As part of our BLACK British edition The Detail which you can read now, we asked actor Ben Bailey Smith to write a letter to his younger self, reflecting on his career so far.
I know. Trust me, I know
You’re only 6 years old and it seems overwhelming, but I know you’re excited too. It’s Christmas 1983, hard to reflect back on a year when you’re so young, but what a year. You had one of your most profound experiences this summer – your first-ever visit to a cinema. Star Wars: Return of the Jedi too! Wow. Back in January, some old man shouted “Dirty little half-caste n**r!” at you in a North London park, now you’re travelling through space at hyper speed, visiting different planets, watching an epic story unfold in a distant galaxy, right before your eyes. How long ago and far, far away that scary moment in January felt as your eyebrows raised at that screen
And somehow, despite fearing that baddie in the park, you were strangely drawn to the baddie in the movie. The mysterious, faceless man in black with a little b and a deep, booming voice that sounded Black with a capital B
I know. I remember the astonishment, the bittersweet reveal of his face at the end. Bittersweet because he wasn’t brown like you under that mask. But he also wasn’t all bad. Even the worst people have a heart somewhere under all their hardened exteriors. Everybody deserved kindness, to feel joy… to be entertained, you concluded. And so your only wish from Santa that year was the Vader outfit, so you could stomp around to the Imperial March, mimicking that rich Black voice and the asthmatic wheeze, making your family and friends laugh. It felt good! Your mum had the foresight to send you to that free drama club on Kilburn High Road. That felt good too!
But I know
I know that in your teens you’ll find out that Vader’s voice really was Black – James Earl Jones, the voice of Mufasa, no less. And his mainstream side-lining will bizarrely coincide with your own self-side-lining, walking away from Performing Arts because you felt that dirty little half-caste n*****s from Kilburn just don’t make it as actors. I have no practical guidance for you because I know you’ll find yourself – it’ll be another decade from your late teens but you’ll find yourself – as we all do eventually. You’ll even join Vader’s side, for real.
However, I will say this: Nothing is ever purely black and white. Every mask we wear covers our grey areas – it’s behind the mask that we find our complications, our duality, our idiosyncrasies, and hypocrisies. And all of them, yes all – even the very worst – are beautifully human. You are beautifully human. Keep celebrating it.
