Actor, producer and campaigner Rakie Ayola, 56, was born in Cardiff to a Sierra Leonean mother and a Nigerian father. She trained at the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama. She won a Bafta for the BBC drama Anthony and a Bafta Cymru for The Pact, but is perhaps best known as nurse Kyla Tyson in Holby City and for playing Hermione Granger in the West End production of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. She now stars in Netflix series Kaos, a modern-day retelling of Greek mythology.
What attracted you to the role of Persephone, queen of the underworld?
My character’s first scene at Mount Olympus. Hades and Persephone arrive for breakfast, then she proceeds to just help herself to the breakfast bar. I absolutely know who that woman is – one who turns up at someone’s house and, to hide her nerves, starts piling food on her plate. She even shouts to Hades: “They’ve got hash browns!” She eats all the way through this very important conversation and it drives Hera mad. I thought, I have to play this woman! We based her costumes on Margaret Thatcher. For her hair, I was thinking Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie – turning up with her status on her head, like her own crown.
