Jimmy Akingbola always dreamed of going to Hollywood. As a black child growing up in a white foster family his idols were Sidney Poitier, Denzel Washington and Eddie Murphy. He would rush to the television whenever a black person appeared on the screen (which obviously was hardly ever), aching to create his own “encyclopedia of role models”. Decades later, we meet the British-Nigerian actor in LA, where he lives and is about to start shooting Bel-Air, a reboot of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. Achieving his dream has made him question how he got here, and Handle With Care (ITV) is the profoundly moving result. “To understand you’ve got to hear my story,” he says in the opening frames, “because I still can’t quite believe it.”
This is a highly personal documentary about what it was like for Akingbola to grow up in a white family in east London. The subject of interracial adoption in a system where more than 40% of the children awaiting adoption are black yet black foster families are comparatively rare is complex and fraught. Akingbola’s film is not really about this debate, or the 90 young people who enter the care system in England and Wales every day, though he does interview other prominent black figures who were fostered, including the actor Lennie James and the athlete Kriss Akabusi. Mostly, Handle With Care is about Akingbola’s own experience. What comes across above all is simultaneously the lifelong impact of abandonment and a loving foster family on a child. It’s the scenes involving Akingbola’s foster mum, Gloria (who really is glorious), that are the most powerful. As Akingbola puts it, Handle With Care is “a love letter to my parents … both sets”. He pauses to bring his hands together. “I’m here because of them.”
