Sir Lenny Henry
👤 SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
We're called the accused.
And they liked it.
They suddenly liked it.
And they loved the fact that I did American characters.
And I finished with Theophilus P. Wildebeest.
Well, oh my God.
The roof came off.
And so that was it.
And that triggered Live Unleashed.
Once I'd done that and people had seen that, they said, well, Lenny should do a feature film.
I was one of the first ever comedians to do a stand-up comedy film in Britain.
And when it went out...
It ran in the Haymarket Theatre for something like eight weeks.
It made its money back.
Yay!
So they never told me that on the day, by the way.
But it did make its money back, so I was really proud of that.
There's a great play that Adrian Lester did called Red Velvet about Ira Aldrich coming in that time period.
Finding racism and opposition.
It's a fascinating story.