Reggie Yates Reveals The Secret To Staying Driven & Reaching Your Potential

The first time I saw a machine gun was in my estate at like nine years old, when the police were raiding a flat on my floor because there was all kinds of craziness there. And you're just playing on the balcony.

As a teenager presenting kids' TV with Air Force 1s and a Mecka tracksuit, it says something. I’m on the BBC and I’m dressed like the boys that you cross the street from. Subsequently, I’ve had kids come up to me saying, "Bro, I loved watching you because we dressed the same, we talked the same, and you were doing that." When people say things like that to you, strangers, it’s so powerful.

For me, empowering others is a huge part of my drive right now. Working with young, talented people—and I love that I have that relationship with people because I never had it growing up. There was always a distance between me and the person that was helping guide me. Shortening that distance for me in the lives of others is what success feels like.

Reggie Yates. He’s a critically acclaimed filmmaker, a writer, a director, and an entrepreneur. And over the last three decades, he’s been on our screens. Through that time, the world has changed, the platforms have changed, and he has certainly changed.

He’s been involved in scandals, wild success, and unfortunate failure. Reggie’s work as a filmmaker is extraordinarily diverse, and he’s traveled across the world meeting those that have oppressed and those that have been oppressed.

This conversation is the same: incredibly diverse. We’ll touch on everything from love, relationships, struggles, family, mental health, ambition, cancel culture, and everything in between. Thank you, Reggie. Thank you for your honesty, because I know that the people that are about to listen to this podcast are going to take a tremendous amount of important value from it.

So without further ado, I’m Stephen Bartlett, and this is *The Diary of a CEO*. I hope nobody is listening, but if you are, then please keep this to yourself.

Reggie, location, environment, family—where do you come from?

I am the child of African immigrants. Both my parents were born in Ghana and came to London as children. I was born on Tottenham Court Road, so I’m London, London, London. I was raised in Holloway, moved to Southeast London when I was 14, and at 18 I moved out. I’ve been a Londoner ever since.

I say that because I've lived all over. London's quite a tribal city between football, the club you support, the area that you're from, and your connection to it. I've lived all over and I call South London home now, even though I didn't start there and I didn't school there, really. But I love it there and it’s nice to return to the place that I spent a chunk of my teens.

Two parents from an African background, from Ghana. They came here when they were...

My mother was 11, and I think my dad was maybe 15 or 16.

So tell me all about that and that experience. I know that in terms of education and perspective on the world and all those things—from my own mom's experience, she couldn't read or write. So we had a ton of wars growing up because I dropped out of university after one lecture, so we didn't speak for three years. I know that African parents have a certain perspective.

I know, especially from reading about how you've handled things like fame, press, drugs, alcohol, and the avoidance of all of those things, I feel like much of that must have come from those kinds of values.

Yeah, I'd say it's a combination of things. It's a combination of the mentors that I chose, the environment that I was in at home, and that massively comes down to culture. That's why I was really interested in your connection to Nigeria, because culturally for me, where my parents are from has informed massively, in a lot of ways, my outlook.

Culturally, obviously, when you've got West African parents who were born there, you're raised in an environment where education is everything because as far as they're aware, that is the only way to unlock another life for yourself. My grandparents came to this country in search of a better life for not just themselves, but their children and ultimately us, their grandchildren. And it worked.

My mom got an education, I got an education to a point, and weirdly my social education and my extracurricular activities have given me a career. So more than anything, I think it's the values of an African house that have given me what I believe to be a healthy life, and I mean that in every sense of the word.

People talk to me a lot about being grounded and understanding what being humble is. I think when you’ve come from nothing, but at the same time you enjoy everything, it changes your perspective on what success looks like. That was the house that I was raised in. We celebrated every day because we essentially were striving to be happy, and happiness didn't come from material goods. It came from success and achievement on a level that made everybody in the house proud, as opposed to what was going on outside the family home. Culture was everything.

And do you feel that—do you still feel that, and did you ever fully believe that happiness would come from success and achievement? Do you still deeply believe that?

