Photographer: June Thomas
Feature Talent: Luyanda Unati Lewis-Nyawo
Created by Russell Davies, TIP TOE, tells the story of two neighbor's (one gay - Alan
Cummings and one straight - David Morrissey), whose ongoing feud gets darker and
darker as one of them falls deeper into the world of online disinformation, with
disastrous consequences for both.
Your work on WEDNESDAY introduced you to global audiences, but TIP TOE feels distinctly darker and more psychologically charged. What drew you to this particular kind of unease, and what did it demand from you as an actor?
What excites me about TIP TOE is that the horror isn't really supernatural. It's recognizable. It's the quiet erosion of trust between people who love each other. Russell has this extraordinary ability to take something that feels almost mundane and reveal the fault lines underneath it until suddenly you're looking at something terrifying.
As an actor, that asks for restraint rather than spectacle, which doesn’t get more wrong, is really fun. That being said, you can't play paranoia at a hundred miles an hour. You have to believe, moment by moment, that your character is behaving rationally. That's where the unease comes from. It’s watching ordinary people make choices that feel completely understandable in the moment but devastating in hindsight.
Created by Russell T Davies, TIP TOE explores how ordinary lives unravel through disinformation and obsession.
How did you prepare to inhabit a world where truth itself feels unstable?
I spent less time thinking about conspiracy and more time thinking about certainty. I'm fascinated by the moments where people become absolutely convinced they're right because uncertainty is Unbearable.I also wanted to ground everything emotionally. Whether a character is right or wrong almost becomes secondary.
The real question is: what fear are they trying to soothe? What grief?What loneliness?
If you can answer that honestly, then even the most extreme behavior starts to make emotional sense. Judy brings that support fire, literally! She’s got her peoples backs. That’s all I had to do, try be there for the spit and polish crew you know.
Your roles often carry a strong sense of authority or intensity, yet your creative path began with something as playful as Baloo in The Jungle Book. Do you still feel connected to that early sense of theatrical joy?
Completely! I think play is actually the foundation of everything I do. We sometimes talk about serious drama as though it lives in opposition to imagination, and play but I think they're deeply connected. The job is play. Tip Toe was an incredibly joyful set even in the dark. So that sense of curiosity I had as a kid pretending to be Baloo is the same instinct I use now when I'm building a character. Acting, at its best, is still asking, "What if?" It's still make-believe. The stakes are just higher.
Having grown up in South Africa during the final years of apartheid, how has your personal history shaped the way you interpret power, identity, and conflict on screen today?
Growing up in South Africa meant growing up with history sitting at the dinner table. Politics wasn't abstract. You could see how systems shaped people's opportunities, relationships and Identities. I think that's given me an instinct to look underneath conflict. I'm rarely interested in heroes and villains. I'm interested in systems, inherited trauma and the stories people tell themselves in order to survive. Every role is
political. I think every story says something about power whether it intends to or not.
What excites you about stepping into a character like Illaoi in a digital universe that exists beyond traditional performance?
Performance capture is one of the most exciting spaces to work in because it strips acting back to its Essentials. Illaoi is an absolute unit but so grounded in her spiritually and ancestral path, that’s something so important to me. You're standing in a volume wearing a Lycra suit with dots all over you. There are no costumes to hide behind. No elaborate sets. It all comes down to imagination and connection. I also love that these worlds allow audiences to spend dozens, sometimes hundreds, of hours with characters. That creates a relationship that's very different from film or television. It's a privilege to contribute to that.
There is a striking duality in your career: grounded dramatic work alongside fantastical, genre-driven worlds. Do you approach realism and fantasy as separate disciplines, or as extensions of the same emotional truth?
For me they're exactly the same discipline. Whether I'm standing in a Yorkshire kitchen or talking to a giant sea monster, the audience isn't connecting with the circumstance. They're connecting with the emotional truth underneath it. Fantasy often gives us permission to explore very human questions at a bigger scale. Horror does the same. Science fiction does the same. I don't really distinguish between genres. I distinguish between stories that have something truthful to say and stories that don't.
What stories do you feel are missing from contemporary screens that you are hoping to reclaim or reimagine?
I'm really interested in stories that allow ordinary people to become mythic without making them extraordinary. That's something I'm exploring in my own writing as well. Folk horror, family dramas, rural communities, inherited memory. I'm fascinated by the idea that history isn't something we read about. It's something we inherit in our bodies and our relationships. I'd also love to see more stories that resist easy answers. I think audiences are incredibly sophisticated. Sometimes the most generous thing a story can do is ask a difficult question and trust people to sit with it.
As part of the LGBTQ+ community whose work and identity are often discussed in the same breath, how do you navigate the balance between representation and simply being an artist first?
I don't really separate those things. I'm a queer, non-binary artist. That's simply true. It inevitably informs how I move through the world and therefore how I tell stories. At the same time, I never want identity to become the entirety of the conversation. I hope people engage with my work because the work stands up. Representation matters enormously, but so does craft. The dream is that young queer artists won't have to choose between being seen for who they are and being recognized for what they make. It can have the affect of pushing our stories into a niche or to the margins.
From Top Boy to Doctor Who, your credits span some of the most culturally resonant series of recent years. What has each project taught you about the kind of storyteller you want to be?
Every set teaches you something different. Top Boy reminded me how powerful specificity can be. If you honor a community honestly, audiences everywhere recognize the humanity in it. Working in the Doctor Who universe reinforced something I already loved: genre storytelling can ask incredibly profound questions about compassion, identity and hope while still being enormous fun. More than anything, I've realized I want to tell stories that stay with people after the credits roll. Stories that entertain, absolutely, but also invite conversation.
Outside of your career, you’ve spoken about cooking, growing food, and living with your cat, Garlic Bread, a beautifully grounded domestic world. How do these quieter rituals shape the emotional life you bring to your work?
I think acting asks you to spend a lot of time living in heightened emotional states, so it's really important that the rest of your life isn't built that way. I genuinely love cooking. I love growing things. There's something deeply satisfying about making a meal for people you love or watching something you've planted finally flourish. It reminds you that life moves at its own pace. And then there's Garlic Bread, who is completely unimpressed by any career milestone. She’s a cat! Which is probably healthy. You need people who remind you to calm down. Those quieter rituals keep me connected to ordinary life. Ultimately, that's what we're all trying to portray as actors. Whether the story is set in a kitchen, on another planet or in a haunted village, it has to begin with recognizable human experience.
