reggie yates he's a critically acclaimed

filmmaker a writer a director and

an entrepreneur the first time i saw a

machine gun was

in my estate at like nine years old when

the police were raiding a flat on my

floor

because there was all kinds of craziness

there when you're just playing on the

balcony

as a teenager presenting kids tv with

air force ones and the mecca tracks

it says something i'm on the bbc and i'm

dressed like the boys that you cross the

street from

subsequently you know i've had kids come

up to me bro i loved watching you

because we dressed the same we talked

the same and you were doing that

and when people say things like that to

strangers it's so powerful

for me empowering others is a huge part

of my drive right now

working with young talented people and i

love that i have that relationship with

people because i never had it growing up

there was always a distance between me

and the person that was helping guide me

shortening that distance for me in the

lives of others

is what success feels like

[Music]

reggie yates he's a critically acclaimed

filmmaker a writer a director

and an entrepreneur and over the last

three decades

he's been on our screens and through

that time

the world has changed the platforms have

changed and he

has certainly changed he's been involved

in scandals

wild success and unfortunate failure

reggie's work as a filmmaker is

extraordinarily diverse

and he's traveled across the world

meeting those that have oppressed and

those that have been oppressed

and this conversation is the same

incredibly diverse we'll touch on

everything from love relationships

struggles

family mental health ambition council

culture and

everything in between thank you reggie

thank you for your honesty because i

know the people that are about to listen

to this podcast are going to take a

tremendous amount of important value

from it

so without further ado i'm stephen

bartlett and this is the dire of a ceo

i hope nobody's listening but if you are

then please keep this to yourself

reggie um location

environment family where do you come

from

um i am the child of african immigrants

both my parents were born in ghana and

came to london as children

i was born on tottenham court road so

i'm london london london

and i was raised in holloway i moved to

south east london when i was 14 and

18 i moved out and i've been a londoner

ever since and i say that because

i've lived all over you know london's

quite a tribal city uh between football

and the club you support and the area

that you're from and

your connection to it i've lived all

over and i call south london home

now even though i didn't start there and

i didn't school there really

um but i love it there and it's nice to

return to the place that i spent a chunk

of my teens

so two parents from an african uh from

ghana

great ghana they came here when they

were my mother 11 i think my dad was

maybe 15 or 16.

