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reggie yates he's a critically acclaimed filmmaker a writer a director and an entrepreneur the first time i saw a
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machine gun was in my estate at like nine years old when the police were raiding a flat on my
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floor because there was all kinds of craziness there when you're just playing on the balcony as a teenager presenting kids tv with
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air force ones and the mecca tracks it says something i'm on the bbc and i'm dressed like the boys that you cross the
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street from subsequently you know i've had kids come up to me bro i loved watching you because we dressed the same we talked
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the same and you were doing that and when people say things like that to strangers it's so powerful
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for me empowering others is a huge part of my drive right now working with young talented people and i
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love that i have that relationship with people because i never had it growing up there was always a distance between me and the person that was helping guide me
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shortening that distance for me in the lives of others is what success feels like
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[Music] reggie yates he's a critically acclaimed
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filmmaker a writer a director and an entrepreneur and over the last three decades
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he's been on our screens and through that time the world has changed the platforms have
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changed and he has certainly changed he's been involved in scandals
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wild success and unfortunate failure reggie's work as a filmmaker is extraordinarily diverse
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and he's traveled across the world meeting those that have oppressed and those that have been oppressed and this conversation is the same
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incredibly diverse we'll touch on everything from love relationships struggles family mental health ambition council
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culture and everything in between thank you reggie thank you for your honesty because i
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know the people that are about to listen to this podcast are going to take a tremendous amount of important value
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from it so without further ado i'm stephen bartlett and this is the dire of a ceo i hope nobody's listening but if you are
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then please keep this to yourself
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reggie um location environment family where do you come
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from um i am the child of african immigrants both my parents were born in ghana and
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came to london as children i was born on tottenham court road so i'm london london london
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and i was raised in holloway i moved to south east london when i was 14 and 18 i moved out and i've been a londoner
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ever since and i say that because i've lived all over you know london's quite a tribal city uh between football
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and the club you support and the area that you're from and your connection to it i've lived all over and i call south london home
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now even though i didn't start there and i didn't school there really um but i love it there and it's nice to
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return to the place that i spent a chunk of my teens so two parents from an african uh from
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ghana great ghana they came here when they were my mother 11 i think my dad was maybe 15 or 16.
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so tell me all about that and that experience because i know that in terms of like education and perspective on the
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world and all those things from my own mom's experience she she couldn't read or write right so we had a ton of wars growing up because i
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dropped out of university after one lecture so we didn't speak for three years i know that african parents have a certain perspective and i know
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especially from reading about how you've handled things like fame press drugs alcohol and the avoidance of
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all of those things i know i feel like much of that must have come from those kind of values yeah um i'd say it's a combination of
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things it's a combination of the mentors that i chose uh the environment that i was in at home
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and that massively comes down to culture you know and that's why i was really interested in your connection to nigeria because
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culturally for me um where my parents are from has informed massively
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in a lot of ways my outlook and culturally obviously you know when you've got west african parents who
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were born there you're raised in an environment where education is everything because
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as far as they're aware that is the only way to unlock uh another life for yourself my
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grandparents came to this country in search of a better life for not just themselves but their children and ultimately us their grandchildren
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and it worked you know my mom got an education i got an education to a point and
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weirdly my social education and my extracurricular activities have given me a career
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so um more than anything i think it's the values of an african house that have given me
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what i believe to be a healthy life and i mean in every sense of the word
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people talk to me a lot about being grounded and understanding what being humble is and i think when you've come from
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nothing but at the same time you enjoy everything it changes your
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perspective on what success looks like and that was the house that i was raised in we celebrated
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every day because we essentially were striving to be happy
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and happiness didn't come from material goods it came from success and achievement uh on a level
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that made everybody in the house proud as opposed to what was going on outside the family home because culture was everything and do
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you feel that do you still feel that and did you ever fully believe that happiness would come from success and
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achievement do you still do you still deeply believe that for me happiness uh comes from being fulfilled i think um
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in my at my most happiest and my most calm i feel like i'm able to love and i feel
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loved i feel as though i am professionally and personally fulfilled um i feel as though i'm creatively
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fulfilled they're the moments when i feel my most happy and they're the things that i'm chasing if ever i was chasing anything
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and what was that what was the kind of difference in between your mom and your dad my mom was nigerian yeah i didn't i don't really
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have to say which my mom was nigerian right my dad was the antithesis of that my dad was a what is a um older
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white male very passive very very calm usually doesn't speak wow and my mom was she can shout for
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seven hours at a tone you've never heard in your life without like taking a breath
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amazing so was there a huge difference between the the sort of values or the approach of your mum and your dad that had a sort of
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a significant well my dad's a musician was is and continues to be um but he
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wasn't in my life my parents divorced when i was quite young and then my mother remarried a another garnier man who was also from
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a similar background um and in terms of who they are slash were as people it's very different
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um i think i get a lot of what makes me me for my mum my mom was incredibly social she loved music i've spoken about this
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before she used to always cook with this sony ghetto blaster above the cooker and you know
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it's west africa dean so you're using a lot of palm oil so there was like the the ghetto blast it's so like clear
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in my mind it's just covered with red oil and like there was there was no cover on the tape bit so
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you used to have to push a tape in and there was like marks on it as to where her favorite radio stations were so
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i was raised on a diet of pirate radio and pop um and that was my mum it's just a
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vivacious big social animal like i remember her 30th birthday because you know she had us quite young and her
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just with a [ __ ] out the window like having a little dance or whatever and like turning up her favorite records and
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my stepfather is not that you know he's not particularly social and he's quite different and his dad was in the military so he was i
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imagine not that dissimilar to your mother it sounds like so um there were two very different
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types of parenting in my house and as i say my biological dad wasn't present and ironically we're
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probably really similar given our you know our expression through creativity
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have you ever reconnected with him yeah um yeah so i did who do you think you are yeah
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the bbc one show yeah and it's really interesting because they they started carving up episodes of the
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show and putting them on youtube and they chunked my episode into four parts and uh on my father's side of the family
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my biological father they've been mixing for generations you know like three of my grandmothers are mariah
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carey black you know like they're super super fair because there's been generations of people that are of mixed origin and with ghana um
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previously being part of the british empire and being part of the commonwealth and ghana finding independence in 1957
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there was a huge uh english contingent particularly uh in around places like cape coast um
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when it came to trading when it came to gold etc um and that's part of my family legacy
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massively so you know my mum was bitterly disappointed after they did the research and realized that
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her family background which was just one village versus my dad's side which was lots of
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different people from different places in europe coming to africa and mixing so on and so forth so
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when we made that show i realized that they wanted to start the show with a conversation between he
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and i talking about the family and i hadn't seen him or spoken to him in over a decade so we met up just
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before we recorded and it was it was weird because i hadn't seen him in so long and then when we did record it's interesting like the film
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starts with the sequence with he and i sort of chatting and he's playing thumb piano but the last time we saw each other with
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each other was the day before but prior to that i was a lot younger so yeah i was a teenager the last time
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i'd seen him so is it i don't know i i don't really have any bitterness towards the man because i understand him a lot better now as i've
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grown and as your friends become fathers you sort of start to identify
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just how many people are actually naturally equipped with fatherhood and not everyone is and unfortunately my
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father just didn't seem to be one of those guys one of the things i i got to be honest i worry about with
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my own experience with my parents is that there are slightly toxic traits that they have and
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i think this is the case with all humans but you know my parents are humans too yeah um that i'm i'm concerned i will
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pass on like with through generational cycles and i think the less aware i am of those things the
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more they stand a chance of like showing up at some point and running the show when it matters the most yeah do you have those fears have you
