Cherrelle Skeete Interview: ‘Theater Reminds You to Live’

Noma Dumezweni played her mother on stage, Hermione Granger, in the West End show Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. The award-winning artist also experienced being a late replacement in a play – in Linda at the Royal Court in 2015 – where she had to continue early in the run-up, script in hand.

So when director Paulette Randall called Skeete to say she was the first choice to replace Lucy Vandi – who was ill – in The Fellowship, Skeete thought of Dumezweni. That is, after she first laughed over the phone for the surprise proposal.

“Noma is a dear, wonderful, big sister mentor to me. I sent her a message saying, ‘The anxiety has kicked in, I’m shitting myself. I’m trying to channel you. ‘ She sent back and said, ‘You have it, it will be so good for you’.

Skeete, who previously had a minor role in the play, was on a train to watch Diana Ross at the Cambridge Club Festival when she received Randall’s call and thought, “I better enjoy it because it’s going intense become.”

A day later, Skeete walked into the rehearsal room with a fresh screenplay for her biggest lead to date, and press night was fast approaching. She came in early, did intensive script exercises, and had to work out the part during technical rehearsal. While she still had the screenplay in hand on Monday’s press night, after which she was widely praised by critics, it was gone two days later.

In The Fellowship, Roy Williams explores the complexities of black British identity through three generations of one family. Skeete plays Dawn who, along with Sister Marcia (played by Suzette Llewellyn), is a child of the Windrush generation. They became activists against various injustices of the time, but decades later they had little in common.

“It feels like a very important time for us to ask what it means to be British and to have a dual identity,” says Skeete. “We are on the verge of reaching 60 years of independence for Jamaica this summer. And I know for my generation, the millennial generation, back to where my mother grew up and my grandmother’s homeland it’s about where I sit, it’s about drawing the lines and creating for myself a story of how I got here has.”

Also, with the scale of the Windrush scandal, it has sometimes become easy to forget the personal stories, she says. “It is important for us to document these moments in time and to recognize them as important parts of British history, so that we do not forget.”

We meet Thursday in Hampstead Theater’s cafe. “It’s such a full circle moment,” she says, pointing through the window to the opposite building. “This is my drama school.”

Skeete grew up in Birmingham where her mother, “in true stepmother fashion”, pushed her in everything from ballet to part of the city’s junior figure skating team. “I have not done it for a long time, but if you train so hard, it is in you. I was a hardcore figure skater! ”

She became increasingly involved with the city’s grassroots art community. “It was driven by having things to say and the need to be seen. It was the driving force and the acting associated with it. ”

The actor remains passionate about the arts and the community’s grassroots organizations that support those trying to get into them. She acted in it, and co-founder of the group Blacktress UK in 2017 as a network for black women actors, a space to support work, and it continued to grow. “I saw a ripple of change,” she says. “Black women take leadership, visibly.”

After moving to London and studying at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, she landed roles at Finborough and the National Theater before being cast in Harry Potter and the Cursed Child in 2016, where she played Rose Granger-Weasley . “Creating a character on stage that is now canon all over the world was so special. And being able to play Noma’s daughter was another full circle moment. ” She saw Dumezweni in A Raisin in the Sun at Coventry’s Belgrade Theater while at university. “I told her it was a crucial moment for me.”

One night, during an intense Harry Potter dance routine, she “tumbled, jumped up, and part of my knee slammed open. I glued it back on, put a plaster on it and kept it going. ” Yet Skeete took the positives out of the experience. “It’s the joy of theater, expect the unexpected.” She continues, “Theater reminds you that you are alive. You have that immediate response from the audience. You can hear them breathing, laughing, panting. It is so present. ”

In addition to building a higher profile on stage – including roles in The Seagull, Fun Home and The 47th – she has become more visible on TV in shows such as Amazon Prime thriller Hanna and Sky’s newly released science fiction program The Midwich Cuckoos.

Then there’s the video game Overwatch, in which she utters robot Orisa, which has brought a whole new fandom to add to her Harry Potter followers. “We had people at The Fellowship who are Harry Potter fans and there were Overwatch fans at the stage door for The 47th. The genres cross over – gamers come to the stage door. People who have read the books come to the theater, it’s just wonderful. ”

There are Potter fans watching any program in which the Cursed Child cast is. “They said, ‘I did not really go to the theater before, and now I go to all these shows.’ Art changes lives, man, and we need it now. ”

Skeete adds: “Artists are the alchemists, who create art out of nothing. No one can take it away from you, even with the cuts and cost of living rising. It gives me so much pleasure to know I create worlds. I encourage people to to continue it. ”

The Society runs until July 23 at Hampstead Theater; hampsteadtheatre.com