so tell me all about that and that

experience because i know that in terms

of like education and perspective on the

world and all those things from my

own mom's experience she she couldn't

read or write right so we had

a ton of wars growing up because i

dropped out of university after one

lecture so we didn't speak for three

years

i know that african parents have a

certain perspective and i know

especially from reading about how you've

handled things like fame

press drugs alcohol and the avoidance of

all of those things

i know i feel like much of that must

have come from those kind of values

yeah um i'd say it's a combination of

things it's a combination

of the mentors that i chose uh the

environment that i was in at home

and that massively comes down to culture

you know

and that's why i was really interested

in your connection to nigeria because

culturally

for me um where my parents are from has

informed massively

in a lot of ways my outlook and

culturally obviously you know

when you've got west african parents who

were born there

you're raised in an environment where

education is everything because

as far as they're aware that is the only

way to unlock

uh another life for yourself my

grandparents came to this country in

search of a better life for not just

themselves but their children and

ultimately us their grandchildren

and it worked you know my mom got an

education

i got an education to a point and

weirdly my social education

and my extracurricular activities have

given me a career

so um more than anything i think it's

the values

of an african house that have given me

what i believe

to be a healthy life and i mean in every

sense of the word

people talk to me a lot about being

grounded and understanding what being

humble is

and i think when you've come from

nothing but at the same time

you enjoy everything it changes your

perspective on what success looks like

and that was the house that i was raised

in we celebrated

every day because we

essentially were striving to be happy

and happiness

didn't come from material goods it came

from

success and achievement uh on a level

that made everybody in the house proud

as opposed to what was going on outside

the family home

because culture was everything and do

you feel that do you still feel that

and did you ever fully believe that

happiness would come from success and

achievement do you still do you still

deeply believe that for me happiness uh

comes from being fulfilled i think um

in my at my most happiest and my most

calm

i feel like i'm able to love and i feel

loved

i feel as though i am professionally and

personally fulfilled

um i feel as though i'm creatively

fulfilled they're the moments when i

feel my most happy and they're the

things that i'm chasing if ever i was

chasing anything

and what was that what was the kind of

difference in between your mom and your

dad my mom was

nigerian yeah i didn't i don't really

have to say which my mom was nigerian

right my dad was the antithesis of that

my dad was a

what is a um older

white male very passive very very calm

usually doesn't speak

wow and my mom was she can shout for

seven hours at

a tone you've never heard in your life

without like taking a breath

amazing so was there a huge difference

between the

the sort of values or the approach of

your mum and your dad that had a sort of

a significant well my dad's a musician

was is and continues to be um but he

wasn't in my life

my parents divorced when i was quite

young and then my mother remarried

a another garnier man who was also from

a similar background

um and in terms of who they are

slash were as people it's very different

um

i think i get a lot of what makes me me

for my mum my mom was incredibly social

she loved music i've spoken about this

before she used to always cook with this

sony ghetto blaster above the cooker and

you know

it's west africa dean so you're using a

lot of palm oil so there was like

the the ghetto blast it's so like clear

in my mind it's just

covered with red oil and like there was

there was no cover on the tape bit so

you used to have to push a tape in

and there was like marks on it as to

where her favorite radio stations were

so

i was raised on a diet of pirate radio

and pop

um and that was my mum it's just a

vivacious big social animal like i

remember her 30th birthday because

you know she had us quite young and her

just with a [ __ ] out the window like

having a little dance or whatever and

like turning up her favorite records and

my stepfather is not that you know he's

not particularly social and he's quite

different and

his dad was in the military so he was i

imagine not that dissimilar to your

mother it sounds like

so um there were two very different

types of parenting in my house and as i

say my biological dad

wasn't present and ironically we're

probably really similar

given our you know our expression

through creativity

have you ever reconnected with him yeah

um yeah

so i did who do you think you are yeah

the bbc one show

yeah and it's really interesting because

they

they started carving up episodes of the

show and putting them on youtube

and they chunked my episode into four

parts

and uh on my father's side of the family

my biological father they've been

mixing for generations you know like

three of my grandmothers are mariah

carey black you know like they're

super super fair because there's been

generations of people that are

of mixed origin and with ghana um

previously being part of the british

empire

and being part of the commonwealth and

ghana finding independence in 1957

there was a huge uh english contingent

particularly

uh in around places like cape coast um

when it came to trading when it came to

gold etc

um and that's part of my family legacy

massively so you know my mum was

bitterly disappointed after they did the

research and realized that

her family background which was just one

village

versus my dad's side which was lots of

different people from different places

in europe coming to africa and mixing so

on and so forth so

when we made that show i realized that

they wanted to start

the show with a conversation between he

and i talking about the family

and i hadn't seen him or spoken to him

in over a decade so we met up just

before we recorded

and it was it was weird because i hadn't

seen him in so long and then when we did

record it's interesting like the film

starts with

the sequence with he and i sort of

chatting and he's playing thumb piano

but

the last time we saw each other with

each other was the day before

but prior to that i was a lot younger

so yeah i was a teenager the last time

i'd seen him so

is it i don't know i i don't really have

any bitterness towards the man because i

understand him a lot better now as i've

grown and as your friends become

fathers you sort of start to identify

just how many people are actually

naturally equipped with fatherhood

and not everyone is and unfortunately my

father just didn't seem to be one of

those guys

one of the things i i got to be honest i

worry about with

my own experience with my parents is

that there are

slightly toxic traits that they have and

i think this is the case with all humans

but

you know my parents are humans too yeah

um that i'm

i'm concerned i will

pass on like with through generational

cycles and i think

the less aware i am of those things the

more they stand a chance of like

showing up at some point and running the

show when it matters the most

yeah do you have those fears have you

ever had that you know they had those

fears i don't have them anymore

okay and the reason i don't have them

anymore is because i recognize that you

know

i define my my present and my future my

past i have no

control over but um who i am today and

who i will become

is down to me um and that also

uh is massively dependent on my

understanding

of my childhood trauma of the things

that um

if unchecked could define me so

i've always been desperate to define

myself

even when i didn't realize that i was

doing it so you know

uh growing up in a council estate up the

road from here in holloway

and having friends who have exactly the

same setup at home you know

before my mother met my stepfather we

were a single-parent household on

benefits

my mom did whatever she could to you

know feed the family and move us forward

that was the same for the other boys on

the estate so if i was hanging out with

corey or tyrone or whoever

their house felt like mine and i was

determined to not be defined by the

things that we were being taught to

normalize

you know and as a result i just

have decided that that's not the life

that i'm gonna have and my children

won't

god will and i have you are when you

look at your career

you are a tremendous outlier in terms of

the journey you've

you've you've taken and what you're

doing now that's very kind thing and

then you trace it back and go you came

from a councillor state not too far from

here for you to have

gone on that journey and achieved the

things you have

