Sade Malone: ‘We had lots of conversations about the characters’ black Irishness. That’s something really relevant now, to be black and Irish’ (2024)

I don’t wish to make this all about myself, but when I first encountered Sade Malone, an unstoppable young English-Irish actor, I felt the weight of time press on my shoulders. Are we at the stage where adults are named after the mononymous singer of Smooth Operator? The song came out 40 years ago. So I guess we passed that point decades ago.

“She’s amazing. And I’m definitely named after her,” Malone says, amused at my distress.

We are not yet halfway through 2024, but this has already been an extraordinary year for the younger Sade. In January she appeared at the Gaiety Theatre in Dublin as the lead in John B Keane’s indestructible drama Sive. Before that run was over, Marian Quinn’s Twig, a translation of Antigone to a dystopian, gang-run Dublin, opened Dublin International Film Festival. Malone bosses the lead role. I met her then on the red carpet, and she seemed dauntingly unfazed. As if she’d been doing this since Smooth Operator was released.

“Naturally, I get nervous before anything,” she says. “I think nerves are really important. It shows you’re alive and it shows you have the adrenaline for what you’re about to do. But I think, particularly with that night, doing Sive and Twig, it just felt amazing. To let anxiousness get in the way felt almost silly.”

She told me she had a Dublin accent as a child. She now speaks in unmistakable northern English vowels. Her mother’s people are Irish. Her dad’s family are from Barbados. Do we have time to tidy up the timeline?

[‘She reminds me of Saoirse Ronan’: young actor Sade Malone lights up opening night of Dublin International Film Festival]

“I actually feel I need to give the long story whenever I talk to anyone, because I feel so connected to all the places I’ve ended up,” she says. “I was born in Greater Manchester, in Rochdale. Then we moved to Dublin when I was a baby with the rest of my family. Then I moved back to Leeds. Then I went and trained in Liverpool – at Lipa, Paul McCartney’s drama school. My grandad is also a scouser. My mum spent a lot of time in Liverpool too. So we have this hybrid thing. And then my dad’s side of the family is from Barbados. It’s a co*cktail, and I am proud of that.”

And now she is in Leeds. Many actors who grew up this way argue that the peripatetic lifestyle helped them develop their craft. You are learning new accents. You are altering your demeanour to fit in with new friends. That is the actor’s job.

“Oh, particularly when you’re a young child,” she says. “I don’t think it’s something that I saw as a positive. I never really saw it as anything – because it was just my upbringing. But when you’re a child you are constantly trying to fit into the environment. You want to blend in as much as possible. So I was already the only person of colour in my class – and I’d always have a different accent to everybody. So I’d always try to go under the radar as much as I possibly could.”

She mentions her time at Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts. It is, indeed, closely associated with one of the city’s favourite sons. Cofounded by McCartney in 1996, Lipa fast developed into a successful nurturer for young performers: actors, musicians, producers. I can hardly avoid asking if she encountered the great man.

“I did. At your graduation you get your mantelpiece photo with Paul McCartney. He’s an extremely inspiring man. His ethos does run through the school. It’s an exciting school. For me, I wasn’t really ready to go to London yet. A northern school felt the right thing to do. Going anywhere to do the same thing for three years, you’re going to get good at it.”

Even by that stage Malone must have been steeped in the business. As a young teenager she landed a role in the CBBC show 4 O’Clock Club, a drama set in a busy secondary school, and stayed with the series until she entered drama school. She played Ralph in an adaptation of William Golding’s Lord of the Flies at Leeds Playhouse. She worked for the legendary Yorkshire playwright John Godber. She appeared in the BBC series Hope Street. By the time she came to Sive and Twig she had a lifetime’s experience. One is minded to ask who set her on this road. There is often an influential teacher. Or a helpful parent.

“Funnily enough, my mum is a dancer,” she says “She’s trained as a dancer. She helps me with all my tapes. She’s an amazing actor. I always say, ‘You should be an actor’. So she’s super talented. I got the role when I was14 on CBBC. That was how it started. But she never pushed. I would say I kind of fell into it.”

As the conversation progresses – I don’t think I’m imagining this – I can hear slivers of Malone’s Dublin accent working their way through the Lancastrian and Yorkshire timbres. At any rate, you would take her for nothing else in Quinn’s hefty, ambitious Twig. Decorated with murders of crows, divided into five acts, the film presents Dublin as run by a cabal of warring crime families, whose activities seem tolerated by a compromised Garda presence. Malone’s Twig (a variation on Antigone) is among the few willing to stand up to Brían F O’Byrne’s tyrannical Leon.

This is a very modern retelling of a very ancient story. I wonder if it was important to Malone that she got to appear in an Irish film with a largely black cast. There is evidence of progress there. Malone is full of praise for her director and for the casting director Louise Kiely.

“That was exciting for all of us – for the whole cast regardless of colour,” she says. “The way Marian and Louise cast it was really fresh. I think the bond and the chemistry that we all have still stands. Two-and-a-half years later we’re all still going to each other’s shows and meeting each other whenever we can.”

It seems as if the choice to cast largely with people of colour emerged organically.

“When the casting call went out for Twig they weren’t necessarily, from my knowledge, looking for anybody in particular lookswise,” she says. “I ended up getting it and therefore there was a ripple-on effect – black brothers and sisters and so on. It should be like this more. It was really exciting for me that they were willing to do that. They did it so gracefully. We had lots of conversations about the characters’ black Irishness. That’s something really relevant now, to be black and Irish.”

She makes an interesting point. It is important to make stories set specifically in black communities. It is equally important to cast black actors as characters that could comfortably be black, white, brown or any other colour.

“We can add layers, but also at times say, ‘No, they’re just Irish,’” she agrees.

After that shoot she tackled an Irish institution in John B Keane’s Sive. That Kerry playwright does not, sadly, have the international reputation of a Brian Friel, but the play, since its first performance in 1959, has gradually become a vital part of the canon. The tale of aggressive matchmaking and restrained ambitions remains powerful. I wonder how familiar the wandering Malone was with Keane’s work.

“I was aware of Sive,” she says. “It’s one of my nana’s favourite plays. She actually came six times with all her friends. That was her crew. They loved it. I felt like a Rolling Stone, to be honest. I’d come out the front entrance and there’d be this crowd. I was aware of Sive, but I suppose I’d never seen myself play it because it just didn’t seem like something that I would or could play. So when the audition came up it was really exciting.”

As you will have gathered, Malone can talk up a storm. She has a presence that can swing from solemnity to irreverence in the snap of a finger. So we are certain to see more of her. As is often the case, she can’t speak of projects in the offing, but she is eager to get back to one of the many places that counts as home.

“I’m working in Dublin – and in Ireland – enough to get my fix, which is good,” she says. “Since coming back here I’ve just been a human being. Spending time with family and friends. Just being present in that, which has been lovely.”

Twig is in cinemas from Friday, June 21st