Lenny Henry desires you to know that his ITV drama Three Little Birds is certainly not his household biopic. The actor, author and comic’s new present centres on a trio of hopeful young ladies from Clarendon, Jamaica, who, in 1957, make the three-week cross-Atlantic sail to Britain, itching for a brand new life. Yes, Henry’s mom was a part of the Windrush technology that made the identical arduous journey within the late Fifties. And sure, she made a brand new home for herself in Dudley, the place the collection is about. And sure, she additionally needed to deal with brutal circumstances from the second of her arrival, because of the Mother Country’s failure to welcome her with the open arms she’d anticipated.
But, Henry protests, this isn’t his mom’s story. “There are some things that are true, but hopefully I’ve… because my family is very litigious, you see,” he jokes, “I can’t say what they are. I fictionalised a lot of my mum’s and aunties’ and uncles’ stories. But the basic premise, two Jamaican women coming to Britain with a ‘mail-order bride’ friend, that is a kind of truth. The rest is fiction.”
Although Henry’s 47-year profession in leisure has usually highlighted Black British experiences, that is the primary TV drama he has written, and exploring the themes of Three Little Birds has been a very long time coming. Henry’s mom, Winifred, died in 1998. Before she handed, she made a degree to inform her son all about what life was like when she first got here to the UK. “The way she was talking, it was quite mythical and legendary; it didn’t sound like she was telling real stories, it felt like she was conveying a narrative,” he says. Twenty-five years later, Henry has teamed up with TV mastermind Russell T Davies to place a model of his mom’s tales on digital camera. Henry performs a cameo function, as a mysterious, runaway pastor again home in Jamaica. But the main focus is firmly on the three leads: “The sisterhood who protects each other when no one else will.”
The three little birds of the title are sisters Leah (Rochelle Neil) and Chantrelle (Saffron Coomber) and their buddy Hosanna (Yazmin Belo). The trio board the Empire Windrush collectively, with the sisters hoping that Hosanna will marry their brother, who awaits them in Britain. Each of the ladies has a particular cause for making the journey. Leah, a smart mom of two, is working from the ache of her abusive marriage to organize a brand new home for herself and her youngsters. For Neil, enjoying Leah felt like placing her personal contact on a aspect of historical past that isn’t usually instructed.
Hosanna (Yazmin Belo) and Leah (Rochelle Neil) in ‘Three Little Birds’
(ITV)
“In the UK, we do period dramas really well, but they’re Downton Abbey, or Call the Midwife – it looks a certain way,” she says. “It gets to the point that when you travel, you get people who’ll say, ‘You’re not British,’ because all they see on TV is that British history. It feels amazing to think that there’s a British period drama that’ll have us included.”
Sadly, the three new arrivals don’t even final sooner or later within the UK earlier than they get their first glimpse of racist graffiti, echoing the “Keep Britain White” rhetoric of the time. “Why did I ever come to this terrible place?” Leah asks herself in despair, after a tough encounter with the police results in a wrongful arrest and a warning for the “darkies” to remain of their place. “I’ll never make a home for my children here.” As a lot as Neil thought-about it a privilege to painting a Jamaican in Nineteen Fifties Britain, just like her personal ancestors, enjoying Leah took a toll. “When we finished filming, I stayed in Coventry for an extra week because I just couldn’t stop crying,” Neil admits. “I was carrying so much, and it was almost like coming back from war – I don’t know how else to describe it. I was carrying all of Leah’s fears and anxieties, missing her children – I’d just had a baby myself, and it all felt very, very real.”
Chantrelle (Saffron Coomber) in ‘Three Little Birds’
(ITV)
For Leah’s sister Chantrelle, attending to the UK is step one in the direction of changing into the following Elizabeth Taylor. With Lady Macbeth monologues memorised and her Rebel Without a Cause poster in hand, Chantrelle boards the steamboat from Kingston hoping it’s only a matter of time earlier than her identify is in lights. She takes a job as a live-in nanny with a household in Watford to be near the studios in close by Borehamwood, but it surely quickly turns into clear that the highway to stardom gained’t be a straightforward one. The extreme, disdainful mom of the host household continually reinforces Chantrelle’s decrease standing, making her put on unflattering garments and use a separate entrance to the home, whereas the daddy’s preliminary kindness turns into one thing extra sinister when he tries to enter her room at evening. Coomber doesn’t take this function flippantly. “What’s so amazing to me is that I’m being able to live the dream that she wanted,” she says. “Were she born now, she’d be able to do what she wanted. I have that access in the way that she doesn’t; for me, that was really precious to protect.”
I hope folks see this as a British story, as a result of everybody’s lives modified
Rochelle Neil
The final little chicken is Hosanna, a religious Christian with a robust ethical compass and a good stronger regard for good manners. Though Hosanna presents essentially the most comedian reduction, along with her stiff higher lip and her immovable beliefs, she by no means suggestions into caricature. For Belo, this was a acutely aware selection. “There were so many phrases and ways she’d express things that are so doused in humour,” she says. “But because of what this story is, and what it’s representing, it was important that I was intentional about her arc, and didn’t make it gimmicky.”
While Three Little Birds stands as a tribute to the struggles of the Windrush technology, Henry hopes that every one viewers will be capable of join, on some degree, to the characters’ plight. “Surely, everybody understands that,” he says. “If you’re from somewhere and you’re in trouble, and you have to leave – you go somewhere else to survive, to raise your family, to have a better life. Surely everybody can relate to that?”
Hosanna (Yazmin Belo), Leah (Rochelle Neil) and Chantrelle (Saffron Coomber) in Three Little Birds
(ITV)
“I hope people watch it and don’t think of it as a Black story, or a post-Windrush story,” Neil provides. “I hope they see it as a British story, because everyone’s lives changed. Everyone was exposed to new music, new culture, whether you were arriving or whether you were already here. The UK as we know it now would not be the same country if it wasn’t for the immigration that has happened. It’s everyone’s story.”
Belo says the drama highlights “how much we make up the fabric of Black British culture”. “Our long existence here isn’t a fairytale,” she says. “We have existed, and we have been here.”
And regardless of the variations in all of the characters’ personal motivations, they’re united in having the braveness to take a leap of religion. “We all came for different purposes, but actually, we were all just trying a ting,” Belo laughs. “And the ting happened to work.”
‘Three Little Birds’ begins on ITV1 and ITVX on Sunday 22 October at 8pm
