Mr Loverman stars Lennie James and Ariyon Bakare: ‘No one should be forced to come out’

At a recent screening of his new queer BBC drama Mr Loverman, Lennie James was caught off guard by a “lovely” comment from an audience member.

The young chap, who was gay, explained that he didn’t feel he could speak to older LGBTQ+ people about sexuality; he didn’t think there were many queer elders, in fact.

The gay young man said he didn’t feel able to speak to older LGBTQ+ people about sexuality, he didn’t think there were many queer elders, in fact. Watching Mr Loverman just might have opened his eyes.

“If our show does that to one person, if it sparks one conversation, it was worthwhile,” James tells PinkNews.

The actor, best-known as apocalypse survivor Morgan James in The Walking Dead and its spin-off, Fear The Walking Dead, plays Barry Walker, in the BBC adaptation of Bernardine Evaristo’s 2013 novel.

It’s another story about survival, but of a very different kind. Barry, a gregarious Antiguan gent living in Hackney, loves his wife of 50 years Carmel (Sharon D Clarke), despite her indignation at his rum-swilling ways. He loves his daughters Donna and Maxine, his status in the tight-knit community, and being suited and booted – even for breakfast. “It was worthwhile not least for the suits I got to wear,” James jokes.

But below the sheen of social acceptance, Barry is harbouring a long-kept secret: he’s having an affair with his best friend, Morris De La Roux (Ariyon Bakare).

As he approaches his 75th birthday, Barry has a choice to make: commit to his true love and lose his family, or keep up appearances and lose Morris.

At first, James’s focus was staying true to the book and honouring the vision set out by screenwriter Nathaniel Price and director Hong Khaou. “What effect it might have in the world”, such as the impact on the young man at the screening, “was something a bit farther down the road”.

But, put simply, Mr Loverman is ground-breaking telly. The charity Opening Doors, which supports LGBTQ+ people over the age of 50, has previously described representation of older queer people as “almost non-existent”. But representation of older, queer, Black members of the ill-treated Windrush generation? That’s absolutely non-existent.

Bakare, who appeared in His Dark Materials and Good Omens, “knew this story had impact,” considering there is still a “stigma” towards queer people in Caribbean communities.

We see that stigma at play in episode one when, at the dinner table after church, Carmel’s friends gossip about an acquaintance they believe to be a lesbian. “If woman was meant to lie down with woman, then God would have given woman a penis,” one says earnestly.

Even Barry displays traits of internalised homophobia, referring to himself as “barrysexual”, and other gay men as “poofters”. It’s a truthful portrayal, given that colonial laws banning same-sex marriage still remain in some Caribbean countries. Same-sex activity only became legal in Antigua in 2022, and many Antiguans still disapprove of homosexuality.

Both James and Bakare appear ever-so-slightly reticent about overhyping Mr Loverman as a queer love story. That’s despite the fact they had to kiss in the first scene they shot together (there are also several tender bedroom moments).

“My effort in playing Barry was finding [a] dynamic in a man who loves the love of his life passionately, but doesn’t believe that reflects on him in any other way other than he loves Morris,” James said at a recent preview of the eight-part series. For Bakare, the most “touching and sentimental quality” of the book and TV script was how it explored that “everybody should be allowed to come out when they want to – no one should be forced”.

He goes on to say: “We’re so in this idea that we’ve got to know people’s sexuality. We’re so in this idea of what they have to be, who they have to be. We compartmentalise every person, by gender, by race, by sexuality, all this stuff. But, sometimes, that causes more trauma inside the person.”

Bakare appreciates that Barry ultimately makes his own decision about his life and identity. “Anyone who’s watching and worried about: ‘Oh, I’ve got to do this because everyone wants me to do it’, no, you do [it] when you’re ready to do it. It’s your time. It’s your moment, your life.”

Both actors see Mr Loverman’s main theme as tackling the existential crisis of, as Bakare puts it, “when do you take control of your life?” The thread that holds all the lead characters together is the fear of where their lives are headed. “It’s obvious in Barry. The fear of losing what he feels he’s built, not least his children and reputation,” James says. As a father of three, he can imagine his character’s turmoil.

“Carmel’s fear that she speaks of [is] not being worthy, not being lovable, not being thought of as attractive enough. Morris’s fear [is] if this continues, what the rest of his life may look like. The fear of living in satellite to Barry, as opposed to living his own life.”

Bakare adds: “They’re in the evenings of their years, so there’s a moment when every one of them is asking: ‘Is this what I’ve got left? What do I do?’ You can’t do anything with the past. You’re going to do something with the future.”

However, it’s not necessarily Mr Loverman’s poignancy that drew them to their parts, although they were very drawn to them. “I contemplated killing people for this role,” James quipped recently. He’d been asked by a fan whether he’d been hesitant to take it, given it’s brazenly Black and queer, and what could now be deemed “woke”.

James isn’t gay, but has defended his right to play the character, saying he doesn’t believe in “blanket bans”, adding: “It’s not something I’m going to spend a huge amount of time justifying.” For Black actors though, such richly complex and true-to-life roles are scarce, let alone existing as part of a largely Black cast, in a prime-time slot on the BBC.

Bakare has, in the past, said: “We’ve all been championing them for years. We’ve looked for them, we’ve wanted them, we’ve always been fighting for them.

“When [something] like this hits you, you’re like: ‘OK, I’ve got to be on board with this even though I know everybody’s going to be standing [at] that bus stop going, ‘I want to get on that bus’. You’ve got to fight [for it].”

Clearly, it was a role worth fighting for. If James’s goal was to open just one mind with Mr Loverman, he achieved that with the queer man at the early screening. “I am looking forward to hearing from people on the other side of the conversations that our show may have emboldened, or encouraged, or allowed to have with people they care about and love,” he says.

Mr Loverman is available to stream on BBC iPlayer. The first two episodes air on BBC One on Monday (14 October) at 9pm.

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