Back. He tells
admits Deacon now. “I didn’t want to sc are anyone. That was never my motive.”
In December 2014 Deacon was arrested and formally charged with harassment without violence. His laptop and phone were confiscated (“I couldn’t contact anyone so I just felt really lost and isolated”) and this, allied with paranoia and a prodigious cannabis s mo k i n g h a b i t , ultimately led to the sword arrest and the episode of mental illness that landed him in hospital. He was soon diagnosed as bipolar but shies away from strict categorisation, saying: “I’m just a human b e i n g wh o’s go n e through a lot.” The harassment trial — complete with the strange sight of legal professionals reading out hashtags — took place last July and ended with a guilty verdict for Deacon, who was also handed a restraining order with regard to Clarke.
Deacon seems to have mostly made his peace with the whole affair (“People may hate me but I don’t hate anyone”) but the fact that, after the trial, he was offered a role in Clarke’s u p c o mi n g saga-closing f o l l ow- u p Brotherhood has him reaching for the handle of that supposedly buried hatchet. “How does that work? You don’t want to talk to me again but you want me in your film?” Deacon requested a sit-down with Clarke and was denied, so politely declined the offer and, it seems, he’s not currently wanting for work opportunities. He’s no longer smoking weed or taking medication for his bipolar disorder (“I didn’t like that it made me put on weight”) and seems inspired by his experience. “I’ve a lw ays p l aye d charac ters that h ave been in trouble with the law but to have been through some of that, it adds a new dimension to it,” he says. “My whole thing now is taking everything I’ve been through and putting it into creativity.” His Suspects cameo on Wednesday will be preceded by an appearance in Knife Edge, a s o l d - o u t p l ay m a d e by community children’s theatre company The Big House at the Royal Court tonight and tomorrow. He also has an upcoming role in Casualty that touches on his personal experience with mental illness and he has discussed depression and other disorders with Stephen Fry for a BBC documentary due to air later this month.
Elsewhere, as a Hackney native and resident he worries aloud about the segregating effects of the gentrification that priced some friends out of the area. “That affected me in a sense because my friends were my family,” he says. He’s also writing projects for the screen and hopeful that the rise of grime will translate to a concurrent boom in gritty film and TV to combat “all those Victorian shows”.
Which brings us to a certain upcoming urban film. Given all that he’s been through with Clarke, will he go and see Brotherhood? “I don’t know if I could watch a new one but I wish everyone we l l , ma n , ” h e s ay s , a study in magnanimous maturit y. The smile flashes again. “Maybe I’ll just get it on pirate or something,” he laughs, at pains to make sure I know he’s joking. Yep, Deacon is back.