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ever had that you know they had those fears i don't have them anymore okay and the reason i don't have them anymore is because i recognize that you
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know i define my my present and my future my past i have no control over but um who i am today and
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who i will become is down to me um and that also uh is massively dependent on my
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understanding of my childhood trauma of the things that um
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if unchecked could define me so i've always been desperate to define
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myself even when i didn't realize that i was doing it so you know uh growing up in a council estate up the
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road from here in holloway and having friends who have exactly the same setup at home you know
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before my mother met my stepfather we were a single-parent household on benefits my mom did whatever she could to you
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know feed the family and move us forward that was the same for the other boys on the estate so if i was hanging out with corey or tyrone or whoever
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their house felt like mine and i was determined to not be defined by the things that we were being taught to
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normalize you know and as a result i just have decided that that's not the life
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that i'm gonna have and my children won't god will and i have you are when you
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look at your career you are a tremendous outlier in terms of the journey you've you've you've taken and what you're
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doing now that's very kind thing and then you trace it back and go you came from a councillor state not too far from
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here for you to have gone on that journey and achieved the things you have i always i always think there must have
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been certain factors in those early years that made you take a different course to those friends
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that might still be on the estate now yeah it might have been you know we talked a little bit about values there it might have been you know
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i don't know something someone said to you an experience you had or just the conditioning whatever it is but my question is do you
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and do you know what those factors were that made you an outlier i mean you sound as though
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you've done a lot of work on yourself and in the little bit that i know about you i get to meet people and ask so i
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learned so much from these kinds of answers right and i've made documentaries for over 10 years so it's the same thing you know
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you learn so much from your environment if you're willing to drink in the information yeah and i just in thinking about between therapy
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and also being um present in moments like this you know yes there are cameras but i'm
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having a conversation with you and i'm learning from you and that certainly was the case in 10 years of making films you know for
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the bbc um so when it sort of comes to me looking at
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how i've become the person that i am and how my journey has played out the way that it has done it's an amalgamation of
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different moments and instances but fundamentally it comes down to
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a desire even as a kid to understand and be aware and it's progressed into
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this idea of being present and understanding the moment that you're in and why you're there and and taking as much from the moment as
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possible so as a child i would always ask questions and i was far too
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aware of my environment for my own good so for instance i'll i'll never sort of forget going to my
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friend kieran's oh no yeah it was kieran buckley's house i went to kieran buckley's house in barnsbury and um
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my mom was very protected so she wouldn't let me play at friends homes i know you know how that goes and i went
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to kieran's and i was in the garden and he had this massive massive beautiful islington
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garden with several trees in it and i asked him how come you've got a
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park at the back of your house um and his mother sort of overheard and laughed a bit and it stayed with me
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and he's like that's not parks my god are you talking about come on freeing it in you're in goal mate and you play this game you don't think about it and then i
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remember going back to my cancer state and looking at the the one tree that me and corey used to climb and think
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i don't have what he has why is that and then you start to think about these things and then start to understand
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class and where you are and even so far as the area you know i started to really recognize the power of
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my walk to school even as a kid before i got to secondary school i was like this is really weird like i live in
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a borough islington in north london that has everything from council states with immigrants and white
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working class right the way through to multi-million pound houses and i lived on a row called liverpool road which is
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such a it's such an important road that i haven't only i've only become
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aware of how important that road is to my journey in recent years so i lived at the holloway end of liverpool road and
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liverpool is a long road that runs through islington and at the other end is angel an angel gentrified years before
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holloway did hallway is a very different place now and they had a waitrose they had a sainsburys and you had these gorgeous
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massive townhouses and you know if you deviated off liverpool road you'd be in barnsbury and there were these beautiful little villagey
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roads and holloway was where the people that i grew up around lived and you had these estates you had every
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kind of madness you could imagine happening on my estate like i remember my first the first time i saw a machine gun was
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in my estate at like nine years old when the police were raiding a flat on my floor because there was all kinds of craziness
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there when you're just playing on the balcony on your estate on on the floor that you live on you got on police there
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you know let alone the other times that you see other weapons or you see other things happen um and those walks that i would go on
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where i would be like wow the bit that i live in versus the bit that i'm walking through versus the bit that i'm going to to go to school
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i know what bit i want to live on so i better start thinking about how i'm going to get to that bit of the road it's so fascinating you'd
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say that and it took me in my head back to back to my own experiences being a kid and this really vivid memory i have one
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day of looking up at the sky and seeing a plane and then looking down at my street and
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thinking i wonder if all of these fam this is what they wanted from their life and then the plane for me was the juxtaposition between a family going on
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holiday i'd never been on like other than coming from africa we'd never been on holiday yeah so i was thinking oh my god people are
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going on holiday and then i look down at my street and i look up again and i see this plane and a lot of people will have that but
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it takes a different mind to then think i want to be on the plane i want to be at the other end of
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liverpool street um but then also i have some idea about how to get there
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or maybe you didn't have some an idea about how to get there but maybe just the i mean if you believe in that manifestation just that i want to be
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there so i'm going to make decisions over the next 10 years in that direction right well my journey's super weird right
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because from the age of eight i was a working actor so i was constantly reminded about my
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difference just by being present and by being aware even as a child so it didn't take much for me to realize
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you're not like your friends reg because you're currently working while they're at school and
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you've been allowed time off school to work so straight away you're like okay i'm a bit different and this is a bit of a weird situation
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to be in and then you look around and there's a hundred people on set and you're the only black person both in front of all behind the camera
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and you go okay wow um i'm not like any of these people here and the conversations that you hear
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about what people did on the weekend or where they're going that even or even conversations about wine like little
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things that people take for granted culturally anybody drinking wine in my house you know what i mean
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like shallow was a big deal you know um going to sainsbury's was a big deal like
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we used to walk to dalston with backpacks to go and buy meat and tin tomatoes and carry them back because we never had a car what does that do to you
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though when you're on set everyone else is a different skin color and they're talking about things that you're not familiar with in terms of like let's be
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honest like class right absolutely what does that do to you and does it put a chip on your shoulder does it
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make you i'm more ambitious does it make you think [ __ ] i'm i'm out of place i'm an imposter yeah well it could have put a chip on my
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shoulder and i'm incredibly thankful that it didn't what it did do was make me so hungry
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to create an environment where i could feel comfortable and what that progressed into was
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understanding that it's going to take me a while to get to the point that i'd like to be at therefore it would be and become my responsibility
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to create that for someone else to create that for another eight-year-old me or 15 year old me and i feel incredibly proud that i'm
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able to do that now because i recognize the power of it and regardless of those moments of feeling out of place or
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being sort of feeling as though you know your class is being is being waved in your face like i told
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this story the other day to a friend of mine who's i'm a godfather to his child he's one of my good good good friends
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uh sam wilkinson he's a director who i made a lot of my documentaries with and um he's got my gorgeous little
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god son in his hands little teddy and we're chatting away and i was telling him a story about uh being at this primary school in
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island where you've got kids from estates and kids from quite you know affluent homes all in the same school and at lunch time you had
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these kids with thundercats lunch boxes and these incredible sandwiches and kitkat minis all the things that i never had in my house you know
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you're sort of looking at tinfoil that hasn't been used 50 times and you're like oh my god they're throwing the tinfoil in the bin what the hell
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what the hell is going on without being made to fold and put it back because you could use it for dinner tomorrow anyway so you're like taking all of that
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in and every lunch time i'll never forget um pat god bless her
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uh the head dinner lady this big lady big lady would walk out and she'd go free school
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dinners and all the kids that were on free school dinners used to have to stand up and go and get your food and it sort of
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broke you a little bit as a kid because your mates were just a bit like oh my god can you imagine and i told this story to
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sam and he started crying and sam started crying i think not because
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well i think he felt a little sad for little mini me but he also as a father imagined his son in that
