Paapa Essiedu: ‘Is this part harder than Hamlet? Yeah, it’s different gravy, mate’

The actor on his challenging new West End role, sweating profusely on stage, and why he almost became a doctor

Paapa Essiedu is a 34-year-old British-Ghanaian actor who moves seamlessly between stage, TV and film. Brought up in Walthamstow, north-east London, he trained at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama before joining the RSC. At 25, he became the first black actor to play Hamlet for the company. Essiedu was also Kwame in the 2020 BBC comedy drama I May Destroy You, created by his Guildhall classmate Michaela Coel. Next up, he stars in Death of England: Delroy, the second of Clint Dyer and Roy Williams’s state-of-the-nation trilogy of plays, which premiered at the National Theatre between 2020 and 2023 and are now being performed together in the West End. Essiedu lives in London with his wife, the actor and comedian Rosa Robson.

Delroy in Death of England is a seriously demanding role. You’re the only character on stage and it’s a 100-minute monologue that tracks the ups and downs of his life. Are you ready for it?
The challenge is enormous. I thought I’d done things that were demanding, played Shakespearean leads and even that play I did at the National last year [Lucy Prebble’s The Effect], there was a lot to it. But this is a different beast.