Hugh Quarshie spent two decades as a top doctor on Holby City, and he even knows his way around a lightsaber. But few roles have been as powerful as his latest.
It’s not just because of the character or the story, but rather what, or who, his new show actually represents, the very best of Black talent, on both sides of the camera.
Six-part drama Riches is being hailed as something of a landmark show for UK TV. And it’s also long overdue.
Hugh, who played Holby’s Ric Griffin in 500 episodes from 2001, says: “When I started out Black characters tended to be in support roles or cameo roles.
“Where there was a drama and ethnicity or skin colour didn’t matter, they tended to be set in deep space.
“And where the Black actor was a main character, they tended to be in dramas written by white men such as Shakespeare’s Othello so the idea of blackness was a white man’s idea of blackness. I think there’s an awareness now that Black characters should be allowed to speak for themselves and be created by Black creatives.”
Riches, on ITVX, is written and created by Abby Ajayi about the exploits of the successful and wealthy Richards family.
Hugh plays Stephen Richards, the founder and CEO of Black British cosmetics empire Flair & Glory, whose stroke sparks a power struggle between the two children from his first marriage (living in New York) and his second wife and their three children based here.
Described as “a love letter to Black London”, Riches is a showcase of Black talent – from showrunner Ajayi and directors Sebastian Thiel and Darcia Martin to the cast across all the major roles including Deborah Ayorinde, Sarah Niles, CJ Beckford and model Jourdan Dunn in her first major role.
While comparisons will be made with Succession, the US series starring Brian Cox as Logan Roy, Riches is closer to Empire, the American drama that debuted in 2015 with Terrence Howard as the hiphop mogul at the head of a family desperate to take over his business.
Hugh, 67, says: “Actors don’t have to define themselves in terms of the difference to white society now.
“There was a time, for example, when my dear mother, because we were the only Black kids in a white primary school, would bathe us and powder us, put a parting in my hair and make sure I polished my shoes if we were invited to parties because, she said, that was the first thing people looked at, your shoes.
“It wasn’t. It was our black skin. My own kids understand that they never have to explain or apologise for themselves.”
The Black health and beauty industry is worth £5billion a year in the UK. As Richards explains to a white business journalist in the first episode: “No one who knows anything about Black women and their commitment to looking good would think there’s anything high risk about my ambitions.”
Hugh was born in Ghana in 1958, and has distant relatives who are village chiefs.
His family moved to Gloucestershire when he was three and he was already in love with acting and had played Othello at a local theatre by the time he went to Oxford University to study politics, philosophy and economics. His acting career started with film roles in Highlander (1985) and TV parts in Rumpole of the Bailey, The Tomorrow People,
and 1989’s Behaving Badly with Dame Judi Dench.
By 1999, Hugh was Captain Panaka in Star Wars Episode 1: the Phantom Menace, before landing his role in Holby. He has since appeared in hit films including the Fantastic Beasts franchise and Jennifer Lawrence’s Red Sparrow as well as TV’s Doctor Who, Breeders and US hit Absentia. Last year he revived his 20-year-old role as Stephen Lawrence’s father Neville, for BBC drama Stephen.
The level of representation has changed in the industry, since he started out, but not as much as some might think. And it is hair and make-up where the lack of equality is still often evident.
Hugh says: “Before I left Holby City there was a group of Black actors at the BBC. We called ourselves the BBC, the Black and Brown Collective. We met on Zoom, just to talk, and there were some appalling stories from actresses who arrived at studios to be told by hair and make-up, ‘Have you brought anything because I haven’t really got anything for you?’
It’s imperative that makeup artists of all ethnicities undergo training to style what is known as ‘textured hair’ and different complexions.
“Verona Joseph [Jess Griffin on Holby City] and I once discussed the idea of a coffee table book called Black Women and Their Hair… there is a sense in which it is a part of a black woman’s identity to have her hair styled. If Beyonce colours her hair blonde, it’s not because she’s trying to pass herself off as a white woman. She is saying, ‘I can be whatever I like. I can choose my identity. I can choose how I look.’”
Strong women are one of the driving forces behind Riches.
Hugh adds: “Early on you see Nina [Richards’ eldest daughter played by Ayorinde] eye up this stud in a bar.
“The next time you see them she’s straddling him and getting what she wants. The sense of the power of women in this show is palpable and is a West African cultural phenomenon. I’m from Ghana, and this is a story of a Nigerian origin [Ajayi is Nigerian-British] but we have things in common, namely the matriarchy in our cultures.
There’s a saying that maternity is a fact, paternity is an opinion. So in terms of succession, it goes down the mother’s line for people who becomes the next chief or king.
“What Abby has been trying, and I think successfully, to demonstrate is that she knows what the conventions are [within the relevant cultures].”
Just because the world is finally making progress in representation, Hugh is quick to stress there’s no such thing as a united black community.
He says: “We’ve all been disabused of the idea. You’ve got Home Secretary Suella Braverman saying the Empire was a force for good. Excuse me? Weren’t your parents from East Africa? Have you heard of the Mau Mau [uprising]?
“Perhaps it’s no bad thing to admit we each have the right to develop our own identities and diverge from the norms.”
- All episodes of Riches are available on ITVX to binge.
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