i always i always think there must have

been certain

factors in those early years that made

you

take a different course to those friends

that might still be on the estate now

yeah it might have been

you know we talked a little bit about

values there it might have been you know

i don't know something someone said to

you an experience you had or just the

conditioning

whatever it is but my question is do you

and do you know what those factors were

that made you

an outlier i mean you sound as though

you've done

a lot of work on yourself and in the

little bit that i know about you

i get to meet people and ask so i

learned so much from these kinds of

answers right

and i've made documentaries for over 10

years so it's the same thing you know

you learn so much from your environment

if you're willing to drink in the

information yeah and

i just in thinking about between therapy

and also being um present in moments

like this

you know yes there are cameras but i'm

having a conversation with you

and i'm learning from you and that

certainly was the case

in 10 years of making films you know for

the bbc um

so when it sort of comes to me looking

at

how i've become the person that i am and

how my journey has played out the way

that it has done it's an amalgamation of

different moments and instances but

fundamentally it comes down to

a desire even as a kid to understand

and be aware and it's progressed into

this idea of being present

and understanding the moment that you're

in and why you're there and

and taking as much from the moment as

possible so as a child

i would always ask questions and i was

far too

aware of my environment for my own good

so for instance i'll

i'll never sort of forget going to my

friend kieran's

oh no yeah it was kieran buckley's house

i went to kieran buckley's house

in barnsbury and um

my mom was very protected so she

wouldn't let me play at friends homes

i know you know how that goes and i went

to kieran's and i was in the garden and

he had

this massive massive beautiful islington

garden with several trees in it

and i asked him how come you've got a

park at the back of your house

um and his mother sort of overheard and

laughed a bit and it stayed with me

and he's like that's not parks my god

are you talking about come on freeing it

in you're in goal mate and you play this

game you don't think about it and then i

remember going back to my cancer state

and looking at the

the one tree that me and corey used to

climb and think

i don't have what he has why is that

and then you start to think about these

things and then start to understand

class and where you are and

even so far as the area you know i

started to really recognize the power of

my walk to school even as a kid

before i got to secondary school i was

like this is really weird like i live in

a borough

islington in north london that has

everything from

council states with immigrants and white

working class

right the way through to multi-million

pound houses and i lived on

a row called liverpool road which is

such a it's such an important road

that i haven't only i've only become

aware of how important that road is to

my journey

in recent years so i lived at the

holloway end of liverpool road and

liverpool is a long road that runs

through

islington and at the other end is angel

an angel gentrified years before

holloway did hallway is a very different

place now

and they had a waitrose they had a

sainsburys and you had these gorgeous

massive townhouses and

you know if you deviated off liverpool

road you'd be in barnsbury and there

were these beautiful little villagey

roads

and holloway was where the people that i

grew up around lived

and you had these estates you had every

kind of madness you could imagine

happening on my estate like i remember

my first

the first time i saw a machine gun was

in my estate at like nine years old when

the police were raiding a flat on my

floor

because there was all kinds of craziness

there when you're just playing on the

balcony

on your estate on on the floor that you

live on you got on police there

you know let alone the other times that

you see other weapons or you see other

things happen

um and those walks that i would go on

where i would be like wow the bit that i

live in versus the bit that i'm walking

through versus the bit that i'm going to

to go to school

i know what bit i want to live on so i

better start thinking

about how i'm going to get to that bit

of the road it's so fascinating you'd

say that and it took me in my head back

to

back to my own experiences being a kid

and this really vivid memory i have one

day of

looking up at the sky and seeing a plane

and then looking down at my street and

thinking i wonder if all of these fam

this is what they wanted from their life

and then the plane for me was the

juxtaposition between a family going on

holiday

i'd never been on like other than coming

from africa we'd never been on holiday

yeah

so i was thinking oh my god people are

going on holiday and then i look down at

my street and i look up again and i see

this plane

and a lot of people will have that but

it takes a different mind to then think

i want to be on the plane i want to be

at the other end of

liverpool street um but then also

i have some idea about how to get there

or maybe you didn't have some an idea

about how to get there but maybe just

the

i mean if you believe in that

manifestation just that i want to be

there so i'm going to make decisions

over the next 10 years

in that direction right well my

journey's super weird right

because from the age of eight i was a

working actor

so i was constantly reminded about my

difference

just by being present and by being aware

even as a child so

it didn't take much for me to realize

you're not like your friends reg because

you're currently

working while they're at school and

you've been allowed time off school to

work so straight away you're like okay

i'm a bit different

and this is a bit of a weird situation

to be in and then you look around and

there's a hundred people on set and

you're the only black person

both in front of all behind the camera

and you go okay wow

um i'm not like any of these people here

and the conversations that you hear

about what people did on the weekend or

where they're going that even or even

conversations about wine like little

things that people take for granted

culturally

anybody drinking wine in my house you

know what i mean

like shallow was a big deal you know um

going to sainsbury's was a big deal like

we used to walk to dalston with

backpacks to go and buy meat and tin

tomatoes and carry them back because we

never had a car what does that do to you

though when you're on set everyone else

is a different skin color and they're

talking about things that you're not

familiar with in terms of like let's be

honest like class

right absolutely what does that do to

you and does it put a chip on your

shoulder does it

make you i'm more ambitious does it make

you think [ __ ] i'm i'm out of place i'm

an imposter

yeah well it could have put a chip on my

shoulder and i'm incredibly thankful

that it didn't

what it did do was make me so hungry

to create an environment where i could

feel comfortable

and what that progressed into was

understanding that it's going to take me

a while to get to the point

that i'd like to be at therefore it

would be and become my responsibility

to create that for someone else to

create that for another eight-year-old

me or 15 year old me

and i feel incredibly proud that i'm

able to do that now because

i recognize the power of it and

regardless of

those moments of feeling out of place or

being sort of feeling as though you know

your class is being

is being waved in your face like i told

this story the other day to a friend of

mine who's

i'm a godfather to his child he's one of

my good good good friends

uh sam wilkinson he's a director who i

made a lot of my documentaries with

and um he's got my gorgeous little

god son in his hands little teddy and

we're chatting away and i was telling

him a story about

uh being at this primary school in

island where you've got kids from

estates and kids from

quite you know affluent homes all in the

same school and at lunch time you had

these kids with thundercats lunch boxes

and these incredible sandwiches and

kitkat minis all the things that i never

had in my house you know

you're sort of looking at tinfoil that

hasn't been used 50 times and you're

like oh my god they're throwing the

tinfoil in the bin what the hell

what the hell is going on without being

made to fold and put it back because you

could use it for dinner tomorrow

anyway so you're like taking all of that

in and

every lunch time i'll never forget um

pat god bless her

uh the head dinner lady this big lady

big lady

would walk out and she'd go free school

dinners

and all the kids that were on free

school dinners used to have to stand up

and go and get your food and it sort of

broke you a little bit as a kid because

your mates were just a bit like oh my

god

