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1. Lockdown has really helped his mental health

David has been very open about his mental health difficulties, including a history of depression and a psychotic breakdown in his 20s. He says that lockdown has been a welcome opportunity to give himself time to recharge. “This is actually the longest I’ve been home in eight years. I’m normally only [home, in London] two months of the year, because I’m filming,” he says. “The last two summers coming back here have been really tough. I was exhausted. I needed that space. Luckily for me, lockdown presented that… I’ve loved it.”

2. Making his documentary about psychosis terrified him

In 2019, David made the documentary David Harewood: Psychosis and Me. It reflected on his breakdown and looked at the help available to people having similar experiences today. He says making the documentary was one of the scariest things he’d done, because it meant reliving an experience that still affected him. “I just didn’t know what I was going to find,” he says. “I was terrified of what the next day was going to hold, what I was going to find out. I was in a very vulnerable position… I thought I’d dealt with this stuff, but I suddenly realised I hadn’t.”

5. He thinks black actors still need to go to America for work

David Harewood in the Â鶹Éç Two documentary Will Britain Ever Have a Black Prime Minister?

There isn’t the industry to support us here… I can turn on my TV in America and there’s a range of shows with black leading actors.

David Harewood on being a black actor in the UK

Since Homeland, David’s career has been extremely successful. Most of his work is in America (he’s currently part of the cast of Supergirl), because he says opportunities for black actors are still limited in the UK. His last major British TV show was The Night Manager in 2016. “David Oyelowo, Idris Elba, Daniel Kaluuya – most of the major black actors leave [the UK],” he says. “There isn’t the industry to support us here… I can turn on my TV in America and there’s a range of shows with black leading actors.”

6. He thinks racism is still misunderstood in the UK

David calls the Black Lives Matter movement, and the attention it’s brought to issues of racism, “extraordinary”. He says he’s seen major changes and important discussions in America, but worries that there isn’t the same change happening in the UK. “Racism and its effects are still not really understood here. Our system is basically a class system,” he says. He believes the difficulties faced by black people are not acknowledged as being outside of the class system, that they’re not the same issues that separate working class and upper class. “It's very difficult to get people to acknowledge that there's a specificity to racism.”

7. He took up snowboarding in his 50s

David turns 55 next year and he’s still embracing new experiences. While shooting Supergirl in Vancouver, he tried his hand at snowboarding. Turns out he’s really good. “I’ve always wanted to and there are so many mountains in Vancouver,” he says. “A couple of the crew guys took me up [to Whistler]… I picked it up in about 15 minutes. Before I knew I was doing black runs on Whistler, flying down these mountains.”

8. He’s a big gamer

David is a huge fan of video games, especially the Call of Duty series. He even appears in Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare, as Sgt. Usef Omar. “As a gamer, that was awesome,” he says. “I’m playing it and I’m hearing my own voice and seeing my own character.” He loves gaming as a way to take time to himself. “It’s a way to switch off and relax.”

9. He’s writing his first book

Over the last year, David has taken a turn behind the camera, directing three episodes of Supergirl. Now he’s working on writing his first book. “It’s sort of a memoir of a breakdown and recovery,” he says. “As a young black kid from Birmingham, who’s also had a breakdown, I’ve come through that and succeeded and become a Hollywood actor. It’s still something I marvel at. I can’t underestimate that.”