Grimsby Telegraph

Your antenna was always up if you were a man of colour in this country

Patrick Robinson talks to GEMMA DUNN about his role in the Windrush drama, Sitting in Limbo

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PATRICK ROBINSON has a platform – and he’s using it. At a time when the Black Lives Matter movement duly dominates the headlines – an immediate call for change has been made after the recent death of George Floyd in the US state of Minnesota – the actor is exercising his right to speak out about those issues closest to him. In effect, racism.

But this particular exchange isn’t triggered by recent events in the news; rather as a result of his latest role in BBC1 drama, Sitting in Limbo.

Written by Stephen S Thompson, the feature-length film is based on the true story of his brother Anthony Bryan (played by Patrick) and his personal struggle to be accepted as a British Citizen during the Windrush immigratio­n scandal.

“I wanted to be involved in the project from the word ‘Go’,” 56-year-old Patrick begins. “I’d been involved with a documentar­y that Trevor Phillips and his brother Mike Phillips put out (following their book, Windrush: Irresistib­le Rise of Multi-Racial Britain) in the late 90s, and I took it as a sort of Bible for the gap in which I didn’t know what happened. How do we get to Britain?

“I was born in England in ‘63 so all I’ve known is Britain as home,” says the Londoner. “Obviously, you’re going to have that thing of being you’re English, British, West Indian, Jamaican. They’re all the boxes I seem to fit into when it’s suitable for other folk to put me there

– so I had to work out the whole thing. “So in terms of the Windrush story, I felt I was part of the world then having got the informatio­n.”

So how does the drama play out? In short, having lived in the UK since he was a boy, Anthony decides to visit his elderly mother in Jamaica. But while filling out the paperwork at the Passport Office, he is stunned to discover that there is no record of him as a British Citizen – and now the onus is on him to prove his citizenshi­p to the Immigratio­n Office.

What follows is a trail of devastatio­n as Anthony is forcibly removed from his home and detained as an illegal immigrant.

“When it comes down to his experience, I don’t know how he dealt with it and had such dignity,” says Patrick, who met Anthony before shooting. “I have so much respect for him and the way he was.

“There’s one thing that he said very simply, and that’s that it nearly broke him. He didn’t have to say much more than that; that was pretty much all I needed.”

Understand­ably playing the part took its toll emotionall­y, he confesses: “But I knew to do it, you’d have to go as far as you can, to do with how you feel.

“I can see the anger and how it had to be held back, because that’s what most West Indians had to do in the double standards of Britain in the 50s and 60s. “Your antenna was always up if you were a man of colour in this country; you couldn’t just walk around and feel like you’re accepted wherever you go – and that’s what I’ve experience­d.

“I’ve been an actor for 35 years and I’ve worked throughout the whole of the UK and abroad, and in the end, you still have to have antennae up,” he insists. “Just imagine that when you walked out of wherever you live, people look at you as if to say, ‘What are you doing here?’ I know that’s what happens all the time. Every day.”

“Right now I’m talking to journalist­s and there’s not one of colour on the panel,” notes Patrick, who among all else, is known for his time on The Bill and Mount Pleasant.

“I’m talking to people who don’t have similar experience or similar bias as me, so you are curious to know what that feels like,” he reasons. “You don’t think about having an antenna out when you go out every day because it doesn’t affect you in the same way.”

He recalls a time when he was interviewe­d by a journalist for a women’s magazine, having landed a part in Casualty in 1990.

“It was the first bit of publicity that I’d had,” he recalls. “I’d been with the Royal Shakespear­e Company for four years and this was my first bit of TV, so I was really excited. It was really big for me. I was 26.

“So I did this interview on the Tuesday and by the Saturday I was in the middle page of The Sun. “There was a cast photo, a heading

I don’t know how he dealt with it and had such dignity Patrick Robinson on Anthony Bryan, who he plays in Sitting in Limbo

 ??  ?? L-R: Taija Bryan as Shanika, CJ Beckford as Gary, Nadine Marshall as Janet, Patrick as Anthony, Jay Simpson as Trevor, Andrew Dennis as Barrington, Florisa Kamara as Lateesha and Pippa Bennett-Warner as Eileen
Patrick as Ash in his Casualty days
L-R: Taija Bryan as Shanika, CJ Beckford as Gary, Nadine Marshall as Janet, Patrick as Anthony, Jay Simpson as Trevor, Andrew Dennis as Barrington, Florisa Kamara as Lateesha and Pippa Bennett-Warner as Eileen Patrick as Ash in his Casualty days

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