James Nelson-Joyce on ‘This City Is Ours’: ‘There’s no happy ending in drugs’

If James Nelson-Joyce’s name doesn’t ring bells straight away, it’s more than likely you will have previously encountered the hollowed cheeks and piercing blue eyes that have allowed the Liverpool actor to become one of Britain’s most imposing – and often terrifying – screen presences in recent years.

He was the psychotic convict who intimidated Sean Bean’s first-time lag in Jimmy McGovern’s devastating prison drama Time, while more recently he’s been seen as the violent boyfriend who faced off against Barry Keoghan in Andrea Arnold’s acclaimed indie drama Bird.

They’re all hard bastards, but few of these characters are as morally conflicted as Michael Kavanagh – the ambitious Liverpool drug dealer that that Nelson-Joyce portrays in the excellent new BBC crime drama This City Is Ours.

The show has been dubbed the Scouse Sopranos in some quarters and it’s easy to understand why some of those comparisons have been made. It’s sinister but also surprisingly funny, a show where the gang is planning a murder one minute and dancing in unison to an Andy Williams classic at a christening the next. Family also looms large and in his best role to date, Nelson-Joyce is the business partner of Sean Bean’s no-bullshit drug kingpin Ronnie Phelan. He’s torn between taking over from the boss as he nears retirement and the powerful pull of starting a family with his girlfriend Diana (Hannah Onslow) to whom he has promised three years before he leaves. Throw in the small matter of a succession battle with Ronnie’s ruthless son Jamie (fellow scouser Jack McMullan) and you’ve got a firecracker of a series on your hands.

“It’s all about the complexity of the character. I read the script and remember thinking I’ve got to play Michael,” Nelson-Joyce reflects as we meet in a Central London hotel shortly after a screening of the first episode.

“I know this world and I also know love, so when you put them together it makes a bit of a shit sandwich doesn’t it? You look at shows like Breaking Bad & The Sopranos, they’re full of great characters who do bad things, but you still root for them. And that’s what Michael is.”

As Nelson-Joyce explains, it’s a murky world just a stone’s throw away from his own working class upbringing in Liverpool – a city that becomes its own central, sweeping character in the show.

“Liverpool’s a very working class city and me and Mike Noble (who plays Kavanagh’s right-hand man Banksey) went to the same school and on set we were talking about all the things that went on. Fireworks going off in classrooms, there were teachers being knocked out, kids coming in with things they shouldn’t be coming in with. It was wild, but it was about survival and wanting to stand up for yourself. That’s what Stephen Butchard has created with this script.”

He adds: “When you’ve got deprived places, people have to find a way of making money and drugs is Michael’s way of making money. Whether you agree with the morality of it, the consequences in the drug game are you’re either put in prison or you’re killed. There’s no happy ending in drugs and that’s the story we’re trying to tell. You see our characters having a nice time in Marbella, but the consequences are huge.”

As Nelson-Joyce hints, there’s no shortage of bloodshed throughout the first series’ eight episodes and creator Butchard has likened the show to Macbeth – a comparison evident in its examination of the horrific things that men will seemingly do in order to gain power. Did Nelson-Joyce ever see himself drawn to that world?

“I think the big word that comes with criminality and drugs is consequences,” he reflects.

“And I’ve always been aware of what those consequences are. So yeah, I could have walked into that line of work and I’ve lost friends to it. But I love my family so much and I’d never put them in a situation like that. I always had the awareness of knowing it’s not what you see on screen.”

Instead, by his own admission, Nelson-Joyce is a “very sensitive, very vulnerable person”, which no doubt helps him portray the moral quandary that Kavanagh finds himself in throughout the series.

It’s also the very thing that helped him reduce a teacher to tears when Miss Griffiths – the English teacher that Nelson Joyce fancied – put him forward for a speaking and listening exam at school.

“I’d never do my homework and she put me forward for this exam that would go towards my grade. I just thought I get to spend a bit of time on my own with Miss Griffiths, so I was up for that!” he reflects.

Nelson-Joyce’s teenage monologue – which saw him tell the story of a young lad facing up to the death of his dog – reduced his examiner to tears and netted him the highest mark ever awarded for the exam the time in the North West. When he left school without qualifications, Griffiths immediately encouraged him to become an actor.

“Everyone from our area was either playing footy or boxing and I was a bit embarrassed to tell my mates that I was going to a community college to do acting,” he says.

“But it eventually just snowballed and I’m very, very fortunate. Look, I’ve met Stephen Graham and I’ve met amazing people along the way and I just realised how fortunate I am in this industry and I’m just very grateful.”

Nelson-Joyce might be on the cusp of becoming a household name, but his success comes at a time when working class voices within acting are very much on the decline. An Equity study last year found that working class representation in the creative industries is at the lowest level in a decade.

“As kids, we only ever think we can be what we see and if we’re not seeing that in front of us, how are we ever gonna know we can be actors if we’re working class?,” he reflects.

“There’s a lot of inspirations out there at the moment that are wrong and make me feel sick. That’s my first point. Secondly, I think drama schools charging for audition fees is wrong, especially if you’re travelling from the north. You go to one audition at one drama school and you’re looking at 100 pounds minimum. We all love shows like Time and hopefully This City Is Ours, so why are we marginalising people? I do think it’s a struggle for the working class at this moment in time to go to theatre schools.”

He adds: “I lived in London for 12 years and there were so many great courses and free workshops and, you know, initiatives for kids to go to theatres and see plays. Up north there isn’t enough of that, and it’s the fact that whenever there is cuts within government, the arts is the first thing to go. I think we need to hold a mirror up to our politicians.”

Across eight episodes, you’ll be left in no doubt that working class actors desperately need more of a voice at the table if we’re to find the next Nelson-Joyce and other diamonds in the rough. Now, he’s just keen to spread his wings a bit more. Half an hour in Nelson-Joyce’s company is enough to assure you he’s so much more than just a hard man.

“I’m a big softy at heart and I loved watching the new Bridget Jones, it broke my heart!” he affirms.

“So I’d want to show my sensitive side. People come up to me in the streets and they go ‘I hated you in that show, you were horrible!’ I just have to tell them I’m really not.”

When This City Is Ours airs, you’d bet that Nelson-Joyce – who will become the show’s most recognisable face – will have a lot more explaining to do…