Actor Rakie Ayola: ‘Amazing things have happened this side of 40’ | Drama

Actor, producer and campaigner Rakie Ayola, 56, was born in Cardiff to a Sierra Leonean mother and a Nigerian father. She trained at the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama. She won a Bafta for the BBC drama Anthony and a Bafta Cymru for The Pact, but is perhaps best known as nurse Kyla Tyson in Holby City and for playing Hermione Granger in the West End production of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. She now stars in Netflix series Kaos, a modern-day retelling of Greek mythology.

What attracted you to the role of Persephone, queen of the underworld?
My character’s first scene at Mount Olympus. Hades and Persephone arrive for breakfast, then she proceeds to just help herself to the breakfast bar. I absolutely know who that woman is – one who turns up at someone’s house and, to hide her nerves, starts piling food on her plate. She even shouts to Hades: “They’ve got hash browns!” She eats all the way through this very important conversation and it drives Hera mad. I thought, I have to play this woman! We based her costumes on Margaret Thatcher. For her hair, I was thinking Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie – turning up with her status on her head, like her own crown.

The series is created by Charlie Covell, writer of The End of the F***ing World. Were you already a fan of their work?
I binged The End of the F***ing World during lockdown and thought it was wild. In Kaos, Charlie has a riot with the Greek myths, which I used to adore. Age 16, bizarrely, I decided to start worshipping the Greek gods. This went on for about a year until I had to admit I could never remember their names. Funnily enough, I once co-wrote and produced a short film called Persephone’s Playground, so this role felt like fate.

Kaos has got a helluva cast too, right?
I loved the dynamic in the room. I was sat at this table with Janet McTeer, Jeff Goldblum, Billie Piper, Stephen Dillane, Leila Farzad – and the gorgeous David Thewlis as my husband. He told me from the off “I’m no trouble”, and you know what? He wasn’t.

The series feels surprisingly relevant, considering the myths date back 2,700 years.
So contemporary. It touches on issues like refugees, religion, power structures and rich elites. And it’s brilliant, because Zeus can be whoever you want him to be. Is he a royal? A populist politician? A tech mogul?

You just finished a run in Faith Omole’s debut play, My Father’s Fable. What drew you to that?
Faith is in We Are Lady Parts [she plays bassist Bisma in the Channel 4 sitcom], which I love. She sent me the script and there was something so brave about her writing. She dared to put two really unfashionable women at the centre of the play – Favour, a conservative black Nigerian woman who works hard to sound as English as possible, and her daughter Peace, a teacher who has never explored her roots. It challenges the audience and is so much fun, too. Comedy takes courage.

It’s often said that decent roles are rare for midlife women. Are you finding the opposite?
Amazing things have happened this side of 40. A decade ago, my friend Sharon Duncan-Brewster got a bunch of women together. She said: “Listen, we’re reaching that age when this business apparently doesn’t need us any more. So we need to stay relevant and lean on each other.” Every few weeks, a bunch of us got together, discussed work, shared stuff we’d written and became this creative support group. It grew and grew. Indira Varma, Noma Dumezweni and Tanya Moodie were all there. We stayed in the game and somehow all our careers went whoosh. Natasha Gordon won awards for Nine Night and became the first black British woman to write a West End play. Michele Austin went to Broadway with The Effect. Golda Rosheuvel and Adjoa Andoh turned up on the set of Bridgerton, ready to play the grande dame. As doors opened, we were ready to step through them.

Your Twitter bio says “Still menopausal”. Why?
Menopause was extraordinary because I couldn’t remember anything, which came as a shock. I wasn’t sure I could do any more plays, because my brain couldn’t keep the words in. Now I’m the other side of that, it’s important to keep talking about it. So yes, I’m a post-menopausal woman, still taking HRT. That’s partly why I gave Favour a fan in My Father’s Fable and why Persephone wears glasses in Kaos. Let’s just try to be a little bit more real.

Two years ago, your takedown of a BBC Breakfast interviewer’s question about The Pact featuring “a ‘woke’ version of a Welsh family” went viral. How was that experience?
Weird. I honestly just answered the question. I said what I’ve been telling my husband in our kitchen for years! When I turned my phoned back on afterwards, I’d got all these calls and messages. I know those families exist – black, brown, gay, trans, disabled, blended families – and they can’t be the only ones. It’s not woke nonsense, it’s real life. When I reflect on it now, my response would be the same.

You played Hermione in Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. What have you made of JK Rowling becoming such a divisive figure?
I spoke to some Cursed Child superfans about this and they’d found a way to make sense of it. They love the whole world of Harry Potter so much, they’ve decided to separate the work itself from the person who created it. Personally, I’d love to have a conversation that’s more than just name-calling or a social media spat. I’d love a chance to ask JK Rowling questions and understand what’s disturbing her.

You grew up on a council estate. Do you worry about a “class ceiling” in acting?
I did all the youth theatre I could find and it was about a quid per week. Nowadays, unless you’ve got £20 a week to spend on your kids’ music or drama lessons, they can’t get involved. I did the National Youth Theatre of Wales’s four-week residential course with Michael Sheen and Ruth Jones, paid for by the council. Now, you’d be reliant on bursaries or benefactors. When I did a three-year acting diploma, every single penny of my subsistence and course fees was paid for by the local education authority. Arts access makes a huge difference. People’s voices matter.