Glass talks to actor Chiwetel Ejiofor about his latest film Locked Down and how the experience of the real-life lockdown has changed him for ever
THERE are few people who cannot have been riveted to their seats while watching Chiwetel Ejiofor give the performance of a lifetime in 12 Years a Slave, for which he was nominated for an Academy Award in 2013. Having made more than 40 films since 1997, it’s a surprise to learn that the British-Nigerian actor was never particularly interested in the silver screen, considering theatre his natural home.
Chiwetel Ejiofor. Photograph: Nick Thompson
His cinematic roles have traversed the genres, from heart-wrenching dramas like Dirty Pretty Things (2002) and Half of a Yellow Sun (2013) to light-hearted rom-coms like Love Actually (2003) and Locked Down, his latest release. Then there are the straight up Hollywood superhero films like Dr Strange (2016) and The Old Guard (2020). Whatever the part, Ejiofor always manages to draw his audience in with his distinctive style and humanity. In 2019, he also made his directorial debut with the moving The Boy who Harnessed the Wind, in which he also stars.
Chiwetel Ejiofor. Photograph: Nick Thompson
When I meet Ejiofor over Zoom, the UK has been in some form of lockdown for almost a year. Locked Down, co-starring Anne Hathaway, captures the maddening cabin fever of lockdown and the surreal situation of trying to live your life over video calls. The final scene in the film feels like the light at the end of the tunnel – the light that in real life we are still waiting to see.
Chiwetel Ejiofor. Photograph: Nick Thompson
What has the last year been like for you?
It’s gone through all of its phases. Last year, I started the lockdown in New York because I was working on something there, and I ended up having to stop working because it shut down like everywhere else. My first experience of it was quite intense. New York was hit intensely with the pandemic early on. I was in a little apartment in Tribeca and it was quite an intense time as everybody was trying to get used to this new reality we’ve all been dealing with. But also this extraordinary death toll was taking place in Manhattan – it was just an incredibly traumatic and destabilising period.
I came back to the UK in the summer. I got a repatriation flight, which sounded very Orwellian to me. I’ve been here since then. It was interesting making Locked Down because that was the first time of really going back on set and trying to re-introduce a sort of normality into life, which was amazing. It was amazing just to connect with people again after such a length of time, and the feeling that there was a way out, that there was a return to something. We were shooting at the moment when … it felt it was the beginning of the end of coronavirus. Sadly, it was not to be.
Chiwetel Ejiofor. Photograph: Nick Thompson
What was it like filming during lockdown?
It was interesting because it was the first time I really reflected on the lockdown as a type of city-wide event for London. And being a Londoner, having that kind of connection and understanding it from a very specific point of view, just even understanding what the department stores had gone through … and how everybody had to react very quickly to this extraordinarily unique set of circumstances with no knowledge of how it was going to be resolved.
The crew was being incredibly respectful of social distancing and masks because myself and Anne [Hathaway] were, for a lot of [the filming], the only people without face masks. Everybody was very diligent about that to the point where there were people on the crew I would not recognise if I saw them on the street because I never saw their faces. I might recognise them if they covered up the bottom half of their face – it would probably be easier to recognise them in those circumstances. It was a strange dynamic. There was also something heartening about it – people working together on a project and having to take responsibility for each other.
Chiwetel Ejiofor. Photograph: Nick Thompson
Chiwetel Ejiofor. Photograph: Nick Thompson
Are you filming at the moment?
Yes, I’m filming the second Doctor Strange. It’s the same process. It’s slightly – I want to say easier – but I suppose it’s just the sense of everything being a bit bigger that makes it feel a bit more “run in”, about how bigger productions are dealing with the pandemic and everything is like clockwork. Not that it wasn’t on Locked Down, but it felt like the protocols were in a sense still finding their feet.
Whereas now they’re very much set and there are very efficient ways of running through these huge units of people – with everybody getting tested and social distancing; all of the hygiene stations that are around; all of the different sort of bubbles of people; and how they are organised into different groups so that there can’t be that much cross-pollination. It’s its own thing. It’s kind of remarkable.
Chiwetel Ejiofor. Photograph: Nick Thompson
Has lockdown had any silver linings for you?
Yes. I think for so many people the change in the pace of life has been really significant. For me that’s been a major change to the way that I have lived my life in the last 20 years, or since I started working as an actor, which has been a constant movement from place to place and a lot of activity, and not much time given to any specific place.
It’s been quite frenetic in its own way, which is all a part of a certain lifestyle that I signed up to and am perfectly happy with. But it’s been interesting to have that lifestyle be interrupted completely and totally changed; the idea of really focusing on where you are and the people you are around and can make contact with.
Now that we are in full lockdown again, there’s a simplicity to it as you can’t hang out with anybody. But when you could go for a walk with one person, it’s a really interesting thing to be presented with – who is that person today? What does that dynamic and relationship mean to me?
That’s powerful and increasingly it becomes about the bonds you share, the people you connect to and really love, and how to deepen and enrich those dynamics. In many ways, I think those are the only relationships that do keep you sane. In my case, they managed to keep me sane incredibly efficiently and that’s not something I necessarily would have known before – just how much I value those connections to people that I have, and how rich those things can be when I give time to them. It’s something that has actually been very powerful and meaningful to me in these times.
Chiwetel Ejiofor. Photograph: Nick Thompson
Chiwetel Ejiofor. Photograph: Nick Thompson
The theme of this issue is “breakthrough”. Has there been a particular moment in your personal life or career that you felt was your breakthrough moment?
When I was in my twenties, I made a film with Stephen Frears, Dirty Pretty Things. The making of the film was an extraordinarily rich experience, but I feel that it was around the time that the film came out that I was aware that there was a change in the temperature in terms of my relationship to the work, and people’s relationship to me in terms of the work. There were questions as to where that would go and what it would mean.
It definitely felt like there was a change. That period manifested really interesting conversations and dynamics that happened with various filmmakers, especially centred in New York, and I moved to New York for a period after that film. But that definitely felt like a breakthrough moment.
Chiwetel Ejiofor. Photograph: Nick Thompson
It was also the time I fell in love with making films. Even though I had made a couple of movies before, I’d always thought of myself as a theatre actor. It was very much what I was built to do, what I was trying to achieve and how I had seen my development. It wasn’t because I disliked film, but I had never seen or understood film acting in the form that I understood [until] I made that film [Dirty Pretty Things]. I didn’t understand the poetry of cinema or film acting.
Somehow, I’d always thought of cinema as slightly cruder than theatre. It was actually the relationship with Stephen Frears and the dynamics that were being played out, and the scenes with Audrey [Tautou – one of the first Glass magazine cover-stars], which made me very aware that, although you don’t have a six-week rehearsal period or an immediate interaction with an audience, you are still crafting something so delicate and poetic, if done within a certain context. It was the first time I was really exposed to that understanding.
by Nicola Kavanagh
Photographer NICK THOMPSON
Stylist MICHAEL MILLER
Groomer CARLOS FERRAZ at CAROL HAYES using AMANDA HARRINGTON LONDON
Set designer JOSHUA STOVELL
Tailor JURGITA at GALEDI LONDON
Production ALEXANDRA OLEY
All clothing and accessories, DIOR Fall21 Men’s Collection