A prestigious drama school has apologised for the “appalling” racism experienced by the actors Paapa Essiedu and Michaela Coel while they were students there.
In an interview for the Guardian’s Saturday magazine, Essiedu described how a teacher taking part in an improvisation used a racial slur. “Suddenly she shouted: ‘Hey you, N-word, what have you got behind you?’” he said, choosing not to repeat the word. Essiedu and Coel were the only two black students in the group. Essiedu was told by the same teacher that he did not enunciate clearly and that he spoke as if his mouth was “full of chocolate cake”.
A renowned Shakespearean actor, Essiedu became the Royal Shakespeare Company’s first black Hamlet in 2016. He was speaking to the Guardian to promote his new role starring in Sky’s The Lazarus Project.
A spokesperson for the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, ranked as one of the top 10 performing arts institutions in the world, said: “Guildhall School apologises unreservedly for the racism experienced by Paapa Essiedu, Michaela Coel and other alumni whilst they were studying at the school. The experiences he shares were appalling and unacceptable.
“We have since undertaken a sustained programme of action to address and dismantle longstanding systemic racism within the acting programme, including commissioning an external report into historic racism and a comprehensive and ongoing process of staff training and reflection.”
The racial slur was used in an improvisation in which the teacher played a prison officer looking for drugs among prisoners, played by students. Essiedu said the incident was so horrifying that neither he nor Coel knew how to respond.
“That was a real ‘time stops’ moment. It was like, surely this can’t be happening. We were so shocked we just stayed in the improvisation, so we were like: ‘No we haven’t got anything behind us.’ We were shellshocked by what had happened and shocked that it had come out of the mouth of a teacher.”
Coel previously referred to the incident in the MacTaggart lecture she delivered at the Edinburgh TV festival in 2018.
Essiedu, who played Kwame in Coel’s groundbreaking Emmy- and Bafta-winning TV drama I May Destroy You, said the comment was “loaded in a million different ways” and he was appalled that a teacher could treat students in her care in such a way. “It so clearly shows a lack of respect and understanding of what the experience is of someone who is in that position, in that skin, in that institution.”
British drama schools have come under scrutiny in recent years. This year a report from the Diversity School Initiative, which was set up in 2016 with the aim of improving representation and inclusion in British drama schools – including ArtsEd, Mountview, Lamda, Bristol Old Vic and Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts – detailed widespread claims of overt racism and casting bias.
In 2020, Rada, which severed its partnership with the diversity initiative, was accused of failing to address student concerns around “race, class, disability and sexual harassment”.
The principal of the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, Gavin Henderson, resigned in 2020 after students raised concerns about “systemic racism” at the college. In 2018, Henderson had said he felt quotas to address the imbalance of black and minority ethnic students studying at the school risked diluting the quality of students.
In his Guardian interview, Essiedu, who graduated from Guildhall in 2012, said the syllabus focused entirely on white dramatists. “I remember doing restoration comedies such as Man of Mode about the aristocratic class – slave owners, basically. These plays ask a very different question of a black or brown actor whose ancestry might have been negatively impacted by those particular people than they do of actors who don’t have that same historical context.”
Rather than questioning whether he felt uncomfortable performing such plays, he was criticised for his performance. “It was like, oh, that person is doing it right and you’re not doing it right. They reduced it to the idea that they were doing it right because they’re better at acting than you whereas there was a whole raft of other things at play.”
Guildhall School told the Guardian: “We have also undertaken a significant redevelopment of our acting curriculum, including a departmental staff restructure, so that our teaching and learning culture prioritises inclusivity, representation and wellbeing. We understand that this work is long-term and will require sustained commitment to build a culture that is inclusive and equitable for everyone.”
Essiedu said he was on good terms with the school, and in 2020 he directed Guildhall students in the Ruby Thomas play Either.
Read the full interview with Paapa Essiedu in the Guardian’s Saturday magazine and online tomorrow.
