Tamara Lawrance on Get Millie Black: 'Excuses are made but a show like this can be done'

Even though each of those projects and characters are so different, Lawrance tells me, she feels "very blessed and just lucky" that she gets to explore an array of stories.

But how does it feel for (especially) Mr Loverman and Get Millie Black to be released in such quick succession after one another?

"It feels good. Both are platforming queer Caribbean stories," she says. "I think that's something that we've not seen so much of, characters like Barrington and Morris and then characters like Curtis, Daniel and Hibiscus. I think they're very important to be on our our screen."

The opportunity to take on the role of Millie-Jean Black for the new series was one Lawrance couldn't pass up.

With the new five-parter being set and filmed mostly in Jamaica, as well as featuring a mainly Jamaican cast of national talent, it was all a major plus for Lawrance, who hadn't been back to her mother's home country since the age of three and could identify with Millie's "dual identity or being othered in both spaces".

As well as the series being a homecoming of sorts for Lawrance – echoing the story of Millie herself – Get Millie Black also explores underrepresented themes that we, quite frankly, need to see more of on our screens.

"The fact that it explores homosexuality, homophobia, transphobia as well, especially in Kingston," Lawrance says. "Seeing such a spread of Kingston between Uptown and upper-class, middle-class people to the gully and the ghetto. I just thought I've never seen anything like this before."

Central to the story of Millie is the tale of her younger sister, Hibiscus, played by actress Chyna McQueen. McQueen is "really moved" that her own story is able to be platformed in the way it has been with the help of the show, Lawrance tells me, saying that Get Millie Black brings the pressing issue of transphobia to an international platform.

But it's not all trauma, though. As much as Hibiscus's story is one that certainly has its tragic lows, it's a multifaceted one that doesn't purely linger in sadness and also underlines Hibiscus as the "driving force" for Millie. "It's also the fact that we all get to follow and fall in love with Hibiscus as well," Lawrance says.

For those unfamiliar with their history, the formidable Gully Queens are a community of homeless LGBTQ+ people who live in the storm drains (aka the gully) on the outskirts of Kingston, Jamaica's capital city.

As we see in the series, Hibiscus may come up against transphobia and the police, but always has her centre point set at her found family: her sisters and community.

"I think, for me, it was very appealing also as a queer woman to be able to kind of be an ally within that story – Millie being an ally to Hibiscus's storyline. That's also important because Jamaica has a reputation for being a very homophobic country, which is also from quite a colonial lens," Lawrance says.

"But the fact that we get to see allyship in Millie, we see allyship in Richie, Millie's lover. We get to see the fact that he runs this bar that is for, as he says, everyone. It was also a great facet of the story that we get to see that there are Jamaicans that are not homophobic."

Lawrance explains that in the research around the real-life Gully Queens she did for the series, she came across organisations that are on the ground in Jamaica advocating and working towards queer and trans rights. J-Flag and Transwave, to name a couple, are creating safe spaces in Jamaica, and finding these organisations was also "surprising but quite profound" for Lawrance herself.

While Jamaica has an international reputation for being one of the most homophobic countries in the world, a thriving queer community does exist. "The context of queerness in the Caribbean is more nuanced than we might think," Lawrance states.

It's a side of Jamaica that many – including those from the country itself – may never have seen before, but that can be said of a lot of the themes and stories explored in Get Millie Black, including Kingston's own class system. At just five episodes, it really is a masterclass in the depths to which crime dramas can reach.

Cleverly written into the scripts by Marlon James, the differentiation and class divide between Uptown and Downton Kingston is in full display in the series. But it's also the use of patois versus Jamaican English that was something Lawrance herself learnt more about when filming.

Some Jamaican cast members told Lawrance that they were always taught it was rude to speak in patois to others, opting to speak in Jamaican English instead.

Lawrance says that, as Get Millie Black depicts about a lot of things, it's an extension of colonialism and "the decimation of Creole". It's something Lawrance learnt more about through filming the series and in her work with dialect coach Fae Ellington, who spoke through "the social stratas of accents".

"It's people being taught not to speak in this tongue because it's seen as 'lower class', 'ignorant' or 'disrespectful' to somebody who has a more posh Jamaican accent or any kind of other accent. There's code-switching happening here and it's another hangover from colonialism," Lawrance explains.

But patois is almost celebrated in Get Millie Black, with Lawrance herself deciding early on in her portrayal of Millie that she would code-switch seamlessly.

"I had a lot of licence from the directors as well, to choose the patois," Lawrance explains. She decided that Millie uses patois to "ingratiate herself and make people feel comfortable". "She uses it to placate, appease or draw nearer to people or she uses it to alienate.

"The first thing she says to Holborn she says in patois, reminding him that, 'Yes, we may have an affinity because of my Britishness, but I'm also something that you're not.'"

If you're going into watching Get Millie Black assuming that you're going to instantly fall in love with its central protagonist, you might want to rethink that. Going into the role, Lawrance explains, she had to "remove the desire to be liked" because Millie is "somebody who is not likeable, really. She's not very palatable".