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position and i'm sure we'll get on to family and fatherhood and stuff but i you know i realize how much fatherhood
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has softened a lot of my friends and also has made me very sort of cognizant of my journey
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and also just how important my childhood was in shaping who i've become and when you were there when you were in
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school when you were eight years old and working and acting what were your dreams for the future and how big were they could could you
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what was that internal monologue saying that the end of reggie's story would look like i don't
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know what it looks like now yeah and then i never had any sort of desire to create it or paint it
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i just knew that it was fun and i enjoyed it and i didn't quite understand why i was getting paid to do it really i
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just didn't get it because it was like you mean i get off school and i get to play make believe with people that i've
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seen on telly and you're going to pay me for that right i remember my mom opening a bank
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account for me because i did a job and this money started coming in and you
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know suddenly you've got tens of thousands of pounds in your account you're not even in secondary school yet and it's like well hang on this is this
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is crazy because mum's desperately trying to save to put this on the table or to make that happen
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and i'm getting to do something that's fun and it's paying me really well and i get to do it with stephen fry and hugh laurie like what
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that there though for me speaks to a really critically important part of like
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success which is at a very very young age you got to see behind a curtain and the curtain was in my view just from
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hearing what you said i can do something that i actually like and people will pay me for it and imagine most kids from that estate
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all they'll ever get to see is you work in the factory or whatever you have to hate your work and you get paid [ __ ] all for it yeah
00:22:05
that's what did they you know well it's interesting you said it because you've actually weirdly picked up on a really interesting point because
00:22:11
um something happened on set in a moment of realization even as a child that
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only came back into my head popped back into made a few years ago and i recognized how important it was and i actually put it in my book
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and that was um work to me based on my grandparents and
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my mother was something that you hated um my grandmother worked the buses
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she was a cleaner she did all sorts of stuff she was a a cook for london underground at one
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point i was at london bus one of the two my grandfather had two jobs at night he was a security guard at some random
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factory in king's cross and during the day he was a mathematics professor at a university
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you know it's an incredibly educated man but because he wanted to build a home in ghana and he wanted to look after everyone
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he literally worked all the hours that god would send so whenever anyone spoke about work they hated it and then
00:23:08
the first job that i ever got as an actor when i was eight years old was it was desmond which for anyone that um has seen it
00:23:15
will know like retrospectively how important that show was for those that don't know what it is
00:23:20
uh desmond's uh i believe is channel 4's longest running sitcom and it's not on tv anymore it hasn't
00:23:26
been on for years but desmond's was about a black family in peckham who
00:23:31
owned a barber shop and it was a comedy about black life and
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just about life and because it was so human even though it was massively flavored by this
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caribbean family people loved it and it was massive and it ran for i think seven seasons right
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so the first audition i go for is desmonds and i remember going to humphrey
00:23:53
bartlett i think it was the name of the production company in kentish town and we went up to their production office and my mum was excited
00:24:00
you know she was prepping me on her little cards like to get my lines down and everything and i got the job
00:24:05
and then i had this random moment that when i think back it's crazy for me as a
00:24:10
kid to have made this realization i had this realization and that was i was um i was on set surrounded by
00:24:17
people that looked like me and my family you know you had shirley who was the matriarch of the family who actually looked like my gran
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you had norman who played desmond who was like the super funny old guy my granddad was this funny old guy that
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used to make inappropriate jokes all the time and all the makeup artists were black and they would give me little boiled sweets
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and everybody was just so fun to be around i was just surrounded by this blackness but in a professional setting and
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everyone was at work and they were having a great time and something went off in my head and i
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was like wait hang on a second maybe what i've seen in my family and their relationship with work
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doesn't apply to everyone because these people look like my family and they're having a great time
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so what would it be like if i did that for me and that's exactly it and i a lot of
00:25:04
people don't realize that and that's why i referred to it as you got to look behind the curtain right and once you see it
00:25:10
you can't unsee it once you make that connection that you can love your work and it can be in line with your passions
00:25:16
i mean right now the stuff you're doing in your career is seems to be perfectly in line with your interests you know and i've heard about
00:25:23
you know one point you were doing work in music and you're interviewing pop stars and you're asking them questions you didn't want to ask them
00:25:28
and you've it feels like you've really got closer and closer and closer and closer to doing work that's intrinsically
00:25:34
fulfilling as the years have gone on a lot of people don't realize that reggie and they don't ever get to see behind that curtain
00:25:40
yeah so what would you say to those people who um have the have the dreams but they've
00:25:45
always believed that work is a nine-to-five thing it's a chore it's something you do to fund your passion yeah or your free time well
00:25:52
it's really difficult in this era because there are so many experts uh on social media or on youtube and who
00:25:58
are releasing books or whatever you know there's a ton of people who haven't had any life experience which is why people like you i think are so important
00:26:04
and i'm not blowing smoke here you know you're having incredibly important conversations off the back
00:26:10
of living a life and doing something and you're still so young you have earned the right to say this is
00:26:16
what i think and feel and i'm willing to share it and you continue to learn on camera
00:26:21
making documentary is a huge part of me learning on camera and learning with my audience and i'm sure that you can attest to this
00:26:27
there's something incredibly powerful about saying i don't know but i want to learn and when you do that and it's
00:26:33
documented and recorded people come along with you you know and in this moment there are so many
00:26:39
people that just see the end result that want to be gary vee or you know want to shout advice and be
00:26:45
be the tough love guy and there is merit in that and i think that you know for a lot of young men
00:26:50
particularly you can look at some i'll use garyvee as an example i think he's fantastic in some of the things that he does and the
00:26:56
way in which he delivers a message because some people need to hear it similarly on the other side um a book like the secret for instance
00:27:03
you know if you don't have people constantly reminding you of things like some of the messages that are in
00:27:09
the secret you might need to turn to a book that has them all in one place you know
00:27:15
and i think it's incredibly difficult for people to
00:27:20
to be honest with themselves about what they're capable of without willing
00:27:26
to do the work yeah and so many people want the end result but don't respect or understand the
00:27:32
value in the journey and we live in a microwave era where everything happens overnight and people come up and come down from
00:27:39
social media stars to reality tv stars or whatever and it just it it breaks my heart that
00:27:45
nobody's willing to just look back a little bit and see that everything that they're doing has happened before
00:27:50
and it all ends in one way um and without sort of rattling on about it or anything
00:27:56
i had a conversation recently where i realized how fortunate i've been to have been around for so long because i've had a career for over 30 years now
00:28:03
and i've seen the cycle play out over and over and over again so like being
00:28:09
12 years old and interviewing the spice girls and thinking oh my god this is the most amazing exciting thing ever and then seeing their peak because you
00:28:15
know i interview them for wannabe then you see their peak and then you see the movie and you see them on packets of walkers crips
00:28:20
and then you see the fallout and then you get to where you are today and you see how that has played out but that's sort
00:28:26
of like a a bigger arc but you could go even smaller you know in the boy band era you name them i interviewed them from
00:28:32
the backstreet boys to five over here to whoever i met them when they were new
00:28:37
and excited then i met them when they were arrogant and horrible and then you meet them when everything
00:28:42
isn't happening anymore and they've got that album no one wants to buy you see the cycle happen over and over again today it's reality tv starts
00:28:50
only the cycle isn't three albums if you're lucky it's three years if you're lucky it's three years yeah yeah
00:28:56
yeah sometimes it's three months they do love island twice a year now yeah you don't get to a million followers before there's a new sexy eu
00:29:03
on the show you know and what does that take to i guess to in some degrees to to
00:29:08
reinvent yourself through as the world changes as platforms change to stay relevant to you know what does that take
00:29:16
i have no desire to remain relevant i don't care i will just continue to follow my
00:29:23
passions and i i recognized uh the power of platform
00:29:28
when i was 18 when some random kid's mum stopped me on the street and said you're a role model for
00:29:35
my son and i hated there for it and then i realized i have no choice in the matter and
00:29:40
the minute i realized that regardless of how i feel people are going to look at me because i have a platform
00:29:46
i understood the power of that platform and that started a thinking process that made me
00:29:52
desperate to get out of entertainment and get into documentary because i felt as though with that amount of eyeballs i should
00:29:58
have something to say and that's why i think documentaries have naturally led on to me becoming a writer director and filmmaker
00:30:04
and using art to actually say something and everything that i do now speaks to my
00:30:10
purpose quick one so many of you who are joining the huel family and becoming a hooligan as we call it
00:30:16
and starting your fuel journey ask me what my favorite flavors are and i've been quite i guess contradictory in the
00:30:23
podcast historically because as he will introduce new products i get new favorite flavors and so here in front of
00:30:30
me if you're watching this online on youtube you'll see my favorite three products that i literally don't can't imagine
00:30:36
living without at the moment so you have the berry flavor ready to drink which was my original favorite i have that for
00:30:41
convenience that then was replaced by the banana flavor which is my favorite and now and so that's for
00:30:48
convenience day today my favorite flavor as it relates to my gym fitness regime is the salted caramel
00:30:55
powder super low in calories all of your vitamins and minerals and 20 grams of protein in 100 calories
00:31:02
which is outstanding um so these are my favorite three products if you're going to try
00:31:07
huel and you've got the same palette as me start here that's my advice that journey you've
00:31:14
described over you know 30 odd years and the the cycles and the
00:31:19
staying you know being at a point now where you can still do what you want on a big platform
00:31:25
there must have been a ton of failure through that journey and people don't talk about that because that doesn't make for good instagram posts typically you know like the day you get
00:31:32
rejected from the audition or whatever yeah what are the some of the critical moments in your journey where you
00:31:37
encountered failure or rejection and you had that sort of mental conversation with yourself to figure out
00:31:43
what the hell this means and what we do next um i
00:31:48
uh have done a lot of therapy and i'm really thankful for it i started in my 20s and now in my uh my late 30s
00:31:54
um i understand the importance of getting to know your shadow and uh
00:32:01
my current therapist i've been with for a while now is an incredible human being who has given me new tools for the tool belt
00:32:07
i'm using the language i love this i'm using the language and um just some of the things that he's given me
00:32:13
have really helped me to understand me at my worst and one of the big triggers for me is
00:32:19
when my character is questioned and i've always struggled with the idea of people
00:32:24
getting me wrong or thinking that my intentions aren't pure and i had a situation um a few years ago
00:32:31
now where i said something publicly that offended a lot of people and my argument was no no but i didn't
00:32:38
mean that i didn't mean that and what i came to realize was your intentions mean nothing if you hurt
00:32:45
people and in sitting with the community that i offended deeply which breaks my heart
