sting of the past
RIDLEY ROAD SHEDS LIGHT ON A DARK CORNER OF BRIT HISTORY...
PATH OF RESISTANCE
It’s 1962, and naïve young hairdresser Vivien Epstein (newcomer Aggi O’Casey) has followed her boyfriend Jack (Tom Varey, No Offence) from Manchester down to London. She finds Jack engaged in undercover work with the 62 Group: Jewish street fighters forcefully resisting the rise of British fascism. Horrified by the growth of far-right extremism less than two decades after the end of the war, she decides to join him. “Vivien turns out to be really good at it,” reveals O’Casey. “She cares so much about the cause, she’s a good actor and, because she’s a woman in a violent, male sphere, she is underestimated and can slip through the cracks.”
MARSAN MISSION
Alongside O’Casey and Varey are Rory Kinnear as real-life National Socialist Movement leader Colin Jordan, Rita Tushingham as Vivien’s suggestible, vulnerable landlady, and Eddie Marsan as Soly Malinovsky, the no-nonsense (fictional) leader of the 62 Group. “Getting yelled at by Eddie Marsan all day made me so happy,” laughs O’Casey. “It was thrilling! He’s got such a huge presence – Vivien was meant to be terrified, but I couldn’t stop grinning…”
SEE CHANGE
Adapted by actor/writer Sarah Solemani (Him & Her, Bridget Jones’s Baby) from Jo Bloom’s novel, Ridley Road captures a city and a society in the midst of radical transformation. “One shot that was really important to me was a rag-andbone man in a horse and cart crossing the frame as a little Mini Cooper scoots past,” says Solemani. “It’s that sense of emerging from one place and heading somewhere else and the feeling of loss that can foster – losing our country, our culture, our race, our masculinity, whatever it is – and blaming ‘them’. I wanted to show what it feels like when rapid change is happening and you cannot make sense of it, then someone makes sense of it for you – how good people can come to bad conclusions.”
MOUNTING URGENCY
Even in the wake of far-right marches through London, the sight of ‘Sieg Heils’ and swastikas in Trafalgar Square is necessarily shocking, and was perfectly legal before the 1965 Race Relations Act.
Yet with divisions in society widening and prominent political figures stoking hatred with the support of wealthy backers, it is a sadly resonant story.
“I read the book and knew I wanted to adapt it when I was pregnant with my first child, who turns eight this year,” Solemani recalls. “The tragedy is that, with every year that passed, the themes of the show became more and more relevant. It became urgent to get it out.”
CALL TO ACTION
“Ridley Road is an act of tribute to those involved within that movement and that struggle,” says Kinnear. “As we’ve seen with Black Lives Matter, that sense of not just being unracist, but being antiracist is so important. Everyone has to be more front-foot, to step up for people whose lives are made more difficult by the way contemporary society is set up. How much energy are you prepared to give to the people who need it the most? Who’s going to take action to make sure this country maintains decency?”
RIDLEY ROAD STARTS ON BBC ONE THIS MONTH.