Nathan Stewart-Jarrett wants to talk about adversity, about the marginalised experience and the burden of appearing strong and powerful at all times. But his soup needs a stir. “I burnt it last time,” the star of Candyman and Channel 4’s unruly superhero comedy Misfits tells me. “It was a butternut squash soup and I just roasted the f***ing thing. I thought I got all the burnt bits out, but it was not reviewed well.” He scuttles off to his kitchen, spoon in hand.
The 37-year-old loves a tangent, a pithy one-liner, a wry aside. You’d think it’d make drag a natural fit, the best queens as charismatic on stage as they are when delivering a savage remark in the wings. But in the run-up to shooting his new film Femme, a provocative British thriller about sex, violence and revenge, Stewart-Jarrett realised how tough drag can be.