can you imagine and i told this story to

sam and he started crying

and sam started crying i think not

because

well i think he felt a little sad for

little mini me but he also

as a father imagined his son in that

position

and i'm sure we'll get on to family and

fatherhood and stuff but i

you know i realize how much fatherhood

has softened a lot of my friends and

also has made

me very sort of cognizant of my journey

and also

just how important my childhood was in

shaping who i've become

and when you were there when you were in

school when you were eight years old and

working and acting

what were your dreams for the future and

how big were they could could you

what was that internal monologue saying

that the end of

reggie's story would look like i don't

know what it looks like now

yeah and then i never had any sort of

desire to create it or paint it

i just knew that it was fun and i

enjoyed it and i didn't quite understand

why i was getting paid to do it really i

just didn't get it because it was like

you mean i get off school and i get to

play make believe with people that i've

seen on telly

and you're going to pay me for that

right i remember my mom opening a bank

account for me

because i did a job and

this money started coming in and you

know suddenly you've got tens of

thousands of pounds in your account

you're not even in secondary school yet

and it's like well hang on this is this

is crazy because mum's

desperately trying to save to put this

on the table or to make that happen

and i'm getting to do something that's

fun and it's paying me really well and i

get to do it with

stephen fry and hugh laurie like what

that there though

for me speaks to a really critically

important part of like

success which is at a very very young

age you got to see behind a curtain

and the curtain was in my view just from

hearing what you said i can do something

that i actually like

and people will pay me for it and

imagine most kids from that estate

all they'll ever get to see is you work

in the factory or whatever you have to

hate your work

and you get paid [ __ ] all for it yeah

that's what did they you know

well it's interesting you said it

because you've actually weirdly picked

up on a really interesting point because

um

something happened on set in a moment

of realization even as a child that

only came back into my head popped back

into made a few years ago and i

recognized how important it was and i

actually put it in my book

and that was um

work to me based on my grandparents and

my mother was something that you hated

um my grandmother worked the buses

she was a cleaner she did all sorts of

stuff she was a

a cook for london underground at one

point i was at london bus one of the two

my grandfather had two jobs at night he

was a security guard at some random

factory in king's cross

and during the day he was a mathematics

professor at a university

you know it's an incredibly educated man

but because he wanted to build a home in

ghana and he wanted to look after

everyone

he literally worked all the hours that

god would send so whenever anyone spoke

about

work they hated it and then

the first job that i ever got as an

actor when i was eight years old was it

was desmond

which for anyone that um has seen it

will know

like retrospectively how important that

show was for those that don't know what

it is

uh desmond's uh i believe is channel 4's

longest running sitcom

and it's not on tv anymore it hasn't

been on for years but desmond's

was about a black family in peckham who

owned a barber shop

and it was a comedy about black life and

just about life and because it was so

human even though it was massively

flavored by this

caribbean family people loved it and it

was massive and it ran for i think seven

seasons right

so the first audition i go for is

desmonds

and i remember going to humphrey

bartlett i think it was the name of the

production company in kentish town

and we went up to their production

office and my mum was excited

you know she was prepping me on her

little cards like to get my lines down

and everything and i got the job

and then i had this random moment that

when i think back it's crazy for me as a

kid to have made this realization i had

this realization and that was

i was um i was on set surrounded by

people that looked like

me and my family you know you had

shirley who was the matriarch of the

family who actually looked like my gran

you had norman who played desmond who

was like the super funny old guy my

granddad was this funny old guy that

used to make inappropriate jokes all the

time and

all the makeup artists were black and

they would give me little boiled sweets

and

everybody was just so fun to be around i

was just surrounded by this blackness

but in a professional setting and

everyone was at work

and they were having a great time

and something went off in my head and i

was like wait hang on a second

maybe what i've seen in my family and

their relationship with work

doesn't apply to everyone because these

people look like my family and they're

having a great time

so what would it be like if i did that

for me

and that's exactly it and i a lot of

people

don't realize that and that's why i

referred to it as you got to look behind

the curtain right and once you see it

you can't unsee it

once you make that connection that you

can love your work

and it can be in line with your passions

i mean right now the stuff you're doing

in your career is

seems to be perfectly in line with your

interests you know and i've heard about

you know one point you were doing work

in music and you're interviewing pop

stars and you're asking them

questions you didn't want to ask them

and you've it feels like you've really

got closer and closer and closer and

closer to

doing work that's intrinsically

fulfilling as the years have gone on a

lot of people don't realize that reggie

and they don't ever get to see behind

that curtain

yeah so what would you say to those

people who um

have the have the dreams but they've

always believed that work is a

nine-to-five thing it's a chore it's

something you do to fund

your passion yeah or your free time well

it's really difficult in this era

because there are so many experts uh

on social media or on youtube and who

are releasing books or whatever you know

there's a ton of people who haven't had

any life experience which is why

people like you i think are so important

and i'm not blowing smoke here

you know you're having incredibly

important conversations off the back

of living a life and doing something and

you're still so young

you have earned the right to say this is

what i think

and feel and i'm willing to share it and

you continue to learn on camera

making documentary is a huge part of me

learning on camera and learning with my

audience

and i'm sure that you can attest to this

there's something incredibly powerful

about saying i don't know but i want to

learn and when you do that and it's

documented and recorded people come

along with you you know

and in this moment there are so many

people that just see the end result that

want to be gary vee

or you know want to shout advice and be

be the tough love guy

and there is merit in that and i think

that

you know for a lot of young men

particularly you can look at some i'll

use garyvee as an example i think he's

fantastic in

some of the things that he does and the

way in which he delivers a message

because some people need to hear it

similarly on the other side um a book

like the secret for instance

you know if you don't have people

constantly reminding you of things

like some of the messages that are in

the secret

you might need to turn to a book that

has them all in one place you know

and i think it's incredibly difficult

for people to

to be honest with themselves about

what they're capable of without willing

to do the work

yeah and so many people want the end

result

but don't respect or understand the

value in the journey

and we live in a microwave era where

everything happens overnight and people

come up and come down from

social media stars to reality tv stars

or whatever and

it just it it breaks my heart that

nobody's willing to just look back a

little bit

and see that everything that they're

doing has happened before

and it all ends in one way um and

without

sort of rattling on about it or anything

i had a conversation recently where i

realized how fortunate i've been to have

been around for so long because

i've had a career for over 30 years now

and i've seen the cycle

play out over and over and over again so

like being

12 years old and interviewing the spice

girls and thinking oh my god this is the

most amazing exciting thing ever

and then seeing their peak because you

know i interview them for wannabe

then you see their peak and then you see

the movie and you see them on packets of

walkers crips

and then you see the fallout and then

you get to where you are today and you

see

how that has played out but that's sort

of like a a bigger arc but you could go

even smaller you know in the boy band

