Sharon D Clarke on being British TV's first black female detective: "I think it's the idea that black doesn't sell"
"I can't tell you why I've never been number one before. You'd have to ask the people who do the programming."
This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine.
Two women, one white, one black, are waiting in the reception of a police station. A cop appears and walks straight up to the white woman, assuming she’s DCI Ellis, a detective who has been brought in to help a failing investigation. The white woman shakes her head; the cop looks baffled.
He asks the receptionist where DCI Ellis is. She nods towards the black woman. When the cop finally approaches Ellis, she declines to shake his hand before following him into a room of white men in cheap suits, all of whom turn to stare.
Over the course of the three feature-length episodes of Ellis, Channel 5’s new detective drama, Sharon D Clarke as the eponymous senior police officer forms a solid bond with Andrew Gower’s DS Harper – but not before he learns a thing or two about his implicit biases.
The surprise in Ellis isn’t to show institutional racism and misogyny in the police force, but the fact this is the first time a black woman has led a TV police series – and it’s the first time Sharon D Clarke has taken a lead role.
Clarke is a phenomenal, charismatic actor, equally at home playing a grandmother in Doctor Who and a doctor in Holby City as portraying Linda Loman on stage in the 2019 revival of the Arthur Miller play Death of a Salesman, for which she won a third Olivier Award. What took so long?
She grins and then laughs, a long, contagious laugh that seems to indicate disbelief more than anything else. "I can’t tell you why I’ve never been number one before. You’d have to ask the people who do the programming. I think it’s the idea that black doesn’t sell. Full stop."
Clarke opens her fan – "the bloody menopause!" – and continues. "I haven’t been sitting around saying, 'Why not me?' It’s how life is. Everything in its time."
When Clarke got the call saying there was going to be a new detective series with a black female lead and asking if she’d be up for it, she didn’t hesitate. "I didn’t grow up seeing someone like me in the lead role of a TV series, so I was all over it! Plus, I love a good cop show like Law & Order: Special Victims Unit and Criminal Minds."
Eighteen months before filming started on Ellis in Belfast, Clarke talked to co-creator and co-writer Sian Ejiwunmi-Le Berre, who had previously adapted Agatha Christie’s Murder Is Easy for BBC One, about DCI Ellis’s backstory.
"I wanted her to be from a multicultural place, so she’s from Tottenham, North London, which is where I grew up. She’s tough; she has worked her way up to the top despite the endemic racism in the force. I also had a long chat with Irene Afful, Merseyside Police’s first black female inspector, about her experiences.
"She told me that her colleagues wouldn’t let her lead on anything, and she was like, 'I’m a black girl, I can take care of myself.' Two great detectives, both male, saw her potential and encouraged her to rise through the ranks. I fed some of Irene’s experiences into Ellis."
Inevitably, Clarke also fed some of her own experiences into her character. Her mother, a seamstress who worked for Harrods and Selfridges, and her father, a carpenter, moved to London from Jamaica in the early 1950s.
Sharon attended the Ivy Travers Dance School in Stamford Hill on Saturday mornings. She enjoyed tap, ballet and jazz, and played a babe in Babes in the Wood. Aged six, she sang the Marie Osmond song Paper Roses on stage, coached by her mum, who was a great singer. She was hooked: "The energy exchange you have with an audience when you’re on stage is intoxicating."
At 14, Clarke joined the Anna Scher Theatre, with "the raw kids, the ones off the street". She wanted to act, but her parents knew it was precarious, especially for a black working-class girl, and insisted on an education.
She trained to be a social worker because she’s a great listener ("People always share their stories with me on the bus"), but thought about acting the whole time, until one day she noticed an advert for auditions at Battersea Arts Centre. She applied and got the job. Theatre is, she says, her first love, but TV is important because of representation.
As a child, Clarke loved Doctor Who, Wacky Races and Grange Hill. The family got a colour TV in 1981 "so my mum could see Diana’s wedding dress in all its glory".
