51³Ô¹ÏÍø

Theatre: Sir Lenny Henry interview; Part 1 of 2 ENGLAND: London: INT Sir Lenny Henry (Actor, writer and comedian) interview SOT - (On inspiration for writing play) When I see people like Michael Braithwaite talking about his experience of being fired from his job he'd been doing for years, being of value to his community and suddenly being told he hasn't been to a country for forty five years or something it really broke my heart / this could have happened to my sister, some of my cousins, anyone in my family / it really struck me, but I thought if I can write something where you've got this bloke who makes jokes and talks about his family but there's also this dystopian thing about capita and immigration following him around that slowly becomes apparent, then hopefully the audience will be going at a certain point 'no that shouldn't happen to him' / they should be saying that and they should be angry Q: IT IS THE STORY OF AUGUST'S LIFE TOLD BY HIM AND IN A WAY IT'S AN ORDINARY LIFE - Yeah, he's a guy who worked in a factory, works in a shop with his mate now that he co-owns / he makes the customers laugh, he's jokey, not a comedian but he has jokes / when this thing happens to him it shakes him to his very core; how could this happen, I've paid my taxes, I've got a driving licence, I've raised my kids here, they go to school, how can they tell me to go back to a country I've not been to since I was five / if it conveys that then that's good Q: YOU TALK ABOUT PEOPLE WHO DON'T FEEL WELCOME ANYMORE, IS THAT WHAT WINDRUSH DID - The thing is a lot of people involved in the scandal don't really understand what the scandal was / we interviewed some people for this and did quite a lot of research; the truth is they didn't know what it was / the scandal has been given to it by someone else, all we know is these brown envelopes arrive with this weird gobbledegook language where one of your kids reads it and says 'this is saying you've got to leave the countr...