When James Nelson-Joyce was in his first year of drama school, he was told that he’d better lose his accent because he wouldn’t work much as a scouser. It’s safe to say that he’s since proved that assertion completely wrong by, well, working a lot as a scouser (and giving some indelible performances in the process).
In a truly unsettling turn in Jimmy McGovern’s 2021 drama Time, he played Johnno, the prison bully who tormented Sean Bean’s character Mark Cobden; he was responsible for one of the show’s most talked-about (read: harrowing) scenes, involving a bag of sugar, a kettle filled with boiling water and another inmate’s face. He’s also appeared in the Liverpool-set thriller The Responder, cropped up in Industry and played the bad guy in Stephen Merchant’s comedy The Outlaws. Later this year, he’ll star in the new season of Black Mirror.
