Mr Loverman star Sharon D Clarke: ‘As a Black lesbian, I’m desperate for this story to be told’

Sharon D Clarke has one of those names: perhaps not instantly recognisable when you first hear it, but look up her acting credits and you’ll gasp: “Oh, it’s her!”

Sharon D Clarke is a three-time Olivier-Award-winner, bagging best actress in a supporting role in 2014, for The Amen Corner, best actress in a musical in 2019 (Caroline, Or Change) then, in 2020, the crème de la crème: best actress, for Death of a Salesman.

She’s part of the furniture on British television, too: you’ve probably seen her in Doctor Who, or Holby City, or Lost Boys & Fairies, or Red White & Royal Blue and on the big screen in Rocketman. 

But despite that lengthy CV, the way Clarke discusses her most recent role in the BBC’s new queer Caribbean drama Mr Loverman signifies that it might just be the most gratifying of her career.

She plays Carmel Walker, Antiguan Hackney resident and wistful wife of Barrington “Barry” Walker (The Walking Dead’s Lennie James) who, behind his sunny disposition, has a dark cloud hovering over him in the shape of a life-long secret: he’s in love with his best friend Morris De La Roux (Ariyon Bakare), with who he’s had a six-decade affair.

Carmel and Barry’s 50-year-long marriage began fruitfully, but, as with most things built on a foundation of lies – on both of their parts – it’s crumbling. Distrust lingers over their relationship like a bad smell. Barry wants to come out, Carmel is forlorn.

“This is a woman who has lost love. She loves Barry, has always loved Barry, has loved him since the day they were married. But that love is not reciprocated in that passionate way that makes her feel like a woman,” Clarke says. “She has shrunk, she’s a bereft woman. She’s lonely, woman is lonely as hell!”

Sharon D Clarke read Mr Loverman, the Bernardine Evaristo novel on which the series is based, “many moons ago,” she tells PinkNews on a video call, eventually, after a few technical hiccups on our end. “See, I’m not the only one where technology is not my friend,” she jests towards the four BBC PR handlers on the call with us. Clarke is chatting with us alongside her co-stars, James and Bakare.

She’s a warm presence. Ironically, she’s the sort of woman who, to nab a phrase from the internet gays, I’d come out to.

Clarke has her own “lovely, horrific coming out stories,” she says, plural – the point being that LGBTQ+ people spend their whole lives coming out to new people. She married writer and director Susie McKenna in 2008, on stage at the Hackney Empire theatre. LGBTQ+ representation has come a long way since then, but Mr Loverman covers untrodden ground.

“I’m desperate for this story to be told. I am a lesbian. I am from the Black community,” Clarke says. Pop quiz: name five, prime-time dramas that have included a queer person of colour from the Windrush generation coming out. You’ll need a while.

“It’s not something we’ve ever seen on screens. It’s truly an astonishing feat from the BBC and Fable Pictures, director Hong Khaou and writer Nathaniel Price. Older romance stories of all races and sexualities are like gold dust on mainstream TV, as are shows featuring “rich, encompassing, family stories about the Caribbean community.”

Instead of stepping tentatively around those side-lined stories, Mr Loverman throws them all against the wall, and they stick. “It’s all wrapped up in there, and it is all for the giving and the taking and we just hope people run with it,” Clarke adds.

Mr Loverman brims with the sort of historical, cultural and social sub-context you’d expect. Clarke grew up in Enfield, in North London, and describes walking into the Walkers’ house as like “walking into my childhood,” right down to the finest details, such as the glass pineapple perched on the living room bar. “I could smell it, feel it, touch it and taste it,” she insists.

The views on homosexuality that are still held by many in Caribbean communities are present too, with one of Carmel’s friends describing gay men as “anti-men”.

Anti-LGBTQ+ colonial laws remain in place in some Caribbean countries: same-sex activity was only legalised in Antigua in 2022, and same-sex marriage is still not legal. Of course, illegality doesn’t equate to LGBTQ+ people not existing in those communities.

“I want people to know that this is not a fly-by-night thing. This is not a very small, tiny, half a per cent of our Caribbean community that have gay people within it,” Clarke says.

“So, for me to be able to be a part of this story, as someone who grew up in Britain and had no role model for that, had nothing to watch on television for that, had nothing to support me as a gay, Black woman growing up in the country… for me, it’s very important that this story is told and it’s out there for people to see and to contemplate and to relate to and to go: ‘Yes, that’s my story.’”

If Clarke seems fanatical about the role, it’s because she is. At a recent screening of Mr Loverman’s first two episodes, she recalled how desperate she was to get it.

“I was like: ‘I have to have this audition. I have to get it. I must get it. They have to give me the job’,” she said. She got the audition, but it took weeks to hear back, and she assumed the worst. “I was like ‘What is wrong with these people?” she added with mock fury. Then, to rip-roaring laughter from the audience: “Who are they getting? If they’ve gone to America for some b**ch!”

While the series hinges around Barry’s momentous decision, Carmel makes a choice or two also. She’s a complex character, in her autumn years and still searching for fulfilment. “There is that feeling of betrayal, that you’ve never really had someone’s heart and so that makes you less than you are,” Clarke reflects.

It’s a thread that runs through all the characters, where their “happiness depends on someone else and their choices. That’s a hard way to live your life”. There’s a moment towards the end of series where, while getting a massage, Carmel gets to experience the kind of physical touch that she’s desperately been seeking. It’s a revelation for her.

While filming, Clarke had something of a revelation herself: it’s more than possible for diverse shows such as Mr Loverman to exist, but also for those making it to be diverse. She was six when she started working in entertainment, and “never in my life, in my working career, have I worked on a set that has been truly and totally diverse”, until this one. 

“All too often, when I walk on the set, I’m the only Black person,” she adds. “Not on this job.”

Of all the glowing testimonies on her résumé, it makes sense why she speaks of this one so fondly. “When it’s done in that way, with such love and such uplift and such talent and expertise, that’s what you get,” she says. “You get gorgeousness.”

Mr Loverman is available to stream on BBC iPlayer. The first two episodes air on BBC One at 9pm on Monday (14 October), followed by a double bill airing the following three weeks.

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