airing last January, the little details of Ncuti Gatwa’s life changed. ‘It was a juggernaut, bruv,’ says Ncuti, ‘it just exploded. And it didn’t stop.’ In the high-school drama, Ncuti plays singular scene-stealer Eric, a teenager stuck between his natural disposition and constricting family expectations, the GBF of Otis, Asa Butterfield’s lead. ‘Eric represents so many intersections of groups that are marginalised.
When Ncuti Gatwa was introduced to Billy Porter at the Roland Mouret autumn/winter 2019 show in Paris last year, it was as if that US baton had been passed on for Britain to catch up. ‘He’s a pioneer,’ says Ncuti of Porter, ‘someone who’s broken doors down for me. He gave me the warmest, biggest, loveliest hug. He held my hands, looked me in the eye and really meant all the kind words that he was saying. I felt like, I have a brother there.
Ncuti didn’t so much find acting as it found him, when he was sent marching to the Royal Conservatoire of Glasgow at 17 by his kindly drama teacher, Mrs Dalgleish. He was born in Rwanda, ‘the most beautiful place in the world I have ever seen.’ His family fled the genocide when he was two years old and landed in Edinburgh, before decamping to Dunfermline in Fife . ‘We were very lucky to escape,’ he says. ‘I was a baby. I have no memory.
In Glasgow at drama school, Ncuti says that he felt at home for the first time. ‘I just fell in love with it. I thought, there’s a room full of mes here. It was incredible.’ The tenets of normality began to shift underfoot, he with them. ‘There are so many normals that normal is anything. It’s fine for me to be like this. I don’t have to change to fit in.’ It sounds like he found himself in Glasgow.