Scurrying in a little late for our breakfast date at Mount Street in Mayfair, I find Paapa Essiedu bearded, poised and crisply dressed down in a black Edwin hoodie, futuristic black, calf-height trainer-boots and a glinting, silver hoop earring. We take in the artwork crowding the walls and the surrounding Mayfair grandeur flooding the windows. After a debate about the appropriateness of ordering supplementary drams of whisky to go with our morning oats (‘I will if you will,’ he says, with a raise of an eyebrow) we settle for matching, comically vast bowls of porridge and fancy pots of tea.
It is, to put it mildly, an incongruously opulent, china-clinking setting, considering we are primarily here to talk about Essiedu’s participation in the long-awaited sixth series of Black Mirror. Still, even if talk of Charlie Brooker’s dystopian tech satire feels an odd fit for this space, it is a conversation and, more broadly, an IMDB entry that Essiedu has had in his sights for some time. It’s another box ticked for this RSC-honed actor who has embodied a slick, Sunakian MP in deep-fake thriller The Capture, a time-jumping espionage recruit in sci-fi blockbuster The Lazarus Project and, perhaps most indelibly, a Grindr-addicted, trauma-wracked young gay man in I May Destroy You. The 32-year-old’s signature, if he has one, is a kind of watchful inscrutability; a coolly serious Shakespearean heft that seeps into his off-screen engagements.
