From shadows to sinners – Sopé Dìrísù’s on a worthy hot streak.

After starting out with the Royal Shakespeare Company, British Nigerian actor Sopé Dìrísù made his name in 2020 with an acclaimed performance in the horror/thriller His House, going on to star in Gangs of London and Mr Malcolm’s List. This year, his credits include lead roles in the Netflix series Black Rabbit, sci-fi horror The Gorge and My Father’s Shadow, which received a Caméra d'Or Special Mention at Cannes.

He also returned to the stage in 2025, after a five-year break, to play Berenger in Eugène Ionesco’s Rhinoceros at the Almeida Theatre, directed by Omar Elerian. “Before the pandemic, I was averaging at least a play every 18 months, if not every year, and it was something that I really enjoyed. So, the opportunity to get back on stage this year was amazing, and I had a wonderful, wonderful time with the cast, creating that show and sharing it.” Its month-long run, which also delighted critics and audiences, is something he'd be happy to reprise. “But I think that ship may have sailed. We'll see if anyone remembers it when it comes to the theatre awards season! But if they don't, at least the people that got to see it got to experience that.”

Another memorable theatre performance was in One Night in Miami at the Donmar Warehouse in 2016. Dìrísù took the part of Mohammed Ali but says that his lack of physical resemblance to Ali would have made casting him in the subsequent film adaptation impossible. “If I’m watching a biopic, I like the actor to look like the person they’re playing. I think there's some things you can suspend in theatrical settings, that film as a medium is much closer to reality.” He likens the suspension of disbelief in theatre to the concept of kayfabe in wrestling. “We all know that they’re pretending, but we choose to believe that it’s real. We choose to decide to invest in this story that you’re telling us.”

For Dìrísù, the most remarkable aspect of One Night in Miami was sharing the stage with Arinzé Mokwe Kene as Sam Cooke. “His voice is one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever heard, and he would deliver renditions of ‘A Change Is Gonna Come’, night after night, and put chills in both the audience’s spine but also in mine. In that play, there’s before Arinzé sings, and after Arinzé sings – the atmosphere is just different in the second half of the play.” Other inspiring colleagues have included his co-star in the second season of Gangs of London, Waleed Zuaiter – “There are some people who make you step your game up when you’re playing opposite them or playing with them. I think that’s in athletic terms as well as creative terms.” And he has just finished shooting A Colt Is My Passport, a remake of the 1967 Japanese crime film, with Jack Reynor. “I’ll never forget, whilst we were in pre-production, I sat down with him for the first time at a readthrough and heard his accent work. I was like, shit – I already believe this guy is a man from South Carolina, I need to get up to this level so that (a) I’m not embarrassed on screen, and (b) to honour the work that he's done on his character. If he's given this dedication to the story, I also need to give this dedication to the story.”

“The people who have paid, giving you their time and their money, their attention, they’ve come to share this space with you to be entertained and be moved and be provoked. They deserve as much of your energy and your commitment to this as you can give”

— Dìrísù

His next project is All the Sinners Bleed, a Netflix series based on the book by S. A. Cosby about a Black sheriff’s pursuit of a serial killer that also interrogates the racial politics of the American South. “I'm moving to Atlanta next Monday to start preparation. We’ll be shooting up there – I think the shoot starts at the end of October, so not the longest amount of time. But as soon as I was aware that I was being considered for the role, I bought the book and read it voraciously. It was a real page-turner, and it really immersed me in the atmosphere.” As always, Dìrísù is taking his preparation seriously. “I'll read the book again and properly dissect the character and his relationships, both with himself and with the environment around him. I need to learn a lot about the American policing system. I've spoken with the showrunner [Joe Robert Cole – also the screenwriter and executive producer] a couple of times, and he's given me a bunch of homework to do: I've got quite a few films to watch, a few series and some other books that he thinks the character might have read.” In addition to all the background knowledge he plans to acquire over the coming few weeks, Dìrísù will have to work on the “very specific” Virginia accent for his portrayal of Sheriff Titus Crown. “So yeah, looking forward to the muscularity of the character as well. There's a lot of stuff that I'd love to achieve in order to do my best work on this.”

This determination to always give of his best comes partly from having one eye on posterity – “Like all human beings, you have off days, you have things that are going on in life that affect your work, and you have to find some way of motivating yourself to still do good work. This thing is going to live after you die, you won't be able to justify you having a bad day after people have seen it!” But he’s also aware of his responsibility to the audience. “The people who have paid, giving you their time and their money, their attention, they’ve come to share this space with you to be entertained and be moved and be provoked. They deserve as much of your energy and your commitment to this as you can give. I've heard people speak about the sacred exchange of storytelling. I don't know if I've ever gotten that far with it in my own head, but it is something very special.”

From an ex-Royal Marine in The Gorge to a charismatic Nigerian father in My Father’s Shadow to a sheriff from the American South for All the Sinners Bleed, the parts Dìrísù has played in this year alone speak of a refusal to be pigeonholed. “I think being a young Black man of a certain stature, the world is very quick to decide what your story is, and who you are, where you've come from.” He quotes theatre director Peter Brook: “‘A man walks across this empty space, someone else is watching him, and this is all that is needed for an act of theatre to be engaged.’ I think when a Black person walks across an empty space, there's a lot of stories that people decide. I started as a young man very impressionable; I started to take those stories on and think that those were my stories, and they weren't necessarily. What I'd love to do is show that there isn't just one story that's associated with my skin colour, or with my stature. I want to be able to explore a full range of stories.”

For this reason, he has always admired character actors like Christian Bale and Jake Gyllenhaal, who are able to transform themselves for every role they play. “I remember watching Heath Ledger as the Joker in The Dark Knight and not really realizing it was Heath until the final frames of his performance. I was just so excited by the idea that you will always be who you are, but you could always be so many different people and immerse yourself and lose yourself in these characters.” It is the desire to fully embody every role, unhampered by stereotypical views of who he can represent, that drives Dìrísù. “I'm constantly trying to prove to the world, and to myself, that I contain multitudes and can express them creatively.”

Author: Rachel Goodyear