THE FILLIES
IT’S an enthralling real-life cowboy story with a difference – not so much old Wild West as modern day Edgy East – and it stole Idris Elba’s heart.
Now an American inner-city riding club that helps keep black youngsters in a Philadelphita ghetto away from drugs and crime is set to gallop to worldwide fame on Netflix.
And Golden globe winner Idris, 48, today reveals he was so determined to learn to ride and star in Concrete Cowboy he battled through an allergy to horses.
“On the first full day of training, I was scoffing down antihistamines, because my eyes get swollen and my skin blotches out,” said the Luther star. “So that was the first learning curve for me, to be able to sit on a horse without crying my eyes out.”
Part of his determination to tell the story of the Fletcher Street Urban Riding Club – set up in Philly’s toughest neighbourhood by Ellis Ferrell in 1980 – is that it was recently threatened with closure.
“There has been a real miss-telling of history around black people, and horses and cowboys,” he said. “Now it feels apt to tell it.”
Idris stars as Harp, the ex-con dad of troubled teen Cole – played by Stranger Things star Caleb McLaughlin – who is going to the bad side until he discovers he shares his dad’s love of horse riding. The movie was filmed near the Fletcher Street club in the city’s Strawberry Mansion neighbourhood, with 10 of the 25 speaking roles based on real people – among them local hero Ellis.
Known as El Dog, the inspiration for the movie is now anxiously waiting to watch it. “Horses and kids keep me young,” says the 81-year-old. “As long as I got them, I’m successful.” Unlike Idris’s Harp, this “urban cowboy” has never been in trouble with the law – but his back story is just as colourful.
Raised by his gran on her farm in Tallahassee, Florida, he enjoyed their Saturday trips to the movies – especially to see Westerns.
“I loved Johnny Mack Brown, Bob Steele, and Gene Autry – all that riding,” he says.
But when it came to his childhood dream of owning a horse, Gran put her foot down.
“She wouldn’t buy me one because she said she couldn’t eat it. She raised cows,” says Ellis.
“So in order for me to learn to ride I had to break the bulls. I was doing that at eight years old. Then my friend had a horse and let me ride it. Man, I wanted me a horse so bad.”
In 1954, at 14, he moved to Philadelphia to live with his mum and stepdad, round the corner from Strawberry Mansion. The city streets then were still full of horses pulling transport. His cousin had some and Ellis got