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David Harewood has been many things in his career: he’s been the head of the CIA’s counter-terrorism unit in Homeland, he’s played Othello at the National Theatre, he’s been the recipient of an MBE and an OBE. He has even been a Martian superhero in Supergirl. But one thing he has never been, in nearly four decades of acting, is the main star in a TV series – until now.

In Pierre, Channel 4’s new legal drama, Harewood finally gets top billing, playing Pierre Jeffreys, a duty solicitor pulled into a web of institutional corruption. “It’s been a struggle and a little bit frustrating that it’s taken this long,” Harewood says, “but when I read this script [from Roy Williams and John Donnelly] I thought, ‘That’s a character that really fits me,’ and it was an absolute yes, straight off the bat.”

During the six-part series we see Pierre not only juggling the pressures of his job but also dealing with health issues and a fragile personal life. “The script allowed me to play a full human being,” Harewood explains. “He’s a husband, he’s funny and he’s a best mate. In the early stages of my career you just weren’t allowed the chance to play all facets of a character.”

Harewood grew up in Small Heath, Birmingham, the son of a lorry driver father and a mother who worked in catering. His parents had migrated from Barbados to the UK in the late 1950s and racism was an everyday occurrence. In his memoir Maybe I Don’t Belong Here he writes about being only three years old when he was hit on the head by a brick thrown by a racist neighbour. Excrement was pushed through the family’s letterbox and he would get called the “N” word while walking to school.

The adult can recognise these incidents as blatant racism, but I wonder how the little David tried to process it all. “Children have an incredible ability to suppress their emotions and feelings,” he says, “and that was true of me.” School was a welcome escape. Harewood enjoyed playing the clown and making his fellow classmates smile. “I wasn’t very academic at school,” he says, “I was just a mischievous little b*****d.”

When Harewood was in his first year of sixth form, his English tutor told him that he and all the other teachers agreed that he should think about becoming an actor. “They saw something in me that I never saw in myself,” he recalls. “My sister met with some of my old teachers this summer and they all said I was the standout kid. They obviously saw a talent, an ability to stand up and be a storyteller.”

Accepted by the National Youth Theatre, Harewood came to London for a six-week course and was subsequently offered a place at Rada. He makes it sound like it was almost effortless, but to go from working-class Birmingham to Rada is quite the journey – particularly for someone whose only exposure to the arts was 70s television. “I’m president of Rada now,” he says. “What you see when you’re deciding whether somebody should go through the training is a raw element of something which is natural – like an uncut gem.”

Harewood graduated from Rada and was soon confronted by the reality of being an actor primarily defined by his race. “I thought I might have an equal shot at the great roles, to be assessed on my talent,” he says. “It was confronting for me to be labelled a Black actor who can only play Black roles.”

This confrontation with how others perceived him, alongside the long-buried trauma of childhood racism, provoked a psychotic episode in his early 20s. “All those experiences that I had as a child were deeply uncomfortable,” he explains. “As a child you don’t process it, and if you’re unlucky it comes back to revisit you when you’re a bit older. That’s what exploded during my psychotic breakdown.”

Harewood was sectioned and admitted to the psychiatric unit of north London’s Whittington Hospital, where he was prescribed antipsychotic drugs. He was back at work within weeks. He later made an acclaimed documentary about his mental health experience (David Harewood: Psychosis and Me is available on iPlayer) and still sees a therapist every week. “I started seeing a therapist many years ago and it’s the best thing,” he says. “I think everybody should get it, particularly world leaders – they wouldn’t be such douchebags.”

Throughout the 1990s Harewood built a career in television and theatre, with early screen roles in Casualty and Ballykissangel. In 1997, he made history as the first Black actor to take the lead in Othello at the National Theatre, while his film credits included The Merchant of Venice with Al Pacino, and Blood Diamond alongside Leonardo DiCaprio.

But by the late noughties, this hot streak had started to cool down, as a new generation of young Black actors such as Adrian Lester, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Paterson Joseph started to emerge. “I just fell down the list,” Harewood recalls. “I was no longer the It Guy. I wasn’t getting great auditions and the phone wasn’t ringing.”

Harewood had not worked for nine months when his agent sent him a script. “He said, ‘Everyone’s talking about this pilot,’” he recalls. “He told me it was the premier script of the year.” The show was called Homeland. Also starring Claire Danes and Damian Lewis, it was a major critical and commercial success, transforming
Harewood’s fortunes.

He played rising CIA star David Estes in the first two series and the role saw him going from having only £80 in his bank account to being globally famous. He recalls attending the Emmys and finding himself in the gents alongside his childhood hero, Sidney Poitier. “I was Mr Shaky Hands,” he says. “He was completely discombobulated by this British Black guy drooling over him and telling him how much he meant.”

Harewood hasn’t stopped working since, with roles in TV series including Supergirl, The Night Manager and Sherwood, and a return to Othello in 2025 in the West End, as well as numerous documentaries and the aforementioned well-received memoir.

He turned 60 last December. It must be nice, I say, to feel one’s life and career still reaching new peaks. “I feel better than I’ve felt in years and I feel like my best years are ahead of me,” he says. “Maybe it’s taken me this long to work s**t out, but I’m just grateful that I had the chance to work s**t out.”

In some ways, Pierre represents not only a progression in Harewood’s career but also in representation more broadly. “For the first 15 years of my career a role like this wasn’t even possible,” he says. “But there’s been a progressive acceptance of the talent of Black actors, so for me Pierre is a landmark. This is the character I’ve been waiting my whole career to play.”

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Pierre begins on Monday 5 October at 9pm on Channel 4.

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