Essence of Luther
Matt Suddain meets Idris Elba, star of Luther — and People’s Sexiest Man Alive 2018
Iguess it’s the thing people want to ask 2018’s sexiest man about more than anything to do with his movie or television career. His love-life. Though I never would. I’m too polite. Instead I’m eavesdropping as a hapless female journalist from Poland tries to slip it in (no pun intended).
“What about Idris’ love life?”
He pauses. “Idris’ love life? You mean Luther’s love life.”
“No, I wanted to ask about your love life.” She thinks saying it in a slightly flirty way will help her. Elba does nothing more than slowly shake his head, while a minder punches out of a spring-loaded cavity in the wall to say, “No personal questions.”
Even without a love-life, Elba has been superbusy: designing, directing, DJing (his DJ name is Big Driis). He’s just done a new ad for Squarespace, directed by auteur Spike Jonze, in which he appears shirtless and in boxing gloves (Elba, that is, not Jones). He’s playing Macavity, the Mystery Cat, in an upcoming movie version of the Andrew Lloyd-Webber musical, Cats. Maybe all this is why he’s so run down.
“I’m really sorry, I’m not my best today, I’ve got the flu.”
“Me too,” I explain. We have so much in common.
This month he’s back for another season of Luther and he has a new partner. John Luther and DS Catherine Halliday (Wumi Mosaku) are up against a brazen serial killer who seems impervious to CCTV, and who doesn’t mind carrying out a casual murder while travelling on a London bus.
“The comforting thing about Luther from Season One to Season Two is that the DNA doesn’t change. You see the murder, you follow the clues, and you watch John go for it. And we’ve never deviated from that. But each time we’ve tried to make it more complex.”
The sprawling megalopolis of London is still the unsung hero of the show, in many ways, providing a natural layer of urban darkness to the drama.
“We’ve always said London is Gotham City and Luther is Batman. We try to transfer the mood of comics into a real setting, but it still has that graphic novel feeling. I think London is the unsung hero of the show, if you don’t mind me saying.”
I don’t.
“We celebrate London and its oddities and its quirkiness and its coldness. But it’s not fixed. I would love to see Luther in Prague, I would love to see it in Sao Paulo.”
Dunedin, maybe?
He’s not heard of Dunedin.
This season, as with previous seasons, will be gritty, violent, and so dark you’ll need night-vision goggles to watch it.
“We shoot it at night. We spend a lot of time in the dark. We kill people. We watch it and go. ‘Oh my God, what are we doing?’ Then we go home and have nightmares about it and come back for another day.”
The show, according to Elba, can only exist in the dark, dark northern winter. There will never be a Luther: Miami.
“It’s not the kind of role I’d play in the summer, because I like to have fun.
But after the summer is over, I can play John.”
It took him a while to learn to channel the dark content of the show in a healthy way.
“I used to spend a lot of time in the bars after work, no doubt. And now I don’t do that, I’m much older. But I do have to have some kind of therapeutic outlet, which tends to be music for me.”
I don’t want you to walk away from this with nothing more than his DJ name and a few quotes about Luther, so here are some things you’d only know about Elba if you’d met him.
Smell: fairly neutral.
Walk: confident, with a barely perceptible 90s hiphop limp.
Voice: gentle, with some urban
London traits.
He pronounces
Luther “Loofa” and, for a moment, I think he might be talking about his shower habits. But he isn’t. He’s very private, for obvious reasons. He recently shaved off his beard for his Cats role and his fans went in . . . SANE. Then he posted an Instagram video explaining why he’d shaved, in the process accidentally referring to his fiancee as his “wife”, and his fans went in . . . SANE.
There’s always talk around Elba. There’s talk of whether he looks better with or sans beard. (With, seems to be the consensus.) There’s talk of a Luther movie. There’s talk of a revival of his Thor character. “It’s not out of the question, he is half-god.” Which happens to be how many people see Elba. There’s even talk of a stint as 007. “I don’t know, it’s a question I get haunted with at this point. If it was to happen it would be the will of the nation. How about that?”
As to what he’s actually looking for once he finally hangs up John Luther’s trademark coat for good … “I just want some variety. Some comedy, maybe? I’ve often dreamed about playing two people in one body.”
Will he keep the coat? “Hell no. That coat is bad luck. Too many people have died.”
‘‘ We’ve always said London is Gotham City and Luther is Batman. Idris Elba