FIVE MINUTES WITH... PAAPA ESSIEDU

From a run at The Old Vic to gracing the big screen in Alex Garland’s Men, it’s certainly been a busy time for Paapa Essiedu.

And now the Emmy and Bafta-nominated star, 31, is set to try his hand at time travel as the lead in Joe Barton’s action-thriller, The Lazarus Project.

A compelling watch, it’s sure to keep viewers on the edge of their seats. But just how did Essiedu fare starring in it? We hear more from the I May Destroy You actor himself...

WHAT IS THE LAZARUS PROJECT?

It is the brainchild of Joe Barton, one of our great screenwriters who wrote Giri/Haji and has been working on pretty much everything since then. I suppose at its heart it’s a love story set in a world where there’s a top-secret organisation who have got the ability to turn back time in order to prevent extinction level events from taking place. So for example: atomic bombs being dropped; worldwide viruses being spread, civil wars happening. They’ve got the ability to do a butterfly effecttype turning back of time, and then tinkering in order to stop those things happening.

WHO IS GEORGE?

George is an ordinary guy who has a genetic mutation that gives him the ability to be involved in that time tinkering process. He gets invited in to this organisation, but then something traumatic happens in his personal life. The show follows his journey of what he’s willing to do – with the great responsibility that he’s given – in order to either address his personal pain or look after the global issues of the world. What happens when you’re put in that position and you can look after number one, or you can look after everybody?

It’s kind of that thing of when you’ve got two trains on the train track and one of them one of them is gonna hit a baby, or one of them is gonna hit a truck full of people. It’s the so-called trolley problem in philosophy.

HOW DO YOU GET INTO THE HEADSPACE OF A GUY WITH POWERS?

Yeah, it’s interesting, because it’s slightly different from a Marvel-ly type superhero where I can fly, or I can shoot lasers out of my hands or whatever. There’s nothing actually remarkable about George himself apart from he’s one of

0.000001% of the population who when these time changes happen, he notices.

Whereas other people don’t. So there’s definitely the thing of, every time that happens he wakes up and he can’t explain why he feels like he remembers something that hasn’t happened.

To me that just feels like peak deja vu. But as soon as an explanation is put to it it’s very quickly how we, as humans, we normalise things, you know? Huge things have happened in our lives in the last two years, and we just normalise it so that it becomes the new normal, as it were. So I, with the character, try and lean into it being as odd as possible, while it’s odd.

THERE’S A DEADLY VIRUS IN THE SCRIPT. HAS HE PREDICTED THE FUTURE?

Yeah, that guy’s a freak! It’s not really a spoiler to say that there is a virus strand to it. It’s actually a very small strand; it’s not an essential part of the whole thing, because I think we’ve seen enough masks in our lives. The Lazarus Project premieres on Sky Max and NOW on Thursday