00:32:50
because my first ever mentor anna cher who gave me my career in in television it's from that same
00:32:56
community as well and i learned and have learned so much about that community and that faith
00:33:02
um and i felt as though i let so many people down and in having those conversations and understanding that bro it's not actually
00:33:08
about you it's about knowing the power of your platform
00:33:13
understanding that you have a responsibility when you open your mouth because you've worked so long that people listen
00:33:18
to you now bro and respecting the fact that regardless of what your intention is
00:33:25
if you hurt people you have to behave accordingly and that was a huge moment of failure for me
00:33:31
that i have learned so much from and that i am uh i'm proud of the lessons that came
00:33:38
from it and those lessons i think have set me up in such a way that i'm excited about my future because
00:33:46
regardless of everything i've done i feel as though i'm only really getting started now and everything that has happened feels
00:33:52
like practice in a way so i'm gonna ask these questions because
00:33:57
i i'm scared that at some point i'm on dragon's den now i i have a podcast where i speak my mind
00:34:03
and i'm gonna say some [ __ ] at some point i've said to my team before i'm like i know at some point i'm going to say some [ __ ] that
00:34:08
is going to get me in trouble something that i didn't mean or something off the cuff or whatever you want to say didn't mean again to your point it doesn't
00:34:14
necessarily matter but um if i meant it or not what my intentions were but can you talk to me and we're kind of
00:34:20
talking about like cancer culture here we're talking about you know um someone that has a platform
00:34:25
that's speaking their mind that's is using words in various ways um so you're talking you're you're
00:34:30
referencing there there were some comments made people there was an uproar within the jewish community what was
00:34:36
your mental journey from the second you you said
00:34:41
those comments to where you are now can you give me like a little bit of the journey of like
00:34:46
you see the uproar yeah is the initial feeling of like you don't get me that's not what i meant
00:34:52
absolutely yeah and then there's is there anger there is there this and then there's no anger it's just disappointment because you know better
00:34:58
it feels as though it's the biggest thing that's happening anywhere in the world to anyone and it really isn't but the bottom line
00:35:05
is that you have caused offense to people that you care about you have working
00:35:11
relationships with people and so on and so forth and there's a lot of vanity that kicks in
00:35:16
hence me saying what i said about you know you feeling that it's the biggest thing because suddenly your entire world is made up of people
00:35:22
who are either disappointed or uh let down or angry with you and
00:35:28
rightly so um and you just have to sit in it you just have
00:35:33
to sit in it and make those difficult phone calls and also be willing to learn and understand that you were wrong
00:35:40
and i think when you are at your core a good person which i believe i am when
00:35:46
someone tells you you're not oh it's really difficult to get your head around
00:35:51
but leaning into that and like i said getting to know your shadow um understanding why that's such a
00:35:57
trigger understanding what that is setting off for you in terms of things that may have happened in the past etc um
00:36:04
it's uh it's a process that you kind of have to go through that gets really really dark and difficult and then you
00:36:09
come out the other side saying okay i'm i'm proud of that den like i'll never forget actually and this isn't
00:36:15
this is a horrible clan name drop but um uh daniel kahlua said to me that um
00:36:20
actually off the bat like he and i had a conversation about this whole situation and he said bro um there's a reason that
00:36:26
golf balls have dents in them i was like what do you mean he said well you know golf balls with dents go further
00:36:31
and i was like yeah and kalu was so right you know um i learned so much in that situation
00:36:38
that it weirdly strengthened my relationships with a lot of people from that community and also my knowledge is better and my
00:36:45
knowledge of self is better in terms of how i manage myself in complicated moments
00:36:51
this idea of the shadow getting to know your shadow i find that so fascinating it's good stuff in it yeah it's really good i've had that expression before
00:36:57
um yeah well i wish i came up with it but i'm gonna pretend i did but it's just knowing it's knowing what
00:37:04
your triggers are knowing yourself at your worst and being comfortable with it you know i
00:37:09
i can proudly say that i can't there's very little that could happen to
00:37:15
me now that i don't have something in place to help me
00:37:20
navigate it you know i i so i've been having this conversation with one of my best friends
00:37:25
and he's i'm going to say the context because i think because you've had you've been through the therapy maybe you can offer some advice sure
00:37:31
he was saying to me the other day that he is so easily triggered in the moment by certain things he thinks it's because
00:37:37
he used to get bullied when he was younger on the playground but for example if someone was to say that he was wrong or present evidence
00:37:43
which proved he was wrong or his romantic partner who he's i'm currently with were to get in a little bit of a tif
00:37:49
with him it's kind of like this red mist and he can't control it and then ten minutes later i don't know why i don't
00:37:54
know why i do that yeah yeah how did how did you find out what those triggers were and you said you've got
00:38:00
something in place to deal with it what is what is that because he was like in the moment when i'm
00:38:05
sat with my girlfriend at dinner yeah and the trigger goes if i walk off that's storming off if i
00:38:12
go silent that's sulking so what the [ __ ] am i supposed to do yeah um well it's gonna sound ridiculous
00:38:18
but listening is really difficult when you
00:38:24
feel as though you're being challenged and nine times out of ten any conflict
00:38:30
that i've ever had hasn't actually been about me so to have the resolve to shut the [ __ ] up
00:38:38
and listen sometimes allows you to get through the things that are triggering or annoying or make you angry or
00:38:44
frustrating and get to the heart of what something what's actually being said and why and then when you get to that it just
00:38:51
becomes so much easier because most of the time it's not actually about you you know maybe something you've said or done is triggering to the person that
00:38:57
you really care about you sat across the table from you and if you're willing to get beyond the fact that they're saying something that
00:39:03
in the moment makes you angry you can actually move forward together in a way that just didn't exist before
00:39:09
the the thing that's jumping in and that's it's it's commanding your brain to try and win or to go for victory or self-defense
00:39:16
though yeah that you know that can come from the playground that can come from a comment your dad made you when you were four or
00:39:22
whatever so especially if you're someone who has come from nothing and has succeeded yeah you know it's you against
00:39:27
the world for a huge chunk of that you know earlier stage it's very easy to need to
00:39:32
win everything in life especially arguments but most of the time winning an argument actually ends up putting you backwards
00:39:39
because what you described there is i'm from what i understood is ego yes you have to build and i
00:39:44
genuinely believe this too especially because i was a very young entrepreneur in rooms with you know people that were not the same
00:39:51
skincare as me and three times my age when i was first pitching my my ideas and at some point you have to
00:39:56
develop a sense of like huge confidence and self-belief which
00:40:02
has to kind of flirt with having a big ego because i promise you like as you'll probably
00:40:08
know um i don't want to speak for you so i'm saying probably there people will try and [ __ ] with you
00:40:13
especially if you're they i mean of course because everyone's trying to win in their own little personal war especially if you're an outlier yeah if
00:40:18
you are the t-1000 yeah people really want to figure out how they can break you yeah and some people get off on that
00:40:25
yeah um and i'm sure you've experienced that i certainly have but i don't know uh in my experience
00:40:33
a lot of the time when i find those that that conflict where i find people trying to push buttons
00:40:38
it doesn't take much thought to recognize where it's coming from right and most of the time it's not about you i mean books like
00:40:44
uh ego is the enemy or you know uh start with why like they're really or leaders leaders eat last yeah the simon
00:40:51
says um that's a great one for ego um i i sort
00:40:56
of learned a lot from that about how to lead and also what true leadership can do
00:41:03
and that sort of unnatural thing of not being submissive but allowing
00:41:10
someone to find their answers with your guidance as opposed to you telling them is so powerful because it just makes the
00:41:16
bond so much stronger you said i read that you wrote that you had what part of your therapy sessions
00:41:22
was to really understand your issue with father figures and the
00:41:27
sort of tricky relationship you had with father figures yeah yeah uh there was a disappointment that i
00:41:32
felt even as a a young age in that i didn't have the perfect dad at
00:41:38
home or at least a dad that i felt that i deserved as a kid because i was a good kid i was i was working i was doing well at school
00:41:44
i was clinging to my sisters like i i thought i was a good kid and i felt that i deserved a different kind of
00:41:51
dad at home especially someone as someone who was so obsessed with tv you know i'm looking at uncle phil going why
00:41:58
can't i have what will and carlton have you know i want an uncle phil um
00:42:03
and in going to some of the houses of kids that i was going to school with and seeing how their dads fathered them it
00:42:09
made me um disappointed that i didn't have that at home but i've spoken about this before and this
00:42:14
is a book that i've been working on uh called bits of dad um and i was incredibly fortunate
00:42:20
um to have bits of dad um because of what my mother invested in me
00:42:27
so my mother taught me from quite a young age to recognize what a good man looked like which helped me pick the
00:42:32
right friends and ultimately pick the right mentors and people to follow so i say bits of dad because
00:42:40
i would look up to and ask questions of mark who worked at the play center at the after school club at my school
00:42:46
and he would help me with sort of dealing with some of the dynamics in my friendships at school
00:42:52
and then i had billy mcqueen who i call my tv dad a producer who i met when i was 12 years old at disney
00:42:57
who would answer any professional question that i needed help or guidance with and then there were these other men who
00:43:04
helped me with self-discipline or money or even football or even you know conversations
00:43:09
about women and relationships and amalgamated they made the perfect father but i had the bits
00:43:15
and the bits were enough for me so when you're going to therapy was it a
00:43:20
question you're opposing to your therapist about how you get a better relationship with father figures or was it a um was it about authority was it about
00:43:27
bro we've had so many conversations about dad i couldn't tell you what it was specifically but i think just knowing that
00:43:35
being a good man is such an important thing for me and my future and knowing that i didn't have quote
00:43:40
unquote good men at home uh has always been something that i've revisited and tried to unpack and
00:43:47
understand and um it's something that's in the front of my mind in a lot of ways as i said you know that so many of my friends
00:43:52
are now becoming fathers seeing how they parent and also seeing the decisions that they make and now becoming a godfather for
00:43:58
the first time you know i'm not dad i'm not a jace you're saying so i could yeah yeah yeah you know you you go
00:44:04
around you pick up you change nappy sometimes i haven't changed teddy's nephew just yet because he does massive um but um knowing that when that kid
00:44:12
gets a little bit bigger i can help sam this guy who's a mate of mine who i love dearly
00:44:18
and maybe the bits that he can't do with the bits that he doesn't want to do and i offer a different perspective as
00:44:24
well i i one of the really sort of fascinating point i've just become a godfather again congratulations time last week
00:44:30
so that's and i'm particularly close to the dad one of my best friends worked
00:44:36
for me for seven odd years so i feel and it's also the child is um so my friend is the dad
00:44:41
is is is black and the the mum is white so the the kid is probably going to look a little bit a little bit like me so i feel a greater
00:44:48
sense of responsibility it feels like my first my first real kid um there was something you said a quote where you talked about really
00:44:55
understanding how precious your time was and the the actual quote is no one like me has had this opportunity
00:45:01
so i'd be a fool not to make the most of it i really want to understand that like driving force within
00:45:07
within you that's that's um still driving you today and i i've sat here with so many
00:45:12
um successful people so many successful uh black men um i've analyzed myself and it tends to
00:45:18
be a bit of a cocktail sometimes your story from the council estate sheds some light on that yeah and you know liverpool wrote that really shed
00:45:25
some light on it as well um and the bit we talked about being underestimated and
00:45:30
you know feeling sometimes like the outlier in certain rooms yeah um but that thing about time and that
00:45:36
sense of responsibility you speak to is because you saw that word and you're right that was
00:45:41
almost your feeling of responsibility yeah it's really complicated and
00:45:49
i think the idea of responsibility comes from understanding that i was one of the first people to uh be given a platform either on prime
00:45:56
time or on children's tv and so on and so forth and because i've always been myself
00:46:03
[Music] regardless of who i was at that time and you know having been on tv for so many
00:46:09
years that version of me has continued to progress you know as a teenager presenting kids tv with cane row and you
00:46:16
know uh air force ones and the mecca tracks your academic sweatsuit knowing that i'm not just wearing this
00:46:23
to my dressing room i'm wearing this on camera says something it says something i'm on
00:46:28
the bbc and i'm dressed like the boys that you cross the street from that was like i understood even at 18 that that was a
00:46:36
thing that meant something and subsequently you know i've had kids come up to me
00:46:41
over the years saying i grew up with you on tv and bro i loved watching you because we
00:46:47
dressed the same we talked the same and you were doing that and it just made me feel like i existed
