‘Why are our black boys hurting each other?’ Letitia Wright on the deaths that inspired her directorial debut

D ays before we meet, Letitia Wright found herself cheek-by-jowl with a far-right march in London. This is the year when St George’s flags have been displayed in suburban windows and tied to lamp-posts, and when thousands of people – some more intimidating than others, especially to people of colour – have marched on the centre of the capital and beyond. A friend of Wright’s was visiting the city, and they had moseyed down to the South Bank, unaware of what awaited them. “It was jam-packed,” she says, recalling their struggle to get out of the fray. “I was in the middle of it, and then I was out of it. They were doing their thing – and I was doing mine.”

The actor has played refugees twice: once in the BBC Three drama Glasgow Girls , where she portrayed a Somali teenager, Amal, an