David Harewood: British actor (Homeland, Supergirl), director and the first black actor to play Othello at the National Theatre; author and mental-health advocate.
What this episode covers
David Harewood tells Steven Bartlett about growing up as one of the only black families on his Birmingham street amid relentless 1960s-70s racism, and how that othering destabilised his sense of identity. After drama school, ferocious race-focused press hostility, drinking and sleeplessness led him to spiral into psychosis and be sectioned at 23, hearing a voice he believed was Martin Luther King. Years later, a 2017 tweet and his BBC documentary forced a public reckoning, and reading his own medical records revealed how his crisis centred on race and identity. He reflects on his father's earlier sectioning, the over-representation of black men in the mental-health system, and being given triple the legal dose of tranquilisers. Now back in the UK building a production company, he frames trauma as something that 'had to come down' so he could rebuild himself.
The guest's own work
Maybe I Don't Belong Here
David Harewood
“I only found this out again once I started writing my book and started looking at Mental Health and the numbers of black black people are over represented”— guest
Also referenced (named, not recommended)
How to Be Black
Baratunde Thurston
“I think it's a book called How to be black it's a very very funny book we talked about the gold silver bronze”— guest
Entertaining Mr Sloane
Joe Orton
“I played Sloan in Entertaining Mr Sloan Mrs lonia who is quite a devious bisexual character murder he's actually also a murderer”— guest
Big reveals from this episode
- Harewood heard a voice claiming to be Martin Luther King telling him to sacrifice himself that night and become an angel, the night he was sectioned.
- The first line he read in his recovered medical records was 'patient believes he has merged hearts with a young black boy.'
- As a teen he found his father's typewriter with the single word 'illness' typed before his father was sectioned.
- He was sectioned for about five days initially, then again in Birmingham for another five days.
- His consultant told him he was given three times the legal dose of tranquilizers, which he was later told is standard practice with large black men.
- He says if the voice had told him to jump off a Thames bridge that night he would have done it.
- A single 2017 World Mental Health Day tweet got 50,000 retweets and launched his book, documentary and public mental-health work.
Worth remembering
- As a child he was told 'you're not black, you're normal,' reflecting a generation pressured to assimilate.
- A Jamaican psychologist's study found far less psychosis among black communities in Africa than in Western cultures like England and America.
- Harewood frames being a black professional as 'tall poppy syndrome' in a predominantly white space.
- He cites labeling theory and the famous prison study to explain how being told you are something can make you become it.
- He references Jay-Z and a 'gold, silver, bronze' framework of blackness from the book How to Be Black.
- A black reviewer publicly urged people to demonstrate against Harewood taking the role of Mr Sloane.
- During mania he walked up to a stranger's Doberman and screamed its name, and the dog cowered and whelped on the floor.
- Since returning to the UK he has not been offered a single leading dramatic role, doing mostly documentaries instead.