00:46:52
and when people say things like that to strangers it's so powerful and i assume that that might be the case
00:46:58
even as a teenager and i'm so glad that i was right because
00:47:04
that desire to be me whatever room i'm in has served me well and that's gone from
00:47:10
presenting kids tv right the way through to writing and directing now like i've just completed my first feature
00:47:16
film pirates uh which will be out this year and i'm a producer i'm a writer and i'm a director
00:47:22
in this movie about three men of color men 18 year olds right
00:47:28
and i employed the crew i am sat there in interview rooms
00:47:33
interviewing heads of department deciding who is going to ultimately set the mood
00:47:39
for this thing that really matters to me because as a writer director it starts with the script but as a director you're on set and
00:47:46
you've got 150 200 people working for you and if you don't lead in the right way
00:47:53
they'll decide what this environment is going to be and the big concern for me was i'm looking
00:47:58
at three versions of me i've got a moroccan kid a ghanaian kid and a west indian kid who were 18 who were leading their first
00:48:04
movie i remember being 18 desperately trying to get auditions for movies and not getting them it was a very different landscape then
00:48:11
so i understand the responsibility that i have today to put on for those guys for redder for
00:48:17
elliott for jordan it's my responsibility to put on for them and create an environment for them in a way that just wouldn't exist
00:48:25
if the man at the top of the tree didn't intrinsically understand them because nobody understood me coming up
00:48:31
that's where the responsibility comes you know so this is a tough question to answer because i would find it tough to answer but i'll answer it as
00:48:38
well if you want me to but what what what is the best and in your own self-assessment
00:48:43
what is the best and worst part of your leadership style um i think the it's easy to say the best
00:48:52
isn't it i'm great okay let's start with worst i
00:48:57
think the worst part of my leadership style is that i want everybody to have a good
00:49:03
time all the time oh okay interesting i do please explain desperately well
00:49:09
when you're responsible for the environment when you pick the people if it goes left or if you pick the wrong
00:49:16
person it's on you and it's your fault and that feels [ __ ] when you get it wrong
00:49:21
and it affects people that you care about that feels terrible so i desperately want everything to work
00:49:27
out in an environment where i'm responsible you know so i think that that's probably one of the biggest failures
00:49:32
that i hopefully will be better at in the next project you know to be really transparent sometimes you have to replace people midway through a
00:49:39
shoot and it's knowing when is the right time and also having the balls to say you don't quite get what we're trying to
00:49:45
do so thank you for what you've done but your your services are no longer required you know that's difficult
00:49:51
yeah especially if you empowered them to begin with yeah and to take it away is tough um i think the thing that i'm good at
00:49:59
is people management i'm good with people i'm good on a one-to-one basis as well as with
00:50:04
the group um and i think the thing that i'm best at is understanding my actors because i
00:50:09
once was one and knowing that you know they just want to do a good job
00:50:15
and are individuals some might require talking to before a take some might require being left alone
00:50:21
some might require some coaching or some confidence boosting some might require being told to rein it in
00:50:26
you know i with pirates i decided that i wanted to make sure
00:50:31
that my three central guys were a little family before we even got on set so i contacted one of my mentors um richard
00:50:39
curtis write director who uh wrote uh notting hill uh
00:50:45
love actually four wins in a funeral um he and his wife emma uh freud who are amazing amazing couple
00:50:51
uh i met through comic relief which is also something that they do i mean they're kind of amazing uh when i was 18
00:50:57
i met them through comic relief and they've been in my life ever since and when i started writing off the back of spending new year's at
00:51:03
one of his places i said look could i would it be possible to take one of your homes by the sea so i can go and write
00:51:09
there and they're like absolutely and they've given me they've opened their doors to me for me to go and write at their
00:51:14
one of their their homes and the desk that i i wrote a few drafts of pirates is the death that richard wrote notting hill on
00:51:20
so i'm rubbing my desk come on give me some of this good stuff come on um and prior to shooting
00:51:29
i the guys allowed me to i asked them and they were absolutely fine with the fact they actively encouraged me to bring the boys
00:51:35
to the house for the weekend we spent the weekend by the sea cooking together watching coming of age movies
00:51:41
talking about the movies uh very much about friendship and coming of age but it's also set in 1999
00:51:48
with a whole uk garage backdrop so the entire music in the movie is ukg and the boys are desperately
00:51:54
trying to drive from north london to south london and the peugeot 205 to get into twice as nice on new year's eve 1999. that's the movie
00:52:00
it takes place over one day right so you know we got like spoonie on the phone or we got like the heartless crew
00:52:07
on the phone and the boys were just sort of learning about garage and they were also forming these relationships and when we got on set
00:52:14
everyone was like oh so you guys have been friends for years right and i'm like no we just you know just hung out and in now we're at the
00:52:20
point where we started doing screenings people have watched it and they're like the chemistry between the boys is unreal and i say all of this to say that the thing i'm
00:52:27
most proud of is that i recognize what is necessary to get the best
00:52:32
out of my actors and as a result i'm incredibly proud of what they've done i'm just really excited for them because
00:52:39
i know that they're about to have very exciting careers one of my actors red-eyes a moroccan kid
00:52:44
and he's amazing he turned 21 while we were shooting well during our break we got broken up for kovit we got stopped
00:52:50
mid-shoot and we went back thankfully and finished the movie but red is this young incredible uh kid from
00:52:57
uh from morocco london moroccan descent and he said to me like in the audition i was like you're
00:53:02
so naturally funny why haven't i seen you do more comedy and he said mate i only ever get the
00:53:09
the the child of terrorist the young about to be turned terrorist role i only ever get
00:53:15
those parts he said i've never read for comedy ever because i'm always reading for the same thing
00:53:20
which is why when this came across my desk i've done everything i can to be good at it because i don't want to just
00:53:25
play a terrorist i'm more than that and for him to be in this film and to be so funny it's just the most amazing
00:53:34
feeling ever to give somebody that platform you've created so many critically acclaimed
00:53:39
amazing documentaries right and they're so diverse in their subject matter thank you yeah no just
00:53:45
i was going through yeah yeah it's really just like it's so diverse but i i wanted i wanted to
00:53:50
know of all and this might be like picking your favorite kid or something but of all the documentaries and all the moments and those those those stories
00:53:56
that you've told is there something where you think this is why i started
00:54:01
man that's so tough because there's something in every film yeah genuinely yeah it might even be the lesson that
00:54:07
you know you made a crap a crap documentary and you knew it going in but you did it anyway
00:54:12
there's been so many amazing lessons so i think the thing that comes to mind most whenever i'm asked this question
00:54:17
is um the south african preacher i made a documentary called the millionaire preacher um and there was this guy
00:54:25
called uh umboro who is still active as a preacher i mean he recently i think he got arrested
00:54:31
for selling pictures uh to his followers uh that he took when he went up to
00:54:36
heaven so he recently i think has been arrested for that i'm not entirely sure what's
00:54:42
going on with him now but anyway at the time when we went to make the documentary with him he had a congregation of about
00:54:47
10 000 people and he was a multi-millionaire several rolls-royces you name the car he had it mansions the lot and his entire
00:54:54
congregation was made of poor black people and he fell out with me
00:54:59
because he didn't think i respected him enough because i came to the film as somebody
00:55:06
who isn't particularly religious but has a religious background i grew up in a pentecostal christian church my stepfather was muslim i converted to
00:55:12
islam when i was a kid and in my teens i decided that faith really wasn't for me in that context so i'm looking at this man
00:55:20
thinking you are literally exchanging people's faith for their pay packet and i was disgusted by him
00:55:28
by everything that he represented before i'd even spoken to him before i'd even begun to unearth who he
00:55:35
was and what got him to that place and it was an incredible learning experience when he decided that he
00:55:40
didn't want to film with me anymore and you know his armed guards were sort of like you know had their fingers on the trigger as
00:55:46
i was trying to force the point that he should keep talking to me and he was just not interested i i came to realize that
00:55:54
it's not about me the reason i was there was not to have a personal experience
00:56:00
the reason i was there was to make a film that could potentially shed light on an issue or teach something to people across the uk that i
00:56:07
would never meet and ultimately the world as the film went on on netflix and i had a similar situation
00:56:13
when i made a film about being young black and gay i have a family member who i'm incredibly close
00:56:19
to who is a gay man and um his coming out was this incredible moment for me in terms of
00:56:26
realizing how difficult his life had been up until that point because of what he worried about because
00:56:33
of what he thought might happen um and i wanted to make a film about that
00:56:38
and cut a long story short ultimately the film for me didn't feel as though it nailed it
00:56:44
and i was really really disappointed and uh the production company that i worked with at the time would always do
00:56:50
screenings of the film as the films as they went out so we went to the exec's house and we're in his house
00:56:57
and we're in the kitchen watching it and the credits roll and as the credits are rolling everyone's sort of high-fiving each other going ah we killed it we're
00:57:03
trending on twitter this is brilliant everybody loves the film and i'm just like that isn't the film that i had in my head that doesn't speak
00:57:10
to the the specificity of the experience in the way that i wanted it to anyway point being i went into my dm
00:57:18
on all the social platforms i was on at the time and every single mailbox was filled with messages
00:57:24
from young men and women saying we saw that you were making this film
00:57:30
so we purposely watched it with our parents and i've just come out to my mum because of the film you made i was able
00:57:37
to have a conversation with my dad because of some of the things that were happening on screen thank you for giving
00:57:43
us that opportunity thank you for opening the door and i felt like an absolute idiot in
00:57:48
that moment because i was so busy worrying about being missed our program maker and making this film that
00:57:55
was perfect in my mind's eye whereas in reality the conversation that was being had had never been had before
00:58:02
let alone on the bbc and as a result it actively changed lives of people watching it literally changed
00:58:09
the lives of people that messaged me wasn't about me and i felt really embarrassed myself
00:58:16
it's really interesting that balance of it being not about you but it comes to me
00:58:23
yeah do you know what i mean it's that it's that yeah it was it came it was birthed out of your own personal experience and your desire to tell a
00:58:28
very important story which had clearly moved you emotionally enough to commit your life a portion of
00:58:34
your life to telling that story so it but but also i completely understand what you're saying which is like the
00:58:39
outcome is not about you i guess yeah um the experience is yours yeah but the experience that people take
00:58:45
from the content you will never own i will never know how much what i do
00:58:50
affects people or doesn't there's someone out there right now who's seen everything i've never done and i'll never meet them similarly there's someone who i'll bump
00:58:56
into tomorrow who's just seen one film and will have a really important conversation with me
00:59:02
you know on a lot of levels for both of us potentially i'm not responsible for what happens with what is created once
00:59:09
it's out in the world and being comfortable with that is quite difficult but also quite freeing in a lot of ways
00:59:15
quick one as you might know i've recently teamed up with a new partner for the podcast called my energy and they're best known
00:59:21
for their pioneering renewable energy products but they're also doing so much to try and help all of us navigate some of
00:59:27
these alienating um complicated terms as it relates to sustainable energy
00:59:33
whether that's the term les or ules or clean air zones cars you can and can't drive
00:59:38
in london it can be a lot to understand but these guys are making it simple they have tons of
00:59:44
helpful guides explanations q and a's and videos on their website that make all of this stuff make sense
00:59:50
to neanderthal idiots like me and they sell some of the most amazing renewable energy products whether you're buying an
00:59:57
electric car or you're trying to find sustainable ways to run your home check it out myenergy.com they're an
01:00:02
awesome company round by an awesome awesome founder one of the real uk british success stories
01:00:08
and uh i couldn't be more excited to be a partner with them and let's talk about money then so you mentioned money there what role
01:00:14
does does money play in all of this stuff and success in your view in in life well i've never chased it which
01:00:20
is probably why my account hates my guts you know i walked away from prime time tv that you know
01:00:26
is a very rare air in terms of the amount of people that get to host those shows that get millions and millions of
01:00:32
viewers and also the payment that comes with it you know i didn't enjoy
01:00:38
hosting those shows i didn't enjoy being in that space i didn't enjoy being told what to do and say i essentially was being asked to
01:00:45
not be me and that didn't work for me and in walking away from that and focusing on
01:00:50
documentaries i walked away from a lot of money and knowing that i was going to take a hit
01:00:56
financially ultimately being able to get to the place that i am now as a filmmaker
01:01:01
um was something i was very aware of so money has never been a driver for me but
