Enoch Frost
Donal O’Donoghue chats to the Taken Down actor about working on the disturbing crime drama
“I’m hard pushed to find any redeeming features about this dude,” says Enoch Frost of his Taken Down alter ego. “You might secretly like Benjamin when he first comes on screen because he’s a nutter but there’s nothing nice about him. Did you watch The Sopranos? Did you like Tony Soprano? You probably did secretly because he cared about his family. So maybe that’s what is in my character too. Although he is callous, he has his compassionate moments, but usually, he is being compassionate because he wants something from somebody and being a father myself has given me another dimension to at least fake that Benjamin cares. So fatherhood has been useful in that respect.”
It’s press day on Taken Down. Enoch Frost has flown in from his home in Bristol to talk about the voodoo-spouting brothel boss, Benjamin. He talks softly, deliberately, telling me that after he became a father for the first time (his daughter is Quincy), he took a sabbatical from acting. By that stage, the Londoner had notched up an impressive acting CV on stage and screen, most notably as a bad guy in the 007 movie, Skyfall. He says he doesn’t watch much TV and had never seen Love/Hate, the Dublin gangster drama from the same production stable as Taken Down. “This job is like a dream because you really don’t know if your next job is going to be a pantomime or whatever, so I think I have struck gold with Taken Down.” He was cast by director David (Caffo) Caffrey from a self-tape and immersed himself in the part of the Nigerian bad guy. “I remember reading the original synopsis which said that he wasn’t physically imposing. So he’s dangerous but deceptively so. It was kind of nice that he didn’t have to take over the room when he walked in with his presence alone. His threat is a lot more cerebral than simply brute force. That’s a great opportunity to flex my acting muscles and as an actor you want to play as many colours of the spectrum as possible. So one minute this guy is being compassionate, the next moment he is selling coke to Eastern Europeans and then he’s talking about his wife and family. So the character has all these layers: a bit like Iago. In other words he’s a proper dickhead.”
Frost, who is of Ghanaian ancestry, was born in Balham in south London. “I was adopted at the age of seven and lived in Somerset, so that gave me a taste for the country after living those early years in London,” he says. “Later I would go back to London to study (Guildford School of Acting), but I couldn’t wait to get out. So I spent the years paying my dues before going back to live in the countryside.” After early years on stage, he notched up bit parts in small-screen dramas like Holby City, Rome and The Bill before bagging small parts in big movies like Skyfall and Guardians of the Galaxy. Taken Down is his first time working in Ireland. “I’m a bit of a country boy at heart,” he says. “So if I knew where to go, I’d be up in the mountains looking down on Dublin or else down by the coast.”
“As for his decision to take time away from acting when Quincy was born, Enoch explains. “I knew that I would be able to do acting into my 80s, if I live that long, but my daughter is a one-o as I won’t be having any more children. So I wanted to get as much time with my child as possible.” How was it to go back to work and leave Quincy? “ e only thing that made it doable was that she was more than ready for me not to be part of her daily life. It’s the little things like when you leave a child and they don’t look back, you know then. She’s now two years and eight months and I always said to her mother that when she is trained and can wipe her own ass I’m o to work. So when that happened, her mother was like, ‘Now she’s trained so what’s your excuse?’
With his West African roots and his early years in London before being adopted, the Direct Provision narrative of Taken Down has a resonance for Frost. “We dramatise it but I don’t think what we are doing is that far from the truth,” he says. “It’s timely and accurate and shocking and by beaming it into living-rooms, hopefully, people will sit up and take notice. I think that nothing else has come close to broaching this issue in Irish TV drama, so I feel that I’ve won the lottery in getting the role. ere’s a social message, there’s loads of action for me as an actor and I usually don’t get to act so much with women, as I’m usually cast as mercenaries or gangsters.”
For his role in Skyfall, Frost trained with ex-SAS operatives. Taken Down’s Benjamin was more straightforward. “I guess my research was life,” he says. “I spent a lot of time in Ghana over the past decade retracing my family. at helped me massively with the accent because obviously I don’t sound a bit like Benjamin. So I only spoke as Benjamin on the audition tape and when I did eventually meet the director he was quite shocked as he thought I was actually Nigerian. For me, the main aspect of this role is his accent. Spending time in Ghana every year for ten years meant that I’ve been able to dial in the West African accent for years. As far as the rest of Benjamin’s lifestyle, let’s just say that I have led a colourful existence so there are quite a few things I can use in playing this character.”
ere is one disturbing scene in Taken Down, in which Benjamin threatens a young girl with voodoo and violence, that had an impact on him. “ ere is this grey area in acting between real life and you creating this fantasy,” he says. “ at girl was so young and I was so aware that when you’re that young you can be traumatised by things that as an adult might be no big deal. Maybe years down the line, she might be thinking I made her cry by being so horrible to her. I just hope she can tell the di erence between the drama and the reality. Maybe that’s fatherhood coming through in me as well, as I can’t imagine someone doing such a thing to Quincy.”
Yet Frost loves what he does and makes no bones about it. “I love watching myself,” he says with a wry smile. “Yeah, because you get to see what works and what doesn’t. I love dissecting and analysing what I have done and have no issues with that notion of vanity and what’s weird with watching yourself on screen? How else do you get to hone yourself? So I love it. And yes, I have always played dodgy bad guys so I’m like properly typecast (laughs). Occasionally I get a little snippet of playing someone who has a university degree and I did play a priest in Vera. And it wasn’t a bad priest, it was a good priest. In e Missing, I was a doctor but all those parts were small ones, so maybe someday I will play the good guy with more than a few lines.”
You really don’t know if your next job is going to be a pantomime or whatever, so I think I have struck gold with Taken Down