Actor’s pride at his African and Scots ancestry
Actor Stephen Graham has spoken about his pride in his African, Scottish and Irish heritage.
Graham, 48, revealed how his wife had bought them both DNA kits in order to trace their ancestry last Christmas – and he discovered he is 22% African, from his birth father, who was mixed race.
He added there was also “a load of Scottish, tons of Irish and some Caribbean islands as well, all sprinkled in.”
Graham said that he endured racism as he was growing up. His mother once marched round to the home of a child who had been racially abusing him to remonstrate on the doorstep.
He said: “On first glance, I don’t look mixed race. I know my own heritage and culture and I have been brought up to have pride in that, in who I am.”
His stepfather – whom he calls Pops – was also mixed race and Graham said: “He has helped me be the man I am today.
“Ihaveasenseof identity. I know the history of Malcolm
X, of Martin Luther King. My daughter was so proud of the 22% African.”
Now Graham sees that same spirit of pride in his daughter that his mother had when he was a child.
“When my Grace looks at her grandad, her Pops, she sees a black man, a mixed-race man.
“She interprets that her own way. I’m so proud. I feel it all begins with young people. Give them the right information so they can form their opinions from a place of truthfulness.”
The Line Of Duty actor is about to star in a new drama with Killing Eve’s Jodie Comer, called Help, in which he plays a man with early-onset Alzheimer’s living in a care home at the start of the Covid pandemic.