"She's a Black woman at the top of her field and isn't afraid to rub people the wrong way. She doesn't seem to really care what people think, and I think that is a really powerful depiction, especially in the Met police and in these roles that we've traditionally seen as white men."

But it's something that Lawrance personally loves, saying: "I think it's not often on British television that we see Black women depicted with that level of confidence and that confidence being intrinsically linked to her Blackness and her Jamaicanness.

"The sense of self that runs through how she carries herself. She trusts herself, she trusts her instincts. The show explores that – when she doesn't listen to her instincts and listens to other people, that's kind of when things go a bit askew."

It's the kind of multilayered storytelling we need when it comes to the series we consume, we discuss. But what does a series like Get Millie Black say about the need to platform more diverse stories in TV and general?

"I think it says preeminently that it can be done. A lot of of the time, excuses are made, like, 'Oh, you can't film in this place for this amount of time,' or there's not the talent, the resources or people with the experience. But 75 per cent of this show was shot in Kingston with local crew. There were only three of us that were from the UK out there for the three months – me, Gershwyn [Eustache Jnr] and Joe [Dempsie]. Everybody else is Jamaican," Lawrance says.

"So, the talent is there, it's clear as day, it's what makes the show special and different. There are Jamaican producers – we had Jamaican producers, line managers, Jamaican costume, Caribbean women in hair and makeup, it exists.

"Diverse stories, I think, are best and most authentically diverse when that diversity exists behind the scenes as well. The drivers, the crew, everybody was Jamaican. That also adds to the authenticity of the project. It just broadens humanity. The more that you're able to see stories with people that don't look like you and empathise with them, the more fully human we become."

Lawrance continues: "I think there is a a danger of the default being one thing, quite a binary thing, a cis-het thing. It's a danger because the more that those stories are centred, the more that it decreases humanity for other people. Especially in light of things that are going on sociopolitically or geopolitically, I think it's dangerous if we don't see more faces that are different being centred, being loved, experiencing difficulties and working through them.

"The more we see that, the more that we know it can be done and the more that we can go out into the world and feel a curiosity about other people. I hope that in our industry, we can see more people.

"I think it's also important to have [that] where the mouthpiece and the lens is coming from, because I think oftentimes there'll be a queer film that does really well and then you find out that it's by two straight people who have lots of funding behind them. I think things like that, it also becomes dangerous when the people who feel like they have the authority on that voice actually don't have an affinity to that experience at all. I think that also happens a lot.

"And so, the more that we can hear storylines coming from the people that have that experience, the better – the better it will be for all of us."

There's no getting away from the fact that recent conversations about the TV industry "crisis" have revolved around a lack of funding and shows being stuck in limbo, rightfully bringing conversations about the future of diversity into the limelight.

Admitting that I think the industry can and should do more to platform a diverse array of stories, Lawrance agrees with the sentiment. "I think a lot more could be done. I think there's just a lot of optics," she says.

"Sometimes, people say, 'Oh, it's such a good time to be a Black actor because there's just so much more work now.' And I mean, in some ways, that's true. In other ways, it's not. I think sometimes these things come in waves, where there's a period in which diverse work feels very popular and then times where, all of a sudden, all of that kind of traction becomes stagnated or the investment is rescinded.

"Or as you say, people will will pick up a project and then kind of sit on it, so it doesn't get developed. I know from a lot of these projects that I've been on that behind the scenes is not very diverse at all. Sometimes it can feel like lip service to change because, really, we need more producers of global majority, people in the sort of gatekeeping positions – producers, directors, showrunners – we need more global majority showrunners."

Lawrance describes the "trickle down" effect of the TV industry, citing a recent statistic that she read about where "you're exponentially more likely to have Black directors and Black writers when there are Black producers and showrunners".

She says: "For me, I would like to see more people of global majority in those positions of where real systemic change can be made. If it always falls down to casting, we've seen that come and go."

For now, we can only bide our time and hope that we continue to see racially diverse behind-the-scenes talent, as well as actors and stories, platformed as they rightfully should be. Naturally, the conversation turns excitingly to a potential second outing for Get Millie Black.

While the series hasn't been renewed at the time of our conversation, we chat about how there's so many places the show can go – not least because things end with some open-ended questions.

What would Lawrance's hopes be for a season 2 and for Millie-Jean, I ask?

"She has to confront some demons. If we were to get a season 2, where is Millie’s mental health going to be at? What is she going to use to distract herself? Is she going to be somebody that is going to start confronting the things she needs to confront or is there going to be another case that suddenly takes front and centre so that she can avoid all of those things?

"I think the Hibiscus storyline is massively open-ended; where is she? What happened to her and will Hibiscus ever forgive Millie for abandoning her a second time? Also, the Lindo storyline – Lindo escaped, and so there is still so much to explore there in terms of that ring within the UK and the continuing relationship between former colonies and Britain."

We jokingly talk about starting a petition for season 2, but really, "there is so much more" to this series, as Lawrance says.

"I was left feeling like 'I hope we get a season 2' because there are so many more things to explore," she admits. A drama like Get Millie Black only shines through once in a while, so I truly hope so too.

Get Millie Black will begin airing on Channel 4 at 9pm on Wednesday 5th March.

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