She loved television, but "there were no black folk doing stuff on TV". One day, she saw an ad with a black guy brushing his teeth and the landline didn’t stop ringing with her mates calling in disbelief. There is more representation now than in the 1970s, but as Clarke says, "We can always do more," and then she tells a series of anecdotes.
When she went to her first Olivier Awards ceremony in 1995, she and Adrian Lester were the only black people in the room. She still has to tell people not to touch her hair. She has been ignored on TV sets.
"Racism isn’t just an industry thing, it’s a daily thing. It’s how I live my life. I still have to say, 'Excuse me,' several times when people are standing in a doorway," – she repeats "Excuse me" three times, her voice rising in a frustrated crescendo – "and finally they casually say, 'Oh, I didn’t see you there.' It’s exhausting."
For years, Clarke was offered roles as a nurse in various TV series before, finally, being cast as consultant Lola Griffin in Holby City. "I stopped auditioning for telly for a while because I didn’t want to play a nurse simply because I’m black.
"But Lola had authority. She was opinionated. Strong. I walked on set on the first day and saw Robert Powell. Oh my God, it’s Jesus!" [Powell played the title role in Jesus of Nazareth in 1977.]
She fans herself. "At one point I was in an episode with five black women of all different shades doing a scene on primetime TV and there wasn’t a man or a white person in sight. That was a first!" When Clarke left the show in 2008, a whole episode was written around Lola’s exit.
I say that I couldn’t believe Clarke’s character Grace was killed off in Doctor Who and she laughs. "I was like, 'People, you’ve missed a trick here!' To have those different generations of women in the TARDIS was glorious. A black woman, a white woman and a brown woman.
"The flack that Jodie [Whittaker] took for being the first female Doctor was ridiculous. Someone said little boys no longer had a role model! What the hell! And now Ncuti Gatwa is a funky, funny, charming, cheeky, sexy black Doctor. We’re on the frontier of time, right here, right now, and we should always be pushing those boundaries."
Clarke is cautiously optimistic that the boundaries are being pushed. Apart from starring in Ellis, she is starring alongside Lennie James and Ariyon Bakare in Mr Loverman, a gorgeous adaptation of the 2013 novel by Bernardine Evaristo about a family man who has to hide his love for his male best friend.
"I read the book as soon as it came out. I loved Bernardine’s bravery in telling this untold story of an elder gay couple from the Caribbean.
"I’ve been lucky enough to do two gay-led stories this year – I also did Lost Boys and Fairies, which was so truthful and honest. I don’t know why this is the first time I’ve worked with Lennie, but we just got on. And I’ve never worked on a set so diverse, from the cast to the crew to the accountants. This is 2024. This is how you do it! Mr Loverman is probably my proudest moment in television."
I ask Clarke, who grew up in less tolerant decades and who married writer and director Susie McKenna in 2008 after meeting her on a production of Cinderella in 1999, if she has often experienced homophobia.
"I didn’t come out till I’d talked to my late parents, and after that I wasn’t afraid to talk about it at all. I’m very out! Everyone in the industry knows I’m married to Susie. I’ve been very, very lucky in that respect.
"It’s important for me that shows like Lost Boys and Mr Loverman exist to help everyone understand that it’s OK for some people to come out and not so easy for others. You have to let people do their own thing."
It’s time to go – the allocated 45 minutes have turned into 90 minutes – but before she steps out into the rain, Clarke wants to talk about The Importance of Being Earnest, the Oscar Wilde play that opens at the National Theatre on 21st November and also stars Ncuti Gatwa.
"Like Death of a Salesman, it’s part of the white canon of theatre and thus was never on my radar. I didn’t even have to audition! I’m so excited because we have the glory that is Ncuti in it and I know there will be a younger generation coming because of him. That boy is sexy!
"And do you know what?" She looks mischievous. "If Oscar Wilde and Shakespeare were writing today, they’d be writing for the society we live in. Our truly glorious, multicultural society."
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Ellis will begin airing at 8pm on Thursday 31st October on Channel 5.
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