Much like Beyoncé, Lenny Henry has just entered his Renaissance era (you might call it a Lenaissance). After decades as a beloved British talent, he's going global. Within the space of a few months, he'll play parts in three of the highest-profile fantasy series on TV. Last month he made his Netflix debut with a voiceover role in Neil Gaiman's The Sandman, and in December, he'll be a lead in a prequel series for Henry Cavill's ridiculously popular The Witcher. This week? A pivotal role in Amazon's $1bn Lord of the Rings behemoth, The Rings of Power.
Ahead of the show's premiere, Henry sat down with GQ to discuss playing a proto-hobbit, diversity in fantasy TV and the jokes he might not get away with today…
What made you want to get involved in The Rings of Power?
I love fantasy. I've been reading comics since I was nine. Tolkien was from Birmingham, and the Shire is based on the Lickey hills in Birmingham. It all very much feels like something to me. Often when you're watching these things, you don't see yourself as a Black person. But what's interesting about this being told from a 21st-century perspective, things are being reconfigured. And I liked that. [I agreed to be in the show] because maybe some kid will be watching this one day and they'll see [co-stars] Ismael Cruz Cordova and Sophie Nomvete and they'll see me and go, ‘Yeah, I can wield a sword. Yeah, I can rock a bow and arrow’. This is a groundbreaking moment.
In the original Lord of the Rings trilogy 20 years ago, there were no Black characters. But this show is different. It feels like the big new fantasy franchises are finally diversifying.
There’s a real sense of trying to be more inclusive than we were in this world. [House of the Dragon star] Steve Toussaint keeps saying… The purists were saying things about [his casting in the show] god bless them. They have no trouble believing in a dragon, but they do have trouble believing that a Black person could be a member of the court. Or that a Black person could be a hobbit or an elf. And actually, storytellers can do what they want, because they're storytellers. In the reimagining of these stories from 1000 years ago, they are not part of the canon that everybody knows, this is a reimagining and re-weaving of the story. And [Rings of Power showrunners] JD Payne and Patrick McKay have just gone, ‘What if?’ The greatest two words in storytelling: What if.
Did you want to be part of the original Lord of the Rings trilogy?
I would have loved to have been involved in it. But change takes a long time. Slavery lasted for 400 years, for god's sake. In the middle of slavery, we were all going ‘Damn, this has taken a long time. When is the abolishment again?’ Women getting the vote, women are in the middle of that looking at their watches going, ‘When is this going to change?’ Change is long, but then [*claps hands*] it happens. And you’ve got to catch up. And I think that's great.
Can you tease anything about your character?
We are very much feral proto-hobbits. We're a nomadic community. We have carts that we pull everywhere. We're not all shirts and bow ties and pipes. We live in a cart. We move when trouble hits. If it's snowing or flooding, we move. My character Sadoc Burrows is the keeper of the books. I had to learn how to write and draw in the harfoot language and have a symbologist teach me about all the symbols for different things. [Sadoc Burrows] knows about the history and the ancient history of the harfoot community. And he knows what should be happening when. Sadoc is the one who sees that there's something going on here. Because in a minute, as in all the great Tolkien stories, [the harfoots] are involved in the fight against good and evil. That's all I can say.
Do you have an insight into why the harfoots have Irish accents?
The Elven people were very much Shakespearean RP, posh kind of people. But they wanted everybody else to feel like they're part of a community. They could have made them Jamaican or they could have made them Scottish or Northern. But they wanted an identifiably Celtic-rooted dialect for the harfoots. [The harfoots] are a nomadic, very earthy, hard-handed, hard-working people. My dad came to this country and worked with Irish people, and they worked with a lot of Jamaicans and there was a real sense of we're all in this together. And I think [that's the case] with the harfoots. We care about each other. We protect each other.
You've got roles in three gigantic fantasy TV franchises (Rings of Power, The Sandman and Witcher: Blood Origins). Does this feel like a game-changing moment in your career?
I'm very grateful. It's such an extraordinary experience and to be involved in The Witcher franchise and Doctor Who and work with Russell T. Davies on [Henry's upcoming self-penned series] Three Little Birds. This is a moment, and I'm very, very grateful to the gods for allowing me to participate. I'm 60-whatever-it-is and I'm loving it. I've never had this before.
Have you thought about the impact that being the only Black person in the room throughout the early days of your career had on you?
Well, it just made me think about it a lot. Whenever you walk into a room, and you're the only Black person or the only woman or the only gay person or the only person that has a disability or the only working-class person, you really have an introspective moment of ‘Okay, I'm here again’. It's just me, right? So you feel like you have to defend yourself, you have to kind of stand up for what you believe in and where you're from. So you spend a lot of time putting forward your point of view, or interpreting your point of view for people who don't know what you’re talking about. And what's great about the last five years, is that people are slowly beginning to understand what we've been going on about it for the last 20.
Turning attention to the British comedy scene at the moment. Do you pay any attention to the furore around controversial comedians like Ricky Gervais’ stand-up specials?
I love comedy. I'm a huge Richard Pryor fan. I've done the rodeo of a person that I admire saying transgressive things. Comedy is about pushing boundaries, you know, and I think that some people are very comfortable with where they're at. And if anything pushes them out of their comfort zone, whether it's a joke about your wife, or a joke about your friend, or a joke about your gender. It's okay to feel a way about it.
Charlie Williams once said to me, ‘You're not everybody's cup of tea lad’. I know I'm not everybody's cup of tea. And so does Jerry Sadowitz and so does Ricky Gervais. Everybody has a point of view. And what's great about the freedom of speech in the free world, is that, theoretically, as long as you show some taste and are good at self-editing, you pretty much are allowed to say what you like. And you know you've overstepped the mark when there's an uproar, because an uproar only comes when you've gone past that boundary. But how do you test boundaries? You go past them.
Do you have a joke or something where you think you went too far? Anything you regret?
My partner would go, ‘most of the 70s and 80s should be resigned to the bin, you can't do any of that shit anymore’. I'm very aware that if I was starting now, there's a lot of stuff I wouldn't do. Even Donovan Bogarde who I thought, I thought it was a bit like Pepe Le Pew, Because he was in pursuit of Mrs Johnson. "Theophilus P. Wildebeeste", I probably wouldn’t do that now. He’d have to be woke. You know, ‘girl, I respect you’. You’d have to be like that. ‘I reserve the right to respect you and be a proto-feminist myself’. I think it would all have to change. And that's a good [thing].
You sang on Kate Bush’s 1993 album “Red Shoes”.
I did, yeah. “Why Should I Love You”. And the guy from The Waterboys, Mike Scott, I was in a shirt shop and he was in there. We talked about when you know you’ve got a hit record, and when it’s going to be an album filler. He paid a compliment, he said, ‘you did a very good job on “Why Should I Love You?”, because you’re a comedian, who knew you could do that. But it was very scary, you know, it was way out of my comfort zone. My job was singing [as] funny characters. So I had to get into the mode of what she was talking about, which is this almost religious kind of mantra thing.
How has it felt to see the Kate Bush renaissance in 2022?
I’m so proud of it. And proud of her. How wonderful that all these kids are buying “Running Up That Hill”. They’ll be going around singing “Baboushka” next.
The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power debuts on Amazon Prime Video on Friday 2 September.
