If you had told Micheal Ward 15 years ago, when he was performing a hit by Snoop Dogg in a talent competition at his school in Romford, that he would one day be rubbing shoulders with Naomi Campbell and starring in an Oscar-tipped movie, he wouldn’t have believed you. “Never in a million years,” he puts it. But here he is, texting the rapper Drake for advice, snogging Olivia Colman on screen and being dressed by, among others, Dior and Dolce & Gabbana.
And his most recent bizarre celebrity encounter? “I was at a gala in LA a couple of months ago where Diana Ross was performing. Everyone was there,” he says. “I had to go to the toilet and Spike Lee came in, a couple of cubicles away from me. It just reminded me of how amazing it is to be at these big events because for a long time we [black people] were denied entry. Now I’m peeing next to Spike Lee.”
Since his victorious two-series stint as the drug dealer Jamie in the Netflix series Top Boy, about council estate gangs in Hackney, Ward’s career has skyrocketed. First came the critical acclaim and fan adoration (the last series of Top Boy, which aired last year, stayed in the UK top ten for five weeks). Then, a modelling campaign with Louis Vuitton (for which he was handpicked by the late Virgil Abloh) and the Bafta rising star award, which he won after his starring role in another gang-war drama, the film Blue Story. This was followed by a hit role in the gorgeous Lovers Rock, part of the Small Axe anthology for the BBC by Steve McQueen. Now his co-star is Colman in Empire of Light, written and directed by Oscar-winner Sam Mendes — plus he has just wrapped another movie, with Bill Nighy, and is in Italy filming a biblical epic, The Book of Clarence, with Benedict Cumberbatch and David Oyelowo, which is being produced by Jay-Z. He has reached a point where he’s turning down both roles and auditions.
● Read the review: Empire of Light — Olivia Colman is perfect in Sam Mendes’s cinema romance
Yet: “I’m still hustling!” Ward, 25, assures me when we speak over Zoom early one morning before he heads to the Book of Clarence set. “Although I’m in a position where a lot of stuff gets sent my way, a lot of it doesn’t resonate with me and I think you’ve got to be quite strategic with what you say yes and no to. Right now I don’t really want to tell stories about guns and drugs. I don’t want to do anything too negative.”
● Lovers Rock star Micheal Ward on how black culture is portrayed on screen
Empire of Light centres on Colman’s Hilary, a cinema manager in Margate in 1980 who has recently suffered a breakdown and is still battling various demons. Enter Stephen (Ward), a beautiful, beaming new employee at the cinema who radiates charm and hope despite routinely being subjected to racism in a Thatcherite society plagued by political and social upheaval. Despite the differences in their ages and backgrounds, the two form a romance. The scenes where Stephen is mistreated are harrowing to watch. In one, he politely tells a customer that he cannot take his seat with a bag of chips. After racist slurs, the customer menacingly eats the chips as slowly as possible, holding eye contact with Stephen in a twisted power move, while Hilary looks on, uncomfortably trying to alleviate the situation by making light of it.
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“That scene was difficult for me,” Ward says. “It wasn’t his malicious [behaviour] to show his power, it was when Hilary could have done more about it that I really felt the injustice. I think that’s why a lot of white people don’t realise that by trying to solve a situation in a light way, it allows racist people to feel like it’s OK to do what they’re doing, and it’s not. I really felt like, ‘Wow, this is what my people had to go through.’ Which was upsetting. Although I grew up in Essex, which wasn’t massively diverse, no one ever made me feel uncomfortable. I never experienced what Stephen did.”
Ward had met Mendes at the 2020 Baftas and had an initial meeting with him for Empire of Light the following year. “After that, the audition went out to every black guy of that age in London,” Ward says. “I helped one of my good friends from Blue Story do his audition. I helped Hope [Ikpoku Jnr, Ward’s flatmate who plays his younger brother Aaron in Top Boy] do his audition. I know a lot of people who went for it. If I didn’t get it, I wanted one of my friends to at least!”
● The real story of Top Boy, from those in the know
Ward was born in Jamaica. His father was killed in a car crash when he was two; two years later, his mother, Keisha, and his sister (he now has three) moved to Hackney. They then moved to Essex when Ward was eight. He remembers nothing of his father, very little of life before Romford and is incredibly close to his mum and sisters. “I’ve had males in my life, like my uncle, but I’ve grown up around a lot of females. That’s why I’m so sensitive and cry a lot.” He smiles. “I think I’m very good around women. I’ve had to deal with a lot of ‘times of the month’ over the years.” He keeps pictures of his father close by at all times; one is the background image on his phone. “Last year was the first time I’d been back to Jamaica since we left and the first time I got to visit his grave. It was the highlight of my year for sure.”
It was in school that the performing bug kicked in. At the age of ten, Ward won the aforementioned talent show and for the next couple of years participated in other school productions. He left school during his A-levels and went to college for two years, studying performing arts. Around this time, he won a modelling contract with JD Sports. Then a teacher who had left the college to work for an actors’ agency landed Ward an audition for a TV pilot. He didn’t get it but the feedback was glowing, leading to him securing an agent, who he is still with today. “On our first meeting he asked what kind of stuff I wanted to do and I said, ‘Romeo and Juliet and Top Boy, if they ever brought that back,’ ” Ward says. The part of Jamie came up a year later, during which time Ward auditioned for every part going. “I never went a week without an audition,” he says.
Top Boy had originally aired on Channel 4 in 2011, was cancelled and then revived with the financial backing of Drake, who brought it to Netflix in 2019. “If I ever really need advice I might message Drake, but not regularly,” Ward says. “He’s replied a few times. He’s told me to stay focused. But just to have the access to message someone like Drake is amazing.” At the end of the last series — spoiler alert — the protagonist Sully (played by Kane “Kano” Robinson) shoots Jamie in the chest and head, creating one of television’s biggest cliffhangers of 2022. “Initially it wasn’t supposed to happen,” Ward says of being killed off. “Then, for a bunch of reasons, it made sense for me not to come back. They [the writers] made the decision, but if I hadn’t left I don’t think I would have done Empire, so everything happens for a reason and I didn’t push back on it. I was happy to serve the story.”
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The fashion world adores Ward as well. Campbell invited him to a Boss party last October, while Dolce & Gabbana, Prada and Dior have all raced to dress him. “I really appreciate fashion because, on a normal day, trust me, I’m just in tracksuits.” A lot of tracksuits, mind. Ward says he has lost count of how many he owns. “I have a wardrobe that’s entirely black clothes. Then another for colours. I alternate each day so if I’ve worn black, the next day it’s a colour, then it’s grey. When I’m stepping out I want to look suave — that’s important to me. I love getting a compliment about what I’m wearing and how I smell!” After his Vuitton campaign the brand gave him a duffel bag that was designed by Abloh. With his first big pay cheque Ward treated himself to the matching backpack and pouch. “But I’m not making serious actor money yet,” he assures me. “If I do, I’ll buy an estate where all my family can live, so if I need my mum to cook me something she’s right there.”
Empire of Light is in cinemas on January 9