era

you name them i interviewed them from

the backstreet boys to five over here to

whoever i met them when they were new

and excited then i met them when they

were arrogant and horrible

and then you meet them when everything

isn't happening anymore and they've got

that album no one wants to buy

you see the cycle happen over and over

again today it's reality tv starts

only the cycle isn't three albums

if you're lucky it's three years if

you're lucky it's three years yeah yeah

yeah sometimes it's three months

they do love island twice a year now

yeah you don't get to a million

followers before there's a new sexy eu

on the show

you know and what does that take to

i guess to in some degrees to to

reinvent yourself through

as the world changes as platforms change

to stay

relevant to you know what does that take

i

have no desire to remain relevant i

don't

care i will just continue to follow my

passions

and i i recognized uh the power of

platform

when i was 18 when some

random kid's mum stopped me on the

street and said you're a role model for

my son and i hated there for it

and then i realized i have no choice in

the matter and

the minute i realized that regardless of

how i feel people are going to look at

me because i have a platform

i understood the power of that platform

and that started a thinking process that

made me

desperate to get out of entertainment

and get into documentary because i felt

as though

with that amount of eyeballs i should

have something to say

and that's why i think documentaries

have naturally led on to me becoming a

writer director and filmmaker

and using art to actually say something

and

everything that i do now speaks to my

purpose

quick one so many of you who are joining

the huel family and becoming a hooligan

as we call it

and starting your fuel journey ask me

what my favorite flavors are and i've

been

quite i guess contradictory in the

podcast historically because

as he will introduce new products i get

new

favorite flavors and so here in front of

me if you're watching this online on

youtube

you'll see my favorite three products

that i literally don't can't imagine

living without at the moment so you have

the berry flavor ready to drink which

was my original favorite i have that for

convenience

that then was replaced by the banana

flavor which is my

favorite and now and so that's for

convenience day today

my favorite flavor as it relates to my

gym fitness regime is the salted caramel

powder

super low in calories all of your

vitamins and minerals

and 20 grams of protein in 100 calories

which is

outstanding um so these are my favorite

three products if you're going to try

huel

and you've got the same palette as me

start here

that's my advice that journey you've

described over

you know 30 odd years and the the cycles

and the

staying you know being at a point now

where you can still do what you want on

a big platform

there must have been a ton of failure

through that journey and people don't

talk about that because that doesn't

make for good instagram posts

typically you know like the day you get

rejected from the audition or whatever

yeah

what are the some of the critical

moments in your journey where you

encountered failure or rejection

and you had that sort of mental

conversation with yourself to figure out

what the hell this means

and what we do next um i

uh have done a lot of therapy and i'm

really thankful for it i started in my

20s and now in my uh my late 30s

um i understand the importance of

getting to know your shadow and uh

my current therapist i've been with for

a while now is an incredible human being

who

has given me new tools for the tool belt

i'm using the language i love this

i'm using the language and um just some

of the things that he's given me

have really helped me to understand me

at my worst

and one of the big triggers for me is

when my

character is questioned and i've always

struggled with the idea of people

getting me

wrong or thinking that my intentions

aren't pure

and i had a situation um a few years ago

now where i said something publicly that

offended a lot of people

and my argument was no no but i didn't

mean that

i didn't mean that and what i came to

realize was

your intentions mean nothing if you hurt

people

and in sitting with the community that i

offended deeply which breaks my heart

because my first ever mentor anna cher

who gave me my career in

in television it's from that same

community as well

and i learned and have learned so much

about that community and that faith

um and i felt as though i let so many

people down

and in having those conversations and

understanding that bro it's not actually

about you

it's about knowing the power of your

platform

understanding that you have a

responsibility when you open your mouth

because

you've worked so long that people listen

to you now bro

and respecting the fact that regardless

of what your intention is

if you hurt people you have to behave

accordingly and that was a huge moment

of failure for me

that i have learned so much from and

that i am

uh i'm proud of the lessons that came

from it

and those lessons i think have set me up

in such a way that

i'm excited about my future because

regardless of everything i've done i

feel as though i'm only really getting

started now

and everything that has happened feels

like practice in a way

so i'm gonna ask these questions because

i i'm scared that at some point i'm on

dragon's den now

i i have a podcast where i speak my mind

and i'm gonna say some [ __ ] at some

point

i've said to my team before i'm like i

know at some point i'm going to say some

[ __ ] that

is going to get me in trouble something

that i didn't mean or something off the

cuff or whatever you want to say didn't

mean again to your point it doesn't

necessarily matter but

um if i meant it or not what my

intentions were but

can you talk to me and we're kind of

talking about like cancer culture here

we're talking about

you know um someone that has a platform

that's speaking their mind that's

is using words in various ways um

so you're talking you're you're

referencing there there were some

comments made people there was an uproar

within the jewish community what was

your mental

journey from the second you you said

those comments

to where you are now can you give me

like a little bit of the journey of like

you see the uproar yeah is the initial

feeling of like

you don't get me that's not what i meant

absolutely yeah and then there's is

there anger there is there this

and then there's no anger it's just

disappointment because you know better

it feels as though it's the biggest

thing that's happening anywhere in the

world to anyone

and it really isn't but the bottom line

is

that you have caused offense to people

that

you care about you have working

relationships with people and so on and

so forth and

there's a lot of vanity that kicks in

hence me saying what i said about you

know you feeling that

it's the biggest thing because suddenly

your entire world is made up of people

who are either disappointed

or uh let down or angry with you and

rightly so um and

you just have to sit in it you just have

to sit in it and make those difficult

phone calls

and also be willing to learn and

understand that you were wrong

and i think when you are at your core

a good person which i believe i am when

someone tells you you're not

oh it's really difficult to get your

head around

but leaning into that and like i said

getting to know your shadow

um understanding why that's such a

trigger understanding what that is

setting off for you in terms of

things that may have happened in the

past etc um

it's uh it's a process that you kind of

have to go through that gets really

really dark and difficult and then you

come out the other side saying okay

i'm i'm proud of that den like i'll

never forget actually and this isn't

this is a horrible clan name drop but um

uh daniel kahlua said to me that um

actually off the bat like he and i had a

conversation about this whole situation

and he said bro um there's a reason that

golf balls have dents in them

i was like what do you mean he said well

you know golf balls with dents go

further

and i was like yeah and kalu was so

right you know

um i learned so much in that situation

that it

weirdly strengthened my relationships

with a lot of people from that community

and also my knowledge is better and my

knowledge of self is better in terms of

how i manage myself in complicated

moments

this idea of the shadow getting to know

your shadow i find that so fascinating

it's good stuff in it yeah it's really

good i've had that expression before

um yeah well i wish i came up with it

but i'm gonna pretend i did

but it's just knowing it's knowing what

your triggers are

knowing yourself at your worst and being

comfortable with it you know i

i can proudly say that i can't

there's very little that could happen to

me now that

i don't have something in place to help

me

navigate it you know i i so i've been

having this conversation with one of my

