"It’s not a part of history that I’m really aware of and a lot of people are not aware of, including those from England who lived in that time. There’s so much ignorance around what happened in their own country and really the depths of the issue. It was so intriguing and almost inspired me to get back to the history books and go into archives and find more information on it that I was like, 'Wait, wait, this is so up my alley. This is the kind of prep work that I like doing.' And then the added bonus of working with John Ridley, Idris Elba, and whoever they were going to cast as Marcus, who wasn’t cast yet. And then they cast this amazing actor Babou Ceesay, who plays my partner in this series and a true partner he was. I feel like it all came full circle. There was something about working on this film set that felt a lot like working on Slumdog — none of us know how it’s going to land, how it’s going to be accepted, and we don’t want to even think about it. Everyone wants it to do well, but the synergy was just right on set."