Patrick Robinson: ‘This is only one story, there are thousands more’
The star of Sitting In Limbo talks to Gemma Dunn about the fact-based Windrush drama
Patrick Robinson has a platform – and he’s using it. At a time when the Black Lives Matter movement dominates the headlines – an immediate call for change has been made after the recent death of George Floyd in the US state of Minnesota – the actor is exercising his right to speak out about those issues closest to him. In effect, racism.
But this particular exchange isn’t triggered by recent events in the news; rather as a result of his latest role in BBC1 drama, Sitting In Limbo.
Written by Stephen S Thompson, the featurelength film is based on the true story of his brother Anthony Bryan (Robinson) and his personal struggle to be accepted as a British citizen during the Windrush immigration scandal.
“I wanted to be involved in the project from the word ‘Go’,” Robinson, 56, begins.
“I’d been involved with a documentary that Trevor Phillips and his brother Mike Phillips put out (following their book, Windrush: Irresistible Rise of Multiracial Britain) in the late 90s, and I took it as a sort of Bible for the gap in which I didn’t know what happened. How do we get to Britain?
“I was born in England in ‘63 so all I’ve known is Britain as home,” says the Londoner. “Obviously, you’re going to have that thing of being you’re English, British, West Indian, Jamaican. They’re all the boxes I seem to fit into when it’s suitable for other folk to put me there – so I had to work out the whole thing.
“So in terms of the Windrush story, I felt I was part of the world then having got the information.”
So how does the drama play out? In short, having lived in the UK since he was a boy, Anthony decides to visit his elderly mother in Jamaica. But while filling out the paperwork at the Passport Office, he is stunned to discover that there is no record of him as a British citizen – and now the onus is on him to prove his citizenship to the Immigration Office.
What follows is a trail of devastation as Anthony is forcibly removed from his home and detained as an illegal immigrant.
“When it comes down to his experience, I don’t know how he dealt with it and had such dignity,” confides Robinson, who met Anthony before shooting. “I have so much respect for him and the way he was.
“There’s one thing that he said very simply, and that’s that it nearly broke him. He didn’t have to say much more than that; that was pretty much all I needed.”
Understandably playing the part took its toll emotionally, he confesses: “I can see the anger and how it had to be held back, because that’s what most West Indians had to do in the double standards of Britain in the 50s and 60s.
“Your antenna was always up if you were a man of colour in this country; you couldn’t just walk around and feel like you’re accepted wherever you go – and that’s what I’ve experienced.
“I’ve been an actor for 35 years and I’ve worked throughout the whole of the UK and abroad, and in the end, you still have to have antennae up,” he insists.
“Just imagine that when you walked out of wherever you live, people look at you as if to say, ‘What are you doing here?’ I know that’s what happens all the time. Every day.”
“Right now I’m talking to journalists and there’s not one of colour on the panel,” notes Robinson.
“So ultimately, for me, this story [in Sitting In Limbo] says it all. It needs to be told, and the rest of the people in the UK need to see it – I’m talking white folk. And this is only one story, there are thousands more.
“It comes down to what people of colour have dealt with over the centuries... If you think about slavery, that’s the key to how people have been treated.
“We are still forever being told, ‘We can’t go back...’, and I go, ‘No, until the powers that be deal – as far as I’m concerned – with some reparations, you can shove your apologies up your arse.’ Because when it comes down to it, we, in terms of people of colour, worked for nothing for hundreds of years and we are due some payment now!
“That’s what I want you to say that I’m saying, if anything,” he adds. “I’m not politicising it, I’m saying it’s fact: ‘We worked for nothing for hundreds of years – it’s time to pay us. Simple as that. And when you acknowledge money, that tells me you acknowledge us’.
“I want to be understood and accepted and respected for the work that we do. And until then, I’m getting a voice,” he says.
“I’ve been handed the baton by the brothers, so I’m doing my thing as much as I can.”
“It needs to be told, and the rest of the people in the UK need to see it – I’m talking white folk”
● Sitting In Limbo is on BBC1 on Monday 8 June at 8:30pm