best friends

and he's i'm going to say the context

because i think because you've had

you've been through the therapy maybe

you can offer some advice sure

he was saying to me the other day that

he is so easily triggered in the moment

by certain things he thinks it's because

he used to get bullied when he was

younger on the playground

but for example if someone was to say

that he was wrong or present evidence

which proved he was wrong

or his romantic partner who he's i'm

currently with

were to get in a little bit of a tif

with him it's kind of like this red mist

and he can't control it and then ten

minutes later i don't know why i don't

know why i do that yeah yeah

how did how did you find out what those

triggers were and you said you've got

something in place to deal with it

what is what is that because he was like

in the moment when i'm

sat with my girlfriend at dinner yeah

and the trigger goes

if i walk off that's storming off if i

go silent that's sulking

so what the [ __ ] am i supposed to do

yeah um well it's gonna sound ridiculous

but

listening is really difficult when you

feel as though you're being challenged

and nine times out of ten any conflict

that i've ever had hasn't

actually been about me so to have

the resolve to shut the [ __ ] up

and listen sometimes allows you to get

through the things that are triggering

or annoying or make you angry or

frustrating

and get to the heart of what something

what's actually being said and why

and then when you get to that it just

becomes so much easier because most of

the time it's not actually about you

you know maybe something you've said or

done is triggering to the person that

you really care about you sat across the

table from you

and if you're willing to get beyond the

fact that they're saying something that

in the moment makes you angry

you can actually move forward together

in a way that just didn't exist before

the the thing that's jumping in and

that's it's

it's commanding your brain to try and

win or to go for victory or self-defense

though

yeah that you know that can come from

the playground that can come from a

comment your dad made you when you were

four or

whatever so especially if you're someone

who has come from nothing and has

succeeded yeah you know it's you against

the world for a huge chunk of that you

know

earlier stage it's very easy to need to

win

everything in life especially arguments

but most of the time winning an argument

actually ends up putting you backwards

because what you described there is i'm

from what i understood is

ego yes you have to build and i

genuinely believe this too especially

because i was a very young entrepreneur

in rooms with

you know people that were not the same

skincare as me and three times my age

when i was first pitching my

my ideas and at some point you have to

develop a sense of like

huge confidence and self-belief which

has to kind of

flirt with having a big ego because

i promise you like as you'll probably

know um i don't want to speak for you so

i'm saying probably there

people will try and [ __ ] with you

especially if you're they i mean of

course because everyone's trying to win

in their own little personal war

especially if you're an outlier yeah if

you are the t-1000

yeah people really want to figure out

how they can break you

yeah and some people get off on that

yeah um

and i'm sure you've experienced that i

certainly have but

i don't know uh in my experience

a lot of the time when i find those that

that conflict where i find people trying

to push buttons

it doesn't take much thought to

recognize where it's coming from

right and most of the time it's not

about you i mean books like

uh ego is the enemy or you know uh start

with why like they're really or

leaders leaders eat last yeah the simon

says um

that's a great one for ego um i i sort

of learned a lot from that about how to

lead and

also what true leadership can do

and that sort of unnatural thing

of not being submissive but allowing

someone

to find their answers with your guidance

as opposed to you telling them

is so powerful because it just makes the

bond so much stronger

you said i read that you wrote that you

had what part of your therapy sessions

was to really understand your

issue with father figures and the

sort of tricky relationship you had with

father figures yeah yeah

uh there was a disappointment that i

felt even as a a young age

in that i didn't have the perfect dad at

home

or at least a dad that i felt that i

deserved as a kid because i was a good

kid i was

i was working i was doing well at school

i was clinging to my sisters like

i i thought i was a good kid and i felt

that i deserved a different kind of

dad at home especially someone as

someone who was so obsessed with tv you

know

i'm looking at uncle phil going why

can't i have what will and carlton have

you know i want an uncle phil um

and in going to some of the houses of

kids that i was going to school with and

seeing how their dads fathered them it

made me

um disappointed that i didn't have that

at home but

i've spoken about this before and this

is a book that i've been working on

uh called bits of dad um and i was

incredibly fortunate

um to have bits of dad um

because of what my mother invested in me

so my mother

taught me from quite a young age to

recognize what a good man

looked like which helped me pick the

right friends and ultimately pick the

right mentors and people to follow

so i say bits of dad because

i would look up to and ask questions of

mark who worked at the play center

at the after school club at my school

and he would help me with

sort of dealing with some of the

dynamics in my friendships at school

and then i had billy mcqueen who i call

my tv dad a producer who i met when i

was 12 years old at disney

who would answer any professional

question that i needed help or guidance

with

and then there were these other men who

helped me with self-discipline or money

or even

football or even you know conversations

about women and relationships

and amalgamated they made the perfect

father but i had the bits

and the bits were enough for me

so when you're going to therapy was it a

question you're opposing to your

therapist about how you get a better

relationship with father figures or was

it

a um was it about authority was it about

bro we've had so many conversations

about dad i couldn't tell you what it

was specifically but

i think just knowing that

being a good man is such an important

thing for me and my future

and knowing that i didn't have quote

unquote good men at home

uh has always been something that i've

revisited and tried to unpack and

understand

and um it's something that's in the

front of my mind in a lot of ways as i

said you know that so many of my friends

are now becoming fathers seeing how they

parent

and also seeing the decisions that they

make and now becoming a godfather for

the first time you know i'm not dad

i'm not a jace you're saying so i could

yeah yeah yeah you know you you go

around you pick up you change nappy

sometimes i haven't changed teddy's

nephew just yet because he does massive

um but um knowing that when that kid

gets a little bit bigger

i can help sam this guy who's a mate of

mine who i love dearly

and maybe the bits that he can't do with

the bits that he doesn't want to do

and i offer a different perspective as

well i

i one of the really sort of fascinating

point i've just become a godfather again

congratulations time last week

so that's and i'm particularly close to

the dad one of my best friends worked

for me for seven odd years so i feel and

it's also

the child is um so my friend is the dad

is is is black and

the the mum is white so the the kid is

probably going to look a little bit

a little bit like me so i feel a greater

sense of responsibility it feels like my

first

my first real kid um there was something

you said

a quote where you talked about really

understanding how precious your time was

and the the actual quote is no one like

me has had this opportunity

so i'd be a fool not to make the most of

it i really want to understand that like

driving force within

within you that's that's um still

driving you today and i i've sat here

with so many

um successful people so many successful

uh black men

um i've analyzed myself and it tends to

be a bit of a cocktail sometimes your

story from the council estate

sheds some light on that yeah and you

know liverpool wrote that really shed

some light on it as well

um and the bit we talked about being

underestimated and

you know feeling sometimes like the

outlier in certain rooms yeah

um but that thing about time and that

sense of responsibility

you speak to is because you saw that

word and you're right that was

almost your feeling of responsibility

yeah

it's really complicated and

i think the idea of responsibility comes

from understanding that i was one of the

first people to

uh be given a platform either on prime

time or on children's tv and so on and

so forth and

because i've always been myself

[Music]

