HERE COMES THE WOLF

WORDS & INTERVIEW

BETH BENNETT

*This interview was conducted on 6th July 2023, before the SAG-AFTRA strike had begun.

With BBC’s new hit police drama on the horizon, we thought it was only right to spend the morning with leading man Ukweli Roach. We caught up with him at London’s Saatchi Gallery and found out all about the juicy new role he couldn’t wait to sink his teeth into.

EJ So not only are you an actor, you’re a choreographer as well, right?

UR I started, I suppose, performing when I was young. I always knew I wanted to act from about fifteen but dance was something that I loved doing too. So I started taking dance classes when I was about sixteen. I’d actually started with tap dance back when I was a kid which helped with playing football because I loved playing sports as well so I was eager to pick it up again. Then I fell into commercial work while I was studying acting at RADA, and I was dancing for artists like Mariah Carey and at The Brit Awards.

EJ And I suppose that they go hand-inhand, really both acting and dancing. Looking at your performances and even in how you’ve been moving today for these photos, you have a distinct grasp of physicality that really comes across in your characters. Do you think that dancing has helped your acting career?

UR Absolutely. I think all actors should do some form of dance and that dancers should get acting training too. It’s that kinetic intelligence, knowing how you move and altering it naturally – it’s vital for both. But for me? It’s just dance and movement all over. I love parkour. I like fight choreography. I like how it all informs each other. When you watch Jackie Chan doing his own stunts, all that intelligent movement is insane. I admire it, just something about that complete control.

EJ Having that physical control, was it something that you leaned on in Wolf? Your character Jack Caffery has quite a troubled past and you can really see how he carries it with him in how he moves.

UR Jack is desperately trying to solve the mystery of his missing brother who disappeared when Jack was eight. It’s formed the direction of his whole life from choosing to become a detective to the complicated relationship he has with what being a part of the force means for his history. He’s literally got it on his shoulders, weighing down on him, so it affects him in every way. The traumas, the saviour complex, it all makes him such an interesting character to move with.

EJ And how did you tap into Jack’s obsessive and flawed nature?

UR It was a lot of preparation, to be honest. I worked on a system called ‘multidimensional character choices’ that was designed by a friend of mine called Toby Bukhari. And that’s how we really broke down all of my instincts for the role and the character of Jack. We did some in-depth character building to really establish what’s on the surface and then what’s in the undercurrent to Jack. So then that informs everything. From the way he walks to how he squints his eyes or certain intonations.

Having watched it back now, it’s so rewarding to see that all of that work we put in before filming started to come out exactly how we intended. Because it was all subconscious by the time the cameras were rolling. I didn’t realise how ingrained it all was until I was watching it back and seeing everything we’d done in each session.

EJ Sort of evoking the Stanisslavski method as well, I guess?

UR Yeah, of course. Like you have to undo your own movements to move how the character would. But I also think that character building is quite Meisner-ish as well because we’d do a lot of repetition work on facts about Jack and infusing those facts with what an audience would see. It was a bit of an amalgamation of all these creative systems. What was important is that I didn’t forget my instinct because that’s the reason I got the job, they saw something in me that they wanted in Jack so that was the gravitational pull for everything. I didn’t want to completely strip away what I felt was right, it was building on the information in the script and what we’d developed to really become him.

And it was exciting because, well, the complexity of him is one of the reasons why I wanted to tackle this project in the first place. He’s a policeman but he’s willing to break the law himself, he’s willing to use criminal tactics because he’s so set on finding the truth out about what happened to his brother. It’s enticing for any actor, I think.

EJ So looking beyond Jack, I mean the show is fantastic. It has these two narratives that are running distantly beside each other that begin to ramp up this tension and then when they finally, inevitably, collide it’s in quite a brutal way. It’s a lot more visceral and almost poetic in the delivery than what you would usually expect from a BBC police drama. When you’ve got the scripts and you’re cast in the leading role, what was it like to know that you were going to bring this all to life?

UR That was what really enticed me to the script. It isn’t sanitised at all. It’s honest, brutal, and it’s not safe, especially in this time we’re in. It was something that could have been scary to a lot of production companies and broadcasters but the combined bravery of everyone was exciting. He’s this terribly flawed character that, you know, we’re not trying to make him a white knight or some kind of here, he’s almost villainous at times but he’s real. I loved that we got to play out reality and all of these complications, and all the blood and gore.

As an actor, that’s what you want, really. That’s the good stuff. You can sink your teeth into and make it your own, you break it and throw it around and just…have fun. It’s where all the minerals are.

EJ Do you think that this role has impacted how you see the world?

UR I don’t think it’s truly impacted it but I think it’s made me more comfortable in myself, if that makes sense? I understand myself at a deeper level because I’ve got to understand Jack. Being able to have the visibility of those elements in me is definitely going to stay with me for sure.

Wolf is airing now on BBC One and available to stream on BBC iPlayer.