01:01:07
it's been something that i've been conscious on because you've got to live right and also i look after a lot of people
01:01:13
and i help a lot of people and i support people so i've always wanted to do that so money has always been important in that
01:01:18
sense but it's never been important because i'm going to show you that jump you described there where you swing from
01:01:24
being like a tv host to saying you know i want to make my own documentaries feels like a risk it is yeah massively
01:01:31
talk to me talk to me about that the feeling you had when you thought you know what i want to go and pursue myself now yeah
01:01:36
and my sort of intrinsic i always get roasted for using my insurance i can extrinsical intrinsic fulfilling passion yeah um
01:01:43
despite that i'm gonna have to take a financial cut potentially yeah i might not you know and the risk there's no guarantee
01:01:49
here right this might not work out might not get commissioned well it's the same thing with radio you know i hosted radio for 10 years i was
01:01:54
at radio one for a decade and i walked away i left hosting the chart show
01:02:00
not because i was fired but because i decided it wasn't right for me anymore because i stopped learning and for me it's always been about what
01:02:05
are you learning how much you're enjoying this and does this align with where you are as a human being does this align with
01:02:11
your passions does it align with what you care about and you know i you touched on yourself earlier in the
01:02:17
conversation when i recognized that i didn't want to talk to harry styles for 30 seconds
01:02:23
about the new video i wanted to ask how the hell are you managing all of
01:02:28
this you're nine years old like mate how are you managing this
01:02:33
there are grown women that are hunting you down yeah sexually yeah and you're figuring out who the hell you
01:02:39
are as a person how are you managing bro i wasn't allowed to have that conversation on radio one
01:02:45
but i was in my documentaries you know and you know every form has its limitations
01:02:50
which is why documentaries have um grown into filmmaking because now i can actively write
01:02:58
the conversation as opposed to sitting down with someone hoping that they're going to give me the sound bite that makes that you know
01:03:05
makes that uh exciting for the audience now i can write it and through some of my experiences in
01:03:10
factual and life i'm able to create people and create characters that are flawed and interesting enough that
01:03:16
trigger conversations in the way that i would hope to do in the approach to making a documentary
01:03:22
whereas with the film drama specifically i'm able to literally lay it out and create it on my
01:03:28
own terms and in terms of yeah and so in terms of like fulfillment happiness mental
01:03:33
well-being yeah how important is it to be your true self you know and you know again we talked about the lgbtq
01:03:40
community and how the struggles they face when the suicide rates are higher because they they are forced in many instances to live a
01:03:47
life that isn't true to who they actually are from your own experience i mean from mine i know that i mean when you're i mean you're doing it now
01:03:53
you're making extraordinary work because it's connected to who reggie is
01:03:59
um you i'm guessing you're you're more happy you're happy right you're fulfilled and um and it's
01:04:05
all seems to be a really positively reinforcing cycle when you get closer to that yes sense of who you are it's it you
01:04:10
know it is it's it's looking at your door and i'm sure you have a similar thing you know you look at your calendar for the day and you go what am i actually
01:04:16
doing today and we've all had those days where you see something in the calendar that you don't want to do
01:04:21
seldom do i have those days now it's very rare that i have something that i don't want to do
01:04:26
um but professionally particularly yeah um and i'm really excited by that and
01:04:33
i'm proud of that you know um everything that i i'm invested in
01:04:38
professionally uh comes from a place of passion so for instance i made uh you know talking about social media and all the
01:04:44
rest of it i made a drama for the bbc called uh make me famous which was a
01:04:50
standalone one-hour drama about the relationship between uh fame social media and suicide and you know i
01:04:57
created a character who was a reality tv star who after being on a hit show suddenly his
01:05:03
star begins to fade and there is a newer younger sexier version of him who's getting all the accolades and love and suddenly his
01:05:09
rates going through the floor and what that does to him on a on a mental health level
01:05:14
and the conversations and research that i was like embedded within in the build
01:05:21
up to write in the screenplay were incredibly eye-opening for me because i was talking to stars from reality tv past and present
01:05:28
and hearing the difference between people who have been on reality tv 15 years ago and today was heartbreaking you know and seeing
01:05:35
the way that these kids understand fame and and what they're searching for you know and also recognizing that i'm someone
01:05:41
who's hosted reality tv you know and i have a really strange and unique relationship with it so
01:05:47
my point is regardless of what it is i'm doing i care about it i care about it and
01:05:53
that's anything from content to product i have a dairy free ice cream you know i have it sounds ridiculous but
01:06:00
i have a dairy free ice cream i'm a creative director and business partner and blue skies but this is a dairy-free ice cream that
01:06:05
is made in ghana it employs 3000 plus people the people
01:06:10
that work there all look like me and my family and they are being given an opportunity
01:06:16
to not only have a career but be paid properly and it's on amazon fresh and it's in
01:06:23
waitrose and people here are enjoying it in the summer not thinking about it but what it's actually doing is incredible it's changed the community
01:06:29
and this is something that i'm connected to so whatever it is i do now if it doesn't align with my purpose i don't want to be
01:06:35
involved isn't it such a massive uh i reflect on this a lot and especially when i'm speaking to one that has
01:06:40
sort of immigrant parents that you know our parents central concern was survival yes and
01:06:47
what a privilege it is that people like me and you can sit here and talk about meaning and fulfillment and pursuing a
01:06:52
dairy-free ice cream from guys just it seems like you know i think immigrant children will and hopefully understand the weight
01:07:00
of that that response almost responsibility you know when you when so close in your
01:07:05
your your family tree there was people literally fighting for survival yeah um i just think that's it but the
01:07:11
difficult thing about that is and this is a conversation i'm having a lot you know talk about people becoming fathers a lot
01:07:17
of my friends are from a similar background you know black white and different you know whatever children of immigrants or
01:07:22
white working class now that they have worked hard and found a level of success
01:07:28
and are now becoming the parents the lives that their children have will be worlds apart from the struggle
01:07:35
that they experienced how do you navigate that relationship with your kid
01:07:40
who for intents and purposes is silverspoon because you've worked so
01:07:48
hard yeah you've now made it easier for your child and are you going to be mad at that kid yeah because things are easier how do
01:07:54
you raise that child with the same values you know i hope that's a rhetorical question well i definitely don't have
01:07:59
the answer because i'm single i'm not even a dad so i don't have to have that conversation just yet nice segue
01:08:04
to me okay so you're single talk to me about
01:08:10
that how are you going to be waving a partner oh yeah this is like tinder cast
01:08:15
um amazing so so tell me is reggie yates hard to date uh absolutely why uh for the same reason
01:08:23
that you are your business it's the truth it's the truth i i i have a feeling everything
01:08:30
i'm about to say you will identify with and that is the um
01:08:36
disclaimer everything i'm about to say will probably make me sound like a massive pratt so please don't judge um
01:08:43
you're not like a lot of people uh you're not like most of your friends because of the life that you've chosen
01:08:49
for yourself and more importantly the person that you've had to be to become the person that you are which
01:08:55
as a result means that your dating pool is small because if we're talking about someone beyond uh
01:09:01
being attractive and needing to have the value system or the outlook or and this is the really difficult
01:09:07
thing the understanding that you require it suddenly becomes incredibly hard and
01:09:13
one of the stumbling blocks i've found is hoping that someone will become the
01:09:20
person that i really feel that i need in terms of their understanding of me um or expecting them to
01:09:28
and in doing the work and realizing the role that i play in that i've been at
01:09:33
different times very responsible in that those moments of conflict should we say
01:09:39
whereas today i'm just very clear about uh who i am and also what i need and i think if
01:09:46
you're very open and honest about that in the beginning it makes it easier but it doesn't make
01:09:52
it easy and the pool continues to shrink the more my world changes
01:09:58
because a a guy that was like a mentor for me always described me as a moving
01:10:03
target like reg we're moving targets bro like it's never going to be easy because you continue to learn
01:10:09
you continue to work on yourself and you continue to have that hunger to be better for yourself and for others and it's
01:10:17
incredibly difficult to find someone that is either on the same path or has the empathy and understanding for
01:10:23
you and the path that you're on and the knock-on effects that that will have romantically so you said two things there that i
01:10:30
really wanted to jump back to before we proceed um with this topic you said you've come to
01:10:35
learn who you are and what you need yeah who are you and what do you need um i'm a fiercely creative person
01:10:44
with a very young spirit who needs friendship and
01:10:51
understanding and empathy as a writer you know when you're building characters uh one of my
01:10:58
favorite things to do for my characters is write down what is the lie your character believes and i think for the longest time i
01:11:04
believed that i would find a female me and i couldn't imagine anything worse today
01:11:10
and also you know you have to understand the difference between your character's wants and needs which is why i find writing so cathartic
01:11:16
because i'm essentially doing therapy on me as i'm creating different versions of me at different points in my
01:11:22
life and it's never going to be easy to be in a relationship with someone like myself
01:11:28
or i imagine you because we are moving targets i'm a walk in the park um going back to what is it are you
01:11:36
single yeah how's that walk going for you that's good okay so going back to what i
01:11:43
need what does what does and i find this so fascinating because you've described it there like i've been on this journey
01:11:48
over the last 10 years where what i thought i needed if you'd asked me 10 years ago i would have gone this hair color these eyes this way size
01:11:54
this fashion sense and as i've got older and older it's just come down to these like fundamental i guess principles or values yeah and
01:12:01
now there's basically only three of them but i want to i really want to know where you are with what you think you
01:12:06
need now i think it's very simple uh it's to be with someone that i can love unconditionally and that
01:12:14
will love me back unconditionally that's the simplest version of it and that is flaws and all and i think
01:12:22
it's also the desire to be understood and also the ability to understand because i
01:12:29
feel like reg i feel like there's a lot of women out there that would love you unconditionally and i still feel like that might not be
01:12:34
enough um that's an interesting point i don't know i think because i've had exes that loved
01:12:40
me i genuinely know i'm thinking of one in particular loved me unconditionally but it wasn't enough okay so the point i
01:12:47
was about to make and i think that this is something that might i don't know i'm interested to see if this speaks to you is
01:12:53
the understanding part of it right i say understanding and it feels like quite a blanket term but what i mean by that is
01:13:02
culture is such a huge thing for me you know like i'm walking around at the moment with this tiny little chain on but the
01:13:08
pendants on it are jinyami which is a ghanaian
01:13:14
symbol which means trusting god i've got a little africa symbol and i've also got my
01:13:19
family crest right i don't even think about these things anymore but when i think about what i have on me
01:13:25
literally my family is incredibly important to me my relationship with my spirit is
01:13:31
incredibly important to me and where i'm from are incredibly important to me and there is a huge difference between empathy and
01:13:37
understanding and being in a relationship with someone that doesn't understand those three pendants
01:13:44
and doesn't well if they don't understand those three pendants they won't understand me so when i say understanding i speak to
01:13:51
that and it's very easy to say that you can love someone unconditionally but when you're someone like you or i
01:13:58
who meets a thousand people a week some on the street some in situations like this some through crew that you
01:14:03
will never meet again you long to come home look at your partner
01:14:09
and not need to say anything and for them to understand you and that's why
01:14:14
understanding such a huge part of it professionally as well right because you
01:14:19
because you coming your work's going to take you all over the world and you know an insecure partner might think
01:14:25
oh they might try and compete with your work they might be jealous of your work they might well does that mean he doesn't love me
01:14:30
he's spending x time away in a jail cell yeah what about me it's part of it
01:14:37
yeah because work is and isn't um it's a part of who i am you know i go
01:14:44
to the cinema twice a week i've just put a movie theater in my home and god forbid
01:14:50
anybody tell me that i shouldn't be in there as much as i intend to be movies have got me where i am and have
01:14:55
helped like i learned to shave watching danny glover teach his son how to shave and leave a weapon
01:15:01
films are a huge part of my life and you can understand that you know
01:15:08
uh you have to understand me professionally just as much as you do emotionally spiritually and culturally do you think in
01:15:14
relationships you're selfish i definitely was not so much now um
01:15:19
i i i learned the hard way i've been in failed relationships and i've also even in my most recent relationship my
01:15:25
desire to understand uh only went so far and i've you know done some more work on myself
01:15:30
and ultimately didn't work out but i think i understand why and i definitely understand the role that i played in