regardless of who i was at that time and

you know having been on tv for so many

years

that version of me has continued to

progress you know as a teenager

presenting kids tv with cane row and you

know

uh air force ones and the mecca tracks

your academic sweatsuit

knowing that i'm not just wearing this

to my dressing room i'm wearing this on

camera

says something it says something i'm on

the bbc

and i'm dressed like the boys that you

cross the street from that was like

i understood even at 18 that that was a

thing

that meant something and subsequently

you know i've had kids come up to me

over the years saying i grew up with you

on tv and

bro i loved watching you because we

dressed the same we talked the same

and you were doing that and it just made

me feel like i existed

and when people say things like that to

strangers it's so powerful

and i assume that that might be the case

even as a teenager

and i'm so glad that i was right because

that desire to be me whatever room i'm

in

has served me well and that's gone from

presenting

kids tv right the way through to writing

and directing now like

i've just completed my first feature

film pirates

uh which will be out this year and i'm a

producer i'm a writer and i'm a director

in this movie about three

men of color men 18 year olds right

and i employed the crew

i am sat there in interview rooms

interviewing heads of department

deciding who is going to ultimately set

the mood

for this thing that really matters to me

because as a writer director it starts

with the script

but as a director you're on set and

you've got 150 200 people working for

you

and if you don't lead in the right way

they'll decide

what this environment is going to be and

the big concern for me was i'm looking

at

three versions of me i've got a moroccan

kid a ghanaian kid and a west indian kid

who were 18 who were leading their first

movie

i remember being 18 desperately trying

to get auditions for movies and not

getting them

it was a very different landscape then

so i understand the responsibility that

i have today

to put on for those guys for redder for

elliott for jordan

it's my responsibility to put on for

them and create an environment for them

in a way that just wouldn't exist

if the man at the top of the tree didn't

intrinsically understand them

because nobody understood me coming up

that's where the responsibility comes

you know so this is a tough question to

answer because i would find it

tough to answer but i'll answer it as

well if you want me to but

what what what is the best and in your

own self-assessment

what is the best and worst part of your

leadership style

um i think the it's easy to say the best

isn't it

i'm great okay let's start with worst i

think the worst part of my leadership

style

is that i want everybody to have a good

time all the time

oh okay interesting i do please explain

desperately well

when you're responsible for the

environment when you pick the people

if it goes left or if you pick the wrong

person it's on you

and it's your fault and that feels [ __ ]

