Lennie James has stressed the importance of including intimate sex scenes in his poignant new BBC drama, Mr Loverman.
The actor, known for his roles in Line of Duty and the Walking Dead, is set to take on a role we rarely see on TV, playing Barrington ‘Barry’ Walker, a closeted gay man who has been in a secret, decades-long affair with his best friend Morris (Ariyon Bakare).
Throughout the episodes, based on Bernardine Evaristo’s best-selling novel of the same name, we see him struggle to end his marriage to wife Carmel (Sharon D Clarke) and come out to his beloved daughters and grandson, in a bid to finally live his truth.
The series premieres during Black History Month and takes the viewer on a journey from the beginning of Barry’s young romance with Morris while they grew up in Antigua, to their tumultuous bond in present-day London, and doesn’t shy away from some of the more intimate moments of their relationship.
Speaking to Metro ahead of the release, Lennie unpacked some of the sex scenes they took on, revealing that the program would be pointless without them both jumping in.
‘What was important for us was that there’s no point in having those intimate moments, there’s no point in having that physical side of the story, unless you’re telling story through it,’ he told us.
‘It’s a bit like singing a song in a musical – unless the song moves story along, unless you come out of the song with a different understanding than before the song was sung, there’s no point in having it. That was true of our intimate moments.
‘We took a real responsibility, because Bernardine does in the book, and Nathaniel [Price] does in the scripts, of not just telling the emotional love story between Barry and Morris, but also telling the physical love story between Barry and Morris.
‘Doing our best to depict how they physically loved, and emotionally loved, when they were young boys, very much hiding, very much discovering in the Caribbean, in Antigua. To who they were as married men on the down low in their 30s, and to who they were in their 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s.
‘Exploring the different ways that they express their love physically was a large part of our story. It was as important that we got that right as we got everything else right.’
Mr Loverman serves as the TV adaptation Bernardine’s award-winning novel, following Barry’s struggles to end his marriage to Carmel and live his truth as a gay man with his real love.
The series premieres on BBC One with a double-bill tomorrow night, and all episodes will be available to stream on iPlayer from 6am.
Lennie vowed that he had no real pressure in bringing Barry to life, but instead felt a responsibility to ensure that the character was as ‘dynamic and complicated’ as the man written in the pages of her book.
Recalling a seminal scene where he comes out for the first time, he explained that he had spoken to others who went through that later in life, to ensure that it was portrayed as authentically, and as responsibly, as possible.
‘In all of the conversations I’ve had with friends, family, and while we were shooting this, talking to people who have had their coming out moment, the way they described it – and in a lot of cases, unaware of how they described it – there were two things that recurred over and over again,’ he said.
‘That was – if it was a situation where they chose to come out, invariably, they were doing it to someone that they deeply loved. Because of that, the second thing was that there was a huge fear that if the person that they came out to, who they deeply love, rejected them, then they were being rejected by everyone, as far as they were concerned.
‘Everything was wound up in this person still loving them, still wanting them. Because it was something that I have heard, seen, experienced, more than once, I felt a real responsibility to find the truth of that in this 75-year-old man.
‘And to make him – at a point of for him, huge bravery, something he’s not been able to do for nigh on 50-60, years – finally do that, and to manifest his fear, as well as his bravery, was something that I felt a great responsibility to.’
There is no denying that Barry is worlds away from roles we have seen Lennie take on in the past, but the screen icon couldn’t rave enough about the ‘gift’ he was given with the character.
‘Barry, playing him, was always a challenge that I relished, really,’ he added. ‘It was something that excited me about going into work.
‘He was just a gift, and he’s surrounded by equally well-formed and interesting characters in a story that is very rarely, if ever, been told in the way that we’re telling it.
‘I’ve been very lucky in the characters that I’ve played, I looked for characters that have challenged me, that have tested me as an actor, that are not necessarily exactly the same as a character that I’ve played before. I’ve tried to spread them out and make them different.
‘Barry is certainly one of those. He was a joy to get to know, and to wear his suits, it was just lovely.’
All episodes of Mr Loverman will be available to stream at 6am on October 14 – the first two episodes will air on BBC One at 9pm that evening.
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