01:15:36
that last question on this particular one before you can just throw it back at me if you wanted because i've just been like refusing to give my perspective here
01:15:42
because i really i i've really gained a lot from this kind of conversation yeah sure um if you spoke to your
01:15:48
former partners what would be the one common theme as to why they think the
01:15:54
relationship didn't work um i think my my previous partners will say that i
01:16:00
always operate with the best intentions but didn't listen enough and listening so important
01:16:08
oh my god especially if you've got a lot to say and especially if you you've done work and you know stuff
01:16:13
you think you know stuff um you can and i certainly did in my 20s fall into this
01:16:19
belief that i knew enough and i didn't need to listen to you because you don't know as much as me i mean it's
01:16:26
incredibly unhealthy and potentially quite toxic um so yeah i think my biggest failure
01:16:32
romantically has been to not listen interesting where are you i think i think i i've been very uncompromising
01:16:38
and i'd say selfish i think i'm definitely probably in relationships other than my
01:16:43
ex who i've who's taught me a ton of really important lessons about myself and about patience and about yeah
01:16:49
just really realizing that really because i used to once upon a time when i was younger i used to think it was all about
01:16:56
findings i've said this in the last podcast but finding someone that was perfect so again i was i was in search of like the
01:17:01
female equivalent of me that was like super career orientated had the same beliefs as me i saw the world would give me but it was
01:17:08
such a contradiction because i wanted them at my beck and call but then also wanted them to be busy and when you analyze what i was
01:17:14
looking for it of course it didn't exist yeah so the question in my mind moved from being
01:17:19
are they perfect are they worth it and when it becomes are they worth it it's an immediate appreciation for their
01:17:26
and your lack of imperfection and also that there's going to be some really tough difficult times where
01:17:33
it doesn't make sense to you they're worrying about something irrational they're upset about something that would never have upset you but you have
01:17:40
to as you said earlier you have to listen and you don't have to agree
01:17:46
and in fact you don't have to tell them that you disagree yeah you just have to listen and hear them out and that's a skill that i've honed more
01:17:52
recently in my my last current relationship where even if i don't
01:17:57
agree on everything i listen and i will hear them out and yeah i'm
01:18:03
learning the lesson how much do you take who you are professionally into your romantics this is a chip it's a perfect question to
01:18:09
follow up with um no no surprise that you do what you do because that's literally what i what i've what i always ask
01:18:15
people which is in work context i've been taught or in order to succeed
01:18:20
i've had to be someone a set of values a way of speaking a lack of compromise
01:18:26
a clarity of vision and it's worked out and it works out so i come home at night and i'm like
01:18:32
same clarity of vision same like that no [ __ ] there are emotions
01:18:37
yeah and somebody else's feelings yeah i want if she wants to go to the park and do a walk i'm trying to
01:18:43
from my business perspective trying to understand what the roi on that is like i'm like but that's not what i'm wearing
01:18:48
yeah like what the hell are we doing having a picnic like i've got money you know so i've got money to make or something but i've i've
01:18:54
had to realize that i have to be two steves to succeed or different steves to be succeed in different parts of my life in
01:19:01
certain contexts in a boardroom if i'm doing a deal with a one of the ceos of the biggest brands in the world
01:19:08
who is smashing his pen on the desk telling me i'm an idiot and i'm at war with him we're friends but this is how these some of these people do business
01:19:14
i have to be a certain person right the person i have to be when my partner tells me something
01:19:20
like do you know about their personal spiritual beliefs that i might not understand in the full context
01:19:26
is completely different it's not about being right or winning in that context it's about listening
01:19:31
trying seeking to understand and trying if i can to try and find the sort of
01:19:36
mutual bridge in which we we both share values even if the words we're using are different
01:19:42
yeah and i've been on that journey for the last i'd say two years because of this person i met who
01:19:48
yeah who taught me those lessons it's empathy and understanding isn't it ultimately that's what it comes down to what about you on that on that question
01:19:54
you asked me there about the person you are in work yeah and then the person you are at well work has to be quite black and
01:19:59
white in a lot of ways doesn't it you have to be very clear and clinical uh about what needs to get done to
01:20:04
achieve the thing and that's just not the case when you're dealing with a human being
01:20:09
if the thing is uh having a nice dinner and having a conversation where
01:20:15
everybody feels heard you can't be black and white about that there is a gray area that
01:20:22
relationships romantic platonic professional whatever that they they can operate in that
01:20:29
require wriggle room and i think that at my worst i've not allowed for wriggle room when
01:20:36
it comes to somebody's outlook or perspective ultimately i am very happy that i am
01:20:42
where i am and i think i've ultimately made the right decisions in terms of my relationship choices and whoever i end up with hopefully will be
01:20:50
the best version of themselves and i will be the best version of myself and we'll figure it out but what seems to keep coming up for me
01:20:56
is what the foundations of any healthy relationship actually are and the foundation for me that i'm in
01:21:04
search of is friendship i think if i want to
01:21:09
not only spend time with you in the way that i would a friend but also i'm kind to you in the way that i am to
01:21:16
my friends in terms of allowances and allowing for uh being wrong and also figuring it out
01:21:23
and also having a healthy conversation about something when you're on different sides of the argument
01:21:29
bringing that into my romantic relationships has already started conversations in a way
01:21:34
that feel healthier than anything i've ever experienced before how how did your parents how do you
01:21:39
think your parents relationship has impacted your ability to form relationships
01:21:44
massively yes massively um again you know we're talking about the journey of others so
01:21:50
i'll try and be as respectful as i can but as an adult
01:21:56
who is now a lot older than my parents were when they had me um i'm able to have a little clarity on
01:22:03
their decision-making and understanding that their age probably played a big part in some of the decisions that they made i'm sure
01:22:10
it's the same for you you know you look at friends who get married in their early 20s or um
01:22:16
essentially find their life partner before they've had a life and you can have an opinion on it but
01:22:23
you're not necessarily going to be right because there's no way of knowing you
01:22:28
can have an assumption as to where it's going to go and how it's going to play out because let's face it who you are at 21 is infinitely
01:22:34
different to who you are at 29 let alone 30 plus [Music]
01:22:40
i just try my hardest to be as kind as i can to the decisions that my parents made
01:22:46
and how that in turn affected me because i think culturally now we live in an era where we think
01:22:51
more about our how our behavior affects others than
01:22:56
ever before and you know the way in which my stepfather spoke to me at one point or
01:23:02
the way in which they interacted in front of us as kids shouting whatever it was you know um i don't
01:23:08
think it ever occurred to them the effect that that might have yeah that's not because they're bad people that's because culturally that wasn't
01:23:15
even in the conversation at that time so i hold no judgment towards uh parents from that generation um
01:23:23
i've got no excuse though because you know when i'm a parent i know better i've had 10 years plus of therapy and also i exist in the
01:23:30
self-help generation where we've read every book and we have conversations like this and i have conversations like this
01:23:35
with my friends and i know for a fact that my dad and my stepfather wouldn't sit around
01:23:41
with their group of predominantly black friends and have conversations about
01:23:46
you know healthy relationships and mental health etc so this is the last time i mentioned them
01:23:52
because i feel like i've said so much about them but again richard and emma when i went to their house um for the
01:23:57
first time in in notting hill and i walked in and saw this sign on the wall
01:24:02
it broke my heart and excited me in a way that i've never been excited before and those two conflicting emotions stick
01:24:07
with such a visceral moment that i had that no one in the room was aware of they've got a bunch of kids they have
01:24:15
this lovely house where all their kids at the time lived at home and there was this neon sign on the wall that said everything is going to be
01:24:21
okay with literally in lights on the wall in their house where their children were growing up
01:24:28
and it grounded me to the spot when i saw it because i thought subconsciously what is that doing to
01:24:34
these children that they are safe as a message in lights is something that they walk
01:24:41
past every day to me that's what love looks like it's
01:24:50
being able to tell someone you love them without having to say anything based on the environment you've created
01:24:56
based on who you are for them and them feeling safe
01:25:01
that to me was in one moment a real a real sort of
01:25:08
opener in terms of what i would be searching for and should be searching for that feeling of safety from someone that
01:25:14
doesn't need to be said is that is that in part because you didn't feel like you fully had that when
01:25:20
you were definitely i think it's partially because of what i grew up in and partially because of the
01:25:26
relationships that experience up until that point you know it's funny because you you know
01:25:33
a lot of things can we can sometimes play play defense play defense but it turns out well we
01:25:39
think we're playing defense but it turns out to be self-harm so we reject the chance of safety
01:25:46
because we're not comfortable with it it's kind of like what i was describing when i was 14 and jasmine
01:25:52
told me she loved me i was playing self-defense but it was in fact self-harm
01:25:57
you're trying to protect yourself yeah in doing what feels right in the moment but ultimately you're killing something that could have
01:26:02
been incredible i think we've all been there i certainly have definitely i'm just
01:26:08
really thankful that i don't do it anymore i remember sort of rejecting this idea of um of who my family was and how much
01:26:17
of an impact that had on me and then when i embraced it and i embraced the good and the bad i was able
01:26:22
to see so much of the good you know my father who i don't have a relationship with is an incredible
01:26:28
musician he's still part of a band to this day and you know i put on his album and i cry
01:26:33
because it's like this man brings so much beauty and joy to strangers he wasn't able to give it to me but i'm
01:26:40
objectively able to find that beauty and the art that he creates today you cry when you listen to your biological fathers particularly one song
01:26:46
jesus christ which song it's called jojo's song and so we have the same name i'm um he's called reggie
01:26:52
yes i'm reginald yates and um he's obviously guardians because you're based on the day that he's born i'm not
01:26:58
i'm tuesday and so everyone calls him jojo right so it's jojo's song and it's a song where he's singing and playing a fun piano and it's just oh my god
01:27:05
it's beautiful and to know that this man who for chunks of my teens i really resented
01:27:12
because i felt that he wasn't there for me has this beauty in him moves me to tears
01:27:18
whenever i listen to him sing and have you forgiven him i forgave him a long time ago because
01:27:25
i think it was like i said the point when some of my friends started to become fathers you realize that not everybody is going
01:27:30
to get it right and not everybody's cut out for it and i was just unfortunate to not have one of those world's greatest dead guys
01:27:37
i ended up getting a dad that just really wasn't ready to to do it or grow up um and i can't be mad at him for
01:27:46
his journey that brought him to being the man that he was when he became a father and on that point just to conclude that
01:27:51
point of the relationships love point do you think you're ready to be in that relationship that you said
01:27:57
you think you need yeah i think so i think because i'm on my journey professionally and the
01:28:05
worry of not getting there which could affect you romantically doesn't exist anymore for me
01:28:10
that's a huge thing that is taken out of the equation of who i am romantically i think because of the age that i am and the experiences that i've had
01:28:17
i'm very close to being who i will be for the foreseeable yes i am a moving target but the
01:28:23
target's moving out you know the things that are changing in me aren't as big as they were in my teens
01:28:28
into my 20s so meeting someone today and being with them in five years i don't envy just being totally different people it's
01:28:34
so interesting it's easier yeah sure i love that point and you talk about the moving target the
01:28:40
way that i've come to learn to to sort of mentally understand it in my mind is like
01:28:45
you imagine two lines and then from this point onwards the lines start moving
01:28:50
and if they are one percent if say the reggie yates line is just one
01:28:56
percent to the right you and the other line will move apart over time and i think i love what you
01:29:01
said there about like i think i'll be a similar person in five years time which means like the degree of
01:29:07
separation won't be it's less yeah so i think yeah that's a well the
01:29:12
greater journey has been made up into this point and i mean that personally in terms of
01:29:17
my development in knowing who i am the level of self-confidence i have and also what i'm fighting for
01:29:23
has suddenly been crystallized because as someone who has the ability to do lots of different
01:29:28
things i was running around trying to figure out who i was supposed to be and at the same time worrying about what
01:29:35
i was leaving behind for so many years whereas now i've tried loads of different things
01:29:40
i've had lots of different kinds of relationships i've traveled i've done all these different things that i know what i want for me and i
01:29:46
also i feel fairly confident i wouldn't say i know but i feel fairly confident about what love looks like for me
01:29:53
what success looks like for me and what fulfillment feels like for me which instantly makes picking a partner
01:29:59
all being chosen a lot easier in that stage where you're running around trying to figure out who