when you get it wrong

and it affects people that you care

about that feels terrible

so i desperately want everything to work

out

in an environment where i'm responsible

you know so i think that that's probably

one of the biggest failures

that i hopefully will be better at in

the next project you know

to be really transparent sometimes you

have to replace people midway through a

shoot

and it's knowing when is the right time

and also having the balls to say

you don't quite get what we're trying to

do so thank you for what you've done but

your

your services are no longer required you

know that's difficult

yeah especially if you empowered them to

begin with yeah and to take it away is

tough

um i think the thing that i'm good at

is people management i'm good with

people i'm good

on a one-to-one basis as well as with

the group um

and i think the thing that i'm best at

is understanding my actors because i

once was one

and knowing that you know they just want

to do a good job

and are individuals some might require

talking to before a take some might

require being left alone

some might require some coaching or some

confidence boosting some might require

being told to rein it in

you know i with pirates

i decided that i wanted to make sure

that my three central guys

were a little family before we even got

on set so

i contacted one of my mentors um richard

curtis write director who

uh wrote uh notting hill uh

love actually four wins in a funeral um

he and his wife emma

uh freud who are amazing amazing couple

uh i met through comic relief which is

also something that they do i mean

they're kind of amazing uh when i was 18

i met them through comic relief and

they've been in my life ever since

and when i started writing off the back

of spending new year's at

one of his places i said look could i

would it be possible to take one of your

homes by the sea so i can go and write

there and they're like absolutely and

they've given me

they've opened their doors to me for me

to go and write at their

one of their their homes and the desk

that i i wrote

a few drafts of pirates is the death

that richard wrote notting hill on

so i'm rubbing my desk come on give me

some of this good stuff come on

um and prior to shooting

i the guys allowed me to i asked them

and they were absolutely fine with the

fact they

actively encouraged me to bring the boys

to the house for the weekend

we spent the weekend by the sea cooking

together watching coming of age movies

talking about the movies uh very much

about

friendship and coming of age but it's

also set in 1999

with a whole uk garage backdrop so the

entire music in the movie

is ukg and the boys are desperately

trying to drive from north london to

south london and the peugeot 205 to get

into twice as nice

on new year's eve 1999. that's the movie

it takes place over one day right

so you know we got like spoonie on the

phone or we got like the heartless crew

on the phone and the boys were just sort

of learning about garage and

they were also forming these

relationships and when we got on set

everyone was like oh so you guys have

been friends for years right and i'm

like no we just you know

just hung out and in now we're at the

point where we started doing screenings

people have watched it and they're like

the chemistry between the boys is unreal

and i say

all of this to say that the thing i'm

most proud of

is that i recognize what is necessary to

get the best

out of my actors and as a result i'm

incredibly proud of what they've done

i'm just really excited for them because

i know that

they're about to have very exciting

careers one of my actors red-eyes a

moroccan kid

and he's amazing he turned 21 while we

were shooting well during our break we

got broken up for kovit we got stopped

mid-shoot and we went back thankfully

and finished the movie but

red is this young incredible uh kid from

uh from morocco

london moroccan descent and he said to

me like in the audition i was like

you're

so naturally funny why haven't i seen

you do more comedy

and he said mate i only ever get the

the the child of terrorist the young

about to be turned terrorist role i only

ever get

those parts he said i've never read for

comedy ever because i'm always reading

for the same thing

which is why when this came across my

desk i've done everything i can to be

good at it because i don't want to just

play a terrorist

i'm more than that and for him to be in

this film and to be

so funny it's just the most amazing

feeling ever

to give somebody that platform you've

created so many critically acclaimed

amazing documentaries right and they're

so diverse in their

subject matter thank you yeah no just

i was going through yeah yeah it's

really just like it's

so diverse but i i wanted i wanted to

know of all and this might be like

picking your favorite kid or something

but

of all the documentaries and all the

moments and those those those stories

that you've told

is there something where you think this

is why i started

man that's so tough because there's

something in every film yeah genuinely

yeah it might even be the lesson that

you know you made a crap a crap

documentary and you knew it going in but

you did it anyway

there's been so many amazing lessons so

i think the thing that comes to mind

most whenever i'm asked this question

is um the south african preacher i made

a documentary called the millionaire

preacher

um and there was this guy

called uh umboro who is still active as

a preacher i mean he recently i think he

got arrested

for selling pictures uh to his followers

uh that he took when he went up to

heaven

so he recently i think has been arrested

for that i'm not entirely sure what's

going on with him now but anyway at the

time when we went to make the

documentary

with him he had a congregation of about

10 000 people and he was a

multi-millionaire several rolls-royces

you name the car he had

it mansions the lot and his entire

congregation was made of poor black

people

and he fell out with me

because he didn't think i respected him

enough

because i came to the film as somebody

who isn't particularly religious but has

a religious background i grew up in a

pentecostal christian church

my stepfather was muslim i converted to

islam when i was a kid

and in my teens i decided that faith

really wasn't for me in that

context so i'm looking at this man

thinking you are

literally exchanging people's faith for

their

pay packet and i was disgusted by him

by everything that he represented before

i'd even spoken to him

before i'd even begun to unearth who he

was and what got him to that place

and it was an incredible learning

experience when he decided that he

didn't want to film with me anymore and

you know his armed guards

were sort of like you know had their

fingers on the trigger as

i was trying to force the point that he

should keep talking to me and he was

just not interested

i i came to realize that

it's not about me the reason i was there

was not to have a personal experience

the reason i was there was to make a

film that could potentially

shed light on an issue or teach

something to people across the uk that i

would never meet and ultimately the

world as the film went on

on netflix and i had a similar situation

when i made a film about

being young black and gay i have a

family member who i'm incredibly close

to who is a gay man

and um his coming out was this

incredible moment for me in terms of

realizing

how difficult his life had been up until

that point

because of what he worried about because

of what he thought

might happen um and i wanted to make a

film about that

and cut a long story short ultimately

the film for me didn't feel as though it

nailed it

and i was really really disappointed and

uh the production company that i worked

with at the time would always do

screenings of the film as the films as

they went out so we went to

the exec's house and we're in his house

and we're in the kitchen watching it and

the credits roll and as the credits are

rolling everyone's sort of high-fiving

each other going ah we killed it we're

trending on twitter this is brilliant

everybody loves the film

and i'm just like that isn't the film

that i had in my head that doesn't speak

to the

the specificity of the experience in the

way that i wanted it to

anyway point being i went into my dm

on all the social platforms i was on at

the time and every

single mailbox was filled with messages

from young men and women

saying we saw that you were making this

film

so we purposely watched it with our

parents and i've just come out to my mum

because of the film you made i was able

to have a conversation with my dad

because of some of the things that were

happening on screen thank you for giving

us that opportunity thank you for

opening the door

and i felt like an absolute idiot in

that moment

because i was so busy worrying about

being missed our

program maker and making this film that

was perfect in my mind's eye

whereas in reality the conversation that

was being had had never been had before

let alone on the bbc and as a result it

actively changed lives

of people watching it literally changed

the lives of people that messaged me

wasn't about me and i felt really

embarrassed myself

it's really interesting that balance of

it being

not about you but it comes to me

yeah do you know what i mean it's that

it's that yeah it was it came it was

birthed out of your own personal

experience and your desire to tell a

very important story which had clearly

moved you emotionally

enough to commit your life a portion of

your life to telling that story so it

but but also i completely understand

what you're saying which is like the

outcome is not about you

i guess yeah um the experience is yours

yeah but the experience that people take

from the content you will never own

i will never know how much what i do

affects people or doesn't

there's someone out there right now

who's seen everything i've never done

and i'll never meet them

similarly there's someone who i'll bump

into tomorrow who's just seen one film

and will have a really important

conversation with me

you know on a lot of levels for both of

us potentially i'm not responsible for

what happens with what is created once

it's out in the world

and being comfortable with that is quite

difficult

but also quite freeing in a lot of ways

quick one as you might know i've

recently teamed up with a new partner

for the podcast

called my energy and they're best known

for their pioneering renewable energy

products

but they're also doing so much to try

and help all of us navigate some of

these

alienating um complicated terms as it

relates to sustainable energy

whether that's the term les or ules or

clean

air zones cars you can and can't drive

in london it can be a lot to understand

but these guys

are making it simple they have tons of

helpful guides explanations

q and a's and videos on their website

that make all of this stuff make sense

to

neanderthal idiots like me and they sell

some of the most amazing renewable

energy products whether you're buying an

electric car

or you're trying to find sustainable

ways to run your home

check it out myenergy.com they're an

awesome company round by an

awesome awesome founder one of the real

uk british success stories

and uh i couldn't be more excited to be

a partner with them and let's talk about

money then

so you mentioned money there what role