Cherrelle Skeete interview: ‘Theatre reminds you that you’re alive’

Facing the prospect of replacing a lead actor at Hampstead Theatre’s new show a fortnight before it opened, Cherrelle Skeete had one thought: “What would Noma do?”

Noma Dumezweni had played her on-stage mum, Hermione Granger, in the West End show Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. The acclaimed performer had also experienced being a late replacement in a play — in Linda at the Royal Court in 2015 — where she had to go on early in the run, script in hand.

So when director Paulette Randall phoned Skeete to say she was the first choice to replace Lucy Vandi — who was unwell — in The Fellowship, Skeete thought of Dumezweni. That is, after she had laughed down the phone first at the surprise suggestion.

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

Skeete, who previously had a smaller 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 this, because it’s going to get intense.”

A day later, Skeete walked into the rehearsal room with a fresh script for her biggest leading role to date, and press night fast approaching. She came in early, did intensive script drills and had to work the part out during technical rehearsal. While she still had the script in hand on Monday’s press night, after which she was widely praised by the 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, alongside sister Marcia (played by Suzette Llewellyn), is a child of the Windrush generation. They became activists against multiple injustices of the time but decades on they have little in common.

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

Also, with the enormity of the Windrush scandal, it sometimes became easy to forget the personal stories, she says. “It’s important for us to document these moments in time and acknowledge them as important parts of British history so we don’t forget.”

We meet on Thursday in Hampstead Theatre’s café. “This is such a full-circle moment,” she says pointing out the window to the building opposite. “That’s my drama school.”

Skeete grew up in Birmingham where her mother, “in true migrant mother fashion”, pushed her into everything from ballet to being part of the city’s junior figure skating team. “I haven’t done it for a while, but when you train that hard it’s in you. I was a hardcore figure skater!”

Increasingly, she became involved in the city’s grassroots arts community. “It was driven by having things to say and the need to be seen. That was the drive, and the acting attached to that.”

The actor remains passionate about the arts and the community grassroots organisations supporting those trying to get into them. She has acted on it, co-founding the group Blacktress UK in 2017 as a network for black women actors, a space to support work, and it has continued to grow. “I have seen a ripple of change,” she says. “Black women are taking leadership, visibly.”

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

One night, during an intense dance routine in Harry Potter, she “took a tumble, jumped up and part of my knee was flapping open. I stuck it back on, put a plaster on it then kept it moving.” Still, Skeete took the positives from the experience. “That’s the joy of theatre, expect the unexpected.” She continues, “Theatre reminds you that you’re alive. You have that instant response from the audience. You can hear them breathe, the laughter, the gasps. It’s so present.”

As well as 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 show The Midwich Cuckoos.

Then there is the video game Overwatch, in which she voices robot Orisa, which has brought a whole new fandom to add to her Harry Potter followers. “We’ve had people at The Fellowship who are Harry Potter fans and there were Overwatch fans at the stage door for The 47th. The genres are crossing over — gamers are coming to the stage door. People who have read the books are coming to the theatre, it’s just great.”

There are Potter fans who watch any show the Cursed Child cast are in. “They said, ‘I didn’t really go to the theatre before, and now I’m going to all these shows’. Art changes lives, man, and we need it right now.”

Skeete adds, “Artists are the alchemists, creating art out of nothing. No one can take that away from you, even with the cuts and cost of living going up. It gives me so much pleasure to know I am creating worlds. I encourage people to continue doing that.”

The Fellowship runs at Hampstead Theatre until July 23; hampsteadtheatre.com