01:30:05
who you are yeah um for me that was a very insecure stage in my life i talked to you i said
01:30:10
i was before i wanted lamborghinis right and it's funny because in that stage when you're you're most insecure and
01:30:15
you're most searching for answers what i tend to see especially on instagram these days is that is the stage where people arrive
01:30:21
at the conclusion that they need a romantic partner to complete them right yeah
01:30:26
and it's in fact what you've described is no [ __ ] like that's the stage where you need to do the self-work yeah and then people form these like oh
01:30:33
well i had a huge gap so i filled it with a romantic solution yeah and you complete me as one of the most
01:30:40
dangerous statements ever right because you don't yeah
01:30:46
and eventually we're both going to realize that i don't completely when you don't complete me you've got to be complete
01:30:51
to meet someone who's complete to begin something new together and it's that um the idea of you know your life their
01:30:58
life and the shared life right and being willing to recognize that they have to have a life
01:31:03
separate from yours and as you do for you to build something together that's separate and different
01:31:10
and i'm excited about that because i feel as though my universe looks the way that i've always wanted it
01:31:17
to i love the friends that i have you know they're like family to me i love the home that i have i love the
01:31:23
relationships that i have with my my mother's like my mate now it's really lovely and all of that has been work
01:31:28
that i've had to do on my own so now i can come to the table as a healthy grown-up
01:31:33
and make healthy conversation and have healthy decision-making you know damn society wants you to rush it though
01:31:40
doesn't it it really does you know it really does but i mean our parents generation all got married a lot
01:31:45
younger than we didn't look at the divorce rates yeah i think being happy with who you are
01:31:50
first is imperative to being able to recognize someone who is happy within themselves
01:31:57
your work you're doing so much at the moment this is kind of where i wanted to to end this is you're doing so much
01:32:02
across you know your books you know your podcast i think you've taken a little bit of a break
01:32:07
at the moment yeah yeah i'm gonna get back to that but that's another conversation your documentaries your business
01:32:13
what are you most excited about what does the future look like what is the big professional i mean if there is one
01:32:20
what's the big professional i don't mean milestones i mean the big professional feeling you know what i mean the big
01:32:27
professional feeling is being creatively fulfilled in broad terms in more specific terms
01:32:32
it's my business we haven't actively launched yet but we are working
01:32:38
and operating and that is five seven so i have a company called five seven uh which is a people product and content
01:32:45
business which has a cause arm we have past the mic which is a platform that we created for young creatives
01:32:51
which is growing and doing really beautiful things in terms of empowering diverse voices right the way through to content we make
01:32:58
everything from feature films like pirates or you know make me famous um uh right the
01:33:03
way through to uh product like blue skies so everything that we do at five seven has the fingerprints
01:33:11
of my outlook on the world and this idea of understanding the power
01:33:17
of platform like there are so many people that get to a point of notoriety and start selling slim tea
01:33:26
and there is no judgment on anybody that does that but i i judge you reggie doesn't but i do i
01:33:32
judge you i always go back to that mom in the street who stopped me and said you're a role model for my kid and me
01:33:39
hating it and then finally coming around to realizing i have no choice in the mail if you have an opportunity to make
01:33:44
movies to sell products to make tv shows to create a cause-led
01:33:50
initiative why not make it good why not make it
01:33:56
speak to what you care about why not make it something that can actively inspire other people to be
01:34:01
better than you are and do more than you've ever done so for me empowering others is a huge part of
01:34:07
my drive right now and um working with young talented people
01:34:13
inspires me to be better and as a result i feel incredibly fulfilled you know i don't see myself as a mentor but i've
01:34:19
technically mentored three or four people and they're like my little brothers and sisters now that's how i see them they're my friends who come around for
01:34:24
dinner or football or whatever and you know guys and girls will call me and ask for advice on their relationship or
01:34:29
on a decision that they have to make professionally and i love that i have that relationship with people because i
01:34:35
never had it growing up i had these bits of dad but i never had the big brother you know there was always a distance
01:34:41
between me and the person that was helping guide me um shortening that distance
01:34:48
for me in the lives of others is what success feels like so the big
01:34:54
thing is being creatively fulfilled financially free and ultimately
01:35:01
understanding what it feels to love and be loved really and that's a journey that's what
01:35:07
we hope for in your own view what is what is your potential
01:35:12
um unlimited okay and i don't say that because i think i'm lebron james because i definitely can't dunk like
01:35:17
lebron yeah but i do think that i don't think i know
01:35:23
anything that i've wanted to do like really wanted to do and i've really worked for i've achieved
01:35:29
i don't know uh and because that has happened it can happen in any way shape or form
01:35:37
my mother believes that she's quite a spiritual woman as most west african women are i'm sure i'm sure you've got your
01:35:42
stories but she believes that everybody's born with a gift right my mother believed that my gift is to see and to communicate
01:35:49
and she always said that to me since i was a kid you know you can see and you can communicate um and the communication thing is sort
01:35:55
of panned out it's you know essentially how i pay my bills sharing ideas and the the c part of it
01:36:03
is quite ambiguous in a lot of ways because what i've come to understand that to me is that you know as a kid i used to
01:36:10
dream quite vivid things and they would all come to pass to you know learning about self and
01:36:16
doing some reading going some seminars watching some stuff you understand things about manifestation all the rest of it and
01:36:21
that dream thing has sort of changed into manifestation in a lot of ways and when things start to happen
01:36:28
that you had in your head it teaches you you can do anything yeah and that's how i feel right now i feel
01:36:34
like i can do anything i had an idea at a funeral of all places two years
01:36:39
later it's a movie that is coming out in cinemas and
01:36:45
i genuinely think that anything that i put my heart to and my mind to i can i can make happen i can make it real if that's your world view
01:36:51
and you you believe that and you've seen it and you've got evidence for it in your life that when you think about
01:36:56
something when you see it you can then create it is it frustrating
01:37:02
when you speak to friends close friends other people who express their dreams to you yeah that they don't have that
01:37:08
too no it's not reminds me right no but you can't you can't be like that
01:37:13
and i'm i'm very i'm very specific about words some sometimes i try to be anywhere i hate saying the word can't yeah i feel really
01:37:20
strongly about this you can't allow yourself to think that way because who they are is based on their journey
01:37:25
yeah and they may beat that and get beyond that but you can't be mad at someone for
01:37:30
where they are on their own trajectory yeah it's so it's like when i because i have the same world view where
01:37:37
i've built those case personal case studies in my life that i could go from being in most sides stealing chicago
01:37:42
town pizzas to believe to believing and chasing that dream failing along the way messing up failure
01:37:48
whatever but being able to create the the life that i that i was aiming for and so when i see friends who express
01:37:55
their dreams to me and i deeply believe that whatever like we're not talking about going to mars
01:38:00
right we're talking about i want to be a whatever or i want to try i know they can do it
01:38:06
every part of me knows it's possible because i've seen behind the curtain and and they have what it takes and to
01:38:11
be fair when i started i had like my math to ship my english [ __ ] my parents weren't speaking to me we don't come from a family that had any money
01:38:17
so i i know that the belief the self-belief alone the foundation of being born in such a
01:38:23
privileged country is is more than they need to go after that and i just have this [ __ ] thing
01:38:29
in me where i'm like you know i'm like you can and it it you know i get i i definitely i i get you and i
01:38:37
hear you because i've definitely felt that before especially when it comes to young people that want you to help them
01:38:43
or that want you to mentor them and you take a chance on someone and you give them all the information
01:38:48
you give them the blueprint you give them all the tools and they still don't listen or they
01:38:54
agree and they do the total opposite mate it's like practice for parenting isn't it
01:39:00
people that you love or invested in aren't necessarily always going to do
01:39:05
what you think they should do and you can't be mad at them for it because it's their journey and
01:39:12
that is something that i'm incredibly thankful for that the people that i've had around me have allowed me
01:39:18
to not listen and make mistakes or go in another direction like i had a huge huge desire to be a musician
01:39:24
for a long time and i was making music and i was offered a publishing deal and i was collaborating with everyone from i mean
01:39:31
i won't even say the names but you know i made an album and i had a deal on the table and i
01:39:37
i was adamant that this was what i was going to do i was going to be the first person that could host top of the pops and perform on it like that was
01:39:43
that was my thing right and when my god rested soul music lower at the time richard and she sat me down and said
01:39:50
okay you see that top of the pops that you're hosting you see that radio one show that you've got you're gonna have to leave all of that bro
01:39:55
to do this because you're gonna tour you're gonna be in studio we're gonna send you here there and there the label will want you to record and
01:40:00
blah blah and i was like i don't wanna give all that up and it was like all right so are we
01:40:07
going to sign this thing or not and i walked away from what would have been another career
01:40:12
because ultimately it wasn't what i was supposed to do and i wasn't willing to give up the thing that i loved but i
01:40:17
needed to spend three or four years of wasting the time of people that were producers and and
01:40:25
and singer-songwriters who come and collaborate with me and people gave studios were giving me free time record labels were offering me contracts they
01:40:31
were rewriting them all of this investment into me for me to say now i'm just gonna go back
01:40:37
and do what i was doing before i met all of you lot sorry you know
01:40:43
i've done it i can't be mad at someone else who's doing a similar thing because there is that point in your life where you have
01:40:49
to figure out through mistakes or through trial and error what you're ultimately supposed to do
01:40:56
amen i'm glad you agree no i do because i would love you to challenge no i love but i that's why i do it because i know listen
01:41:03
i know that i'm like so so many of my approaches in so many areas of my life are so imperfect but i love getting the perspective from
01:41:08
someone else because everything you've said i completely agree with and of course you're of course you're right
01:41:14
but i still contend with that feeling because there's this there's this like bias in me that i've had it's it's
01:41:21
weakened over time but really wants people to um feel what i
01:41:26
feel in my life and uh and that is an awful bias because it's projecting my own values and world
01:41:34
view and what i think happiness for everyone looks like onto them um so i i yeah you're not the only one
01:41:42
you know i a million percent have done that myself yeah and even in relationships right absolutely so absolutely if you do this you're
01:41:49
going to be like this which means you're going to be just like me and you're going to be great the most frustrating one is whenever you say to someone you say
01:41:54
what do you want and they go this and you go okay here's how you get it and they go oh [ __ ] you know and you're like well you said
01:42:00
you wanted that this isn't that isn't even my world view you said you want to be a costa rican belly dancer here is the cause and
01:42:07
they're like wow well the truth is uncomfortable right yeah and it's usually [Music]
01:42:13
it's usually harder than people want it to be and that unfortunately in this conversation is
01:42:18
both the case for someone like yourself who sat on one side of the table saying this is what you need to do and on the other side of the table the
01:42:24
person saying well i don't want to do all of that and what you both leave with is truth and that is that you can't control
01:42:30
someone else and that is that you've really got to do the things that you aren't willing to do to get what you want you know
01:42:35
amen listen reggie uh you know the work you've done with your documentaries i just think is tremendous and i think
01:42:42
i remember once upon a time listening to i think it was neil degrasse tyson say that the most important work we can do or the most
01:42:49
important people in our society aren't the people we elect into power it's the electorate that elect them
01:42:54
and so therefore the most important powerful work one can do is educating the electorate and what
01:43:00
that really means for me is like the way that people think about whether it's sexuality or regimes in other countries whatever it might be
01:43:06
is the way they think dictates who they then elect into power which then impacts our laws in the society we live
01:43:11
in and that's the work you're doing and i find that to be the most admirable important work of it all so thank you for doing that work thank you
01:43:18
for being a role model i mean i've watched you as a young kid growing up in plymouth you know for
01:43:23
for many a decade and you know you've been one of the faces that i even i could relate to on tv because you look
01:43:28
like me um and so i want to thank you for that as well but also thank you for your time today because i think the conversation
01:43:33
we've had has been very honest diverse you've you know you've shared things that you didn't have to share and um
01:43:38
i know that comes from a very selfless desire to impart value on people that um might need it in various areas of their
01:43:44
life so thank you that's incredibly kind thank you for having me thank you pleasure thank you
01:43:55
[Music]
01:44:03
[Music]
01:44:13
you