Generation next: the rising stars of Steve McQueen's Small Axe
Amarah-Jae St Aubyn: ‘I never saw myself being a lead in a love story’
Amarah-Jae St Aubyn plays Martha, a churchgoing girl who sneaks out of her bedroom window into the endless possibilities of the night in Lovers Rock, the second episode of Small Axe. It’s a coming-of-age tale inspired by the blues parties of the late 1970s and early 80s – club nights held in homes because young Black people weren’t welcome in nightclubs.
Twenty-six-year-old Amarah-Jae St Aubyn’s debut has made her a Screen International Star of Tomorrow, but it’s been a long road to here. She’s performed since she was tiny, attending performing arts school Italia Conti with a cousin, then graduating from the Brit school in 2012. Moving into theatre, the south Londoner often found herself not just the only Black woman in the room, but the only Black person, a perpetually disconcerting situation.
She nearly gave up, became a published poet, yet eventually secured tough but high-profile understudy roles on Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. When she got the Lovers Rock lead last year, St Aubyn carefully researched turn-of-the-80s London (the drama is set in 1980) – the fashion, the segregation, how these parties existed because Black people weren’t allowed into white nightclubs. In the film, she conjures a wide-eyed girl floating through the world in a dream, yet pin-sharp and completely grounded.
Steve McQueen knows what he’s found. “There is a brightness and freshness about Amarah,” he says, “an optimism which just reflects on the screen. Astonishingly, Small Axe was her first time on camera. She is what you call a star.”
“I never saw myself being a lead in a love story, being a Black female,” she says. She’s developing screenplay ideas of her own now. “I don’t want this to be just a trend, I want people to understand how talented we are, not just to tick a box.”
I work weekends in a bar-restaurant, I’ve got a little work family there. I do a lot of reading. is about the inner voice and how you see yourself, the opening and closing of the heart. It’s good
