It’s hard to imagine quite what it would have been like for the Windrush generation to exchange the warm glow of the Caribbean sun for the rain and icy chill of Britain. But arriving on the set of Three Little Birds makes it a little easier. Everyone is shivering in the crisp winter air, with plumes of white breath accompanying every sentence. At least creator Lenny Henry has the warmth of a three-piece suit, but the stars of his semi-autobiographical series are not so lucky. They are in 1950s bridesmaid’s dresses and a lacy wedding gown, with tiny capped sleeves and large A-line skirts that are regrettably billowy. Their teeth chatter as they explain how thrilled they are to be part of the show. “It’s good vibes,” grins one. “It’s just lovely. I love it here. I love it.”
Three Little Birds, named after the Bob Marley song, follows three women who travel from Jamaica to settle in the UK in 1957. Gregarious sisters Leah and Chantrelle and their sister-in-law to be, Hosanna, all have very different reasons to leave Jamaica. Leah is escaping an abusive marriage, Chantrelle dreams of becoming a movie star, and Hosanna wants to settle down and start a family. They come together to overcome racism, sexism and forge their own paths. Inspired by the real-life Henry family, it’s a heartfelt and frequently hilarious drama.
Henry’s mother and aunts arrived in the UK in 1957, which was a tumultuous time. “In ‘58 there were riots in Notting Hill followed by Dudley in ‘62,” he says. “To see ‘Keep Britain white’ written on a wall when you’re walking down the street, that’s tough. And this was every day for them.” Henry teamed up with British TV powerhouse Russell T Davies and talked him through heaps of family anecdotes that were recounted to him as a child, then Henry wrote the show making sure none of his relatives’ actual names were used. “It had to be fictionalised as my family are very litigious,” laughs Henry.
Actor Rochelle Neil is seemingly less worried about being sued. She explains that her character Leah “is inspired by Lenny’s mum Winnie” – for whom Lenny was the first of her children to be born in the UK. When we meet Leah, says Neil, she has “escaped a toxic marriage, left her children behind and come to the UK to build a new, better, healthier life, then assemble the kids.” For Henry, putting his beloved late mother and her sacrifices on screen has proved incredibly emotional. “I watched the sizzle reel the other day and burst into tears. I’m nine-tenths water, but it’s really lovely,” says Henry. Like many people who have lost a parent, he still regrets not preserving every memory, recipe and piece of wisdom. Henry says he envies Martin Scorsese’s documentaries on his parents featuring his mother’s recipe for veal parmesan. “I wish I’d done that with my mum,” he sighs. “I left home when I was 16 so I never got the chance to stand by her and watch how she cooked. The most I did was I got a little cassette recorder, and I got her to tell me how to make her Christmas cake.”
Neil’s own father was born in Jamaica, and his parents left for the UK before sending for him two years later. But Three Little Birds is also the first acting job she took after having her own baby, and now “there’s a whole new layer of fear and part of your brain you didn’t know existed.” Coming to the part with a 10-month-old helped inform her performance with the “first-hand experience of the love and sacrifices that you 100% will make for your baby.”
While the era didn’t see anything unusual about setting off for pastures new without your children, it did hold particular judgment for women who were ambitious and sexually liberated. This is something we see in action with the character Chantrelle, based on one of Lenny’s aunts (please don’t sue me Henry family). At a raucous house party the night they arrive, Chantrelle selects an attractive man to get a little handsy with, much to his absolute delight. This results in a screaming match with Leah, who is unimpressed by her sister’s risque behaviour. She is “very sexually confident. She picks her men and she’ll be like, ‘You’re coming with me,’” says Saffron Coomber, who plays her. “She’s quite ahead of her time and she enjoys her beauty.The period detailing is spot on, with each cast member impeccable in full skirts and sharp trilbys, plus hair and skin done with finesse. This is not always assured on television sets, with many Black actors having horror stories about makeup and hair teams incapable of working with them. Even for Neil, who has been acting for over a decade, “It’s one of the first jobs I’ve ever done where our heads of department have been Black women and people know exactly what to do. It’s amazing to not even have to have the conversation. It’s just done.”
The makeup, hair and costuming for Chantrelle have turned the dial up to 11, and Coomber looks like she’s been plucked from the pages of Vogue, with a deep red lip and flowers in her hair. But she quickly emphasises that Chantrelle is much more than her looks. “She’s just so well written and I love that she’s a mess of contradictions – like we all are. Sometimes you get scripts that sing to your bones.”
There’s particular joy in today’s shoot – not only is filming coming to an end, but the scene is set at a wedding. A tiny ramshackle red church has a rusty green Birmingham bus outside, and everyone is the picture of 50s glamour. Though these Windrush characters had to leave the sunshine behind in Jamaica, it’s clear they brought an abundance of warmth with them.Hosanna, whose wedding is being captured, is a respectable Christian woman who uses her faith to open her heart to the world. Having joined sisters Chantrelle and Leah on their three-week voyage across the Atlantic to marry their brother, her worldview opens up – which leads her to question the patriarchal constructs around her. “Why am I coming over to England to be with a man? What am I actually here to do?,” asks Yazmin Belo of her first appearance in a TV series. “She finds she wants to be a nurse, like so many women, in a time when things revolved around serving someone else rather than serving yourself.”
But our three little birds soon realise there are big obstacles to their ambitions. Signs in windows declare “No Blacks, no dogs, no Irish” and work in factories and domestic service turns out to be horrific. Chantrelle, who arrived having agreed to a nanny job at a “competitive rate,” is forced into indentured servitude. The Wantage family won’t let her use the front door and work her to the bone. They refuse to pay her until she one day proves herself to them, and to make matters worse, before too long, Mr Wantage begins to sexually harass her. “To be in that situation broke her spirit,” says Coomber, as if relaying the struggles of a dear friend. “You see an exploration of depression within her, which is really important because mental health in the Black community is still something that’s relatively new to be spoken about. Many of my relatives who came over, trying to build their life over here, didn’t have time to give space to their trauma. So it’s a privilege to start talking about it.”
For Henry, part of the joy of making this series comes from using his position to usher in a new generation of Black actors, directors, costume designers and makeup artists. But it’s not simply about getting people their first gig to diversify the UK’s TV industry. “I think that will happen as long as we keep pushing. If we stop pushing, it stops. That’s what I’ve learned.”
Everyone on set seems to have a story that shows how deeply personal Three Little Birds is for people with Afrrican-Caribbean heritage. Nonetheless, Sir Lenny believes the show has universal appeal. “It will resonate, I think. Whether you’re Black or white, you’re going to sit there with your parents and go, ‘was it really like this?’” he says. “Maybe they’ll try and rationalise it as it was different in those days. It’s going to be a meaningful watch.”
But whatever conflicts the series puts on screen, there will always be new ones for the next generation. “The kids become British, and that first generation will have to deal with their Britishness,” says Henry. “That conflict to me is great for the story, because how do you deal with kids who speak with a Midlands accent and aren’t anything like you? Who don’t want curried goat because everyone else is eating ham and chips?” He smiles, remembering his mother’s cooking. “I had a great mate called Tom, and he would come round for jerk turkey at Christmas and eat three times as much as he’d eaten at his own house.” It turns out that his mother’s cooking plays a bigger part here than you might imagine – all thanks to that audio recording of her Christmas cake recipe. “I lost the tape! So I made this television series instead.”
Three Little Birds will air on ITV1 and ITVX in October
