aged 36, in 1981. ![]() Next up, Lynch will play reggae matriarch and singer Rita Marley, Bob Marley’s wife, in the forthcoming biopic Bob Marley: One Love. View image in fullscreen In No Time to Die. “This feels like … Are we back in the 1960s?” Lynch says, the subtext being that we are two young Black women feeling a little like intruders. Finally, after a manager is consulted and we agree to “settle the tab straight away”, the tea is on its way. But you can’t use a phone here, so she can’t answer. ![]() Her friend calls to share the details we need. Lynch goes back and forth with a server after trying to order some peppermint tea without a membership card (“Um, do you have a name?” we’re asked). No big deal – except now there are no club members in our party and so we’re flouting house rules. ![]() So much so that no one besides the reception manager has recognised her. That was more her speed with a history-making turn as M16 agent Nomi, the spy who takes over the 007 code number in Daniel Craig’s 2021 swansong Bond film No Time to Die. Lynch sees me and grins, yet I can’t help but picture the 36-year-old actor axe-kicking me in the face. Lashana Lynch is cocooned in a full-length padded coat and beanie, looking inconspicuous as a friend checks her into the well-known London members’ club we have arranged to meet in, then leaves. ![]()
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