For me, happiness comes from being fulfilled. I think at my most happiest and my most calm, I feel like I'm able to love and I feel loved. I feel as though I am professionally and personally fulfilled. I feel as though I'm creatively fulfilled. They’re the moments when I feel my most happy and they’re the things that I'm chasing, if ever I was chasing anything.

What was the difference between your mom and your dad? My mom was Nigerian, and my dad was the antithesis of that. My dad was—well, is—an older white male, very passive, very calm, usually doesn't speak. And my mom was—she can shout for seven hours at a tone you've never heard in your life without taking a breath. Was there a huge difference between the approach of your mom and your dad?

Well, my dad's a musician. Was, is, and continues to be. But he wasn't in my life. My parents divorced when I was quite young, and then my mother remarried another Ghanaian man who was also from a similar background. In terms of who they are/were as people, it was very different. I think I get a lot of what makes me "me" from my mom. My mom was incredibly social, she loved music. I've spoken about this before—she used to always cook with this Sony ghetto blaster above the cooker.

It’s West African cuisine, so you're using a lot of palm oil. The ghetto blaster is so clear in my mind; it’s just covered with red oil. There was no cover on the tape bit, so you used to have to push a tape in. There were marks on it as to where her favorite radio stations were. I was raised on a diet of pirate radio and pop. That was my mom; she’s just a vivacious, big social animal.

I remember her 30th birthday because, you know, she had us quite young. I remember her just with a fag out the window, having a little dance or whatever and turning up her favorite records. My stepfather is not that; he’s not particularly social and he’s quite different. His dad was in the military, so he was, I imagine, not that dissimilar to your mother, it sounds like. There were two very different types of parenting in my house. As I say, my biological dad wasn't present, and ironically, we're probably really similar given our expression through creativity.

Have you ever reconnected with him?

Yeah. I did *Who Do You Think You Are?*, the BBC One show. It's really interesting because they've started carving up episodes of the show and putting them on YouTube. They chunked my episode into four parts. On my father's side of the family, my biological father, they've been mixing for generations. Three of my grandmothers are Mariah Carey black—like, they are super, super fair because there have been generations of people that are of mixed origin.

With Ghana previously being part of the British Empire and being part of the Commonwealth, and Ghana finding independence in 1957, there was a huge English contingent, particularly in and around places like Cape Coast, when it came to trading, gold, etc. That's part of my family legacy massively. My mom was bitterly disappointed after they did the research and realized that her family background was just one village, versus my dad's side which was lots of different people from different places in Europe coming to Africa and mixing.

When we made that show, I realized that they wanted to start the show with a conversation between him and me talking about the family. I hadn't seen him or spoken to him in over a decade. We met up just before we recorded. It was weird because I hadn't seen him in so long. When we did record, the film starts with this sequence with him and me sort of chatting, and he’s playing thumb piano. The last time we’d seen each other was the day before, but prior to that, I was a lot younger. I was a teenager the last time I'd seen him.

I don’t really have any bitterness towards the man because I understand him a lot better now as I’ve grown. As your friends become fathers, you sort of start to identify just how many people are actually naturally equipped with fatherhood. Not everyone is, and unfortunately, my father just didn't seem to be one of those guys.

One of the things I’ve got to be honest I worry about with my own experience with my parents is that there are slightly toxic traits that they have. I think this is the case with all humans, but my parents are humans too. I’m concerned I will pass those on through generational cycles. I think the less aware I am of those things, the more they stand a chance of showing up at some point and running the show when it matters the most. Do you have those fears?

I had those fears; I don't have them anymore. The reason I don't have them anymore is because I recognize that I define my present and my future. My past I have no control over, but who I am today and who I will become is down to me. That also is massively dependent on my understanding of my childhood trauma, of the things that if unchecked could define me.

I've always been desperate to define myself, even when I didn't realize that I was doing it. Growing up in a council estate up the road from here in Holloway, and having friends who have exactly the same setup at home—you know, before my mother met my stepfather, we were a single-parent household on benefits. My mom was doing whatever she could to feed the family and move us forward. That was the same for all the other boys on the estate.

If I was hanging out with Cory or Tyrone or whoever, their house felt like mine. I was determined to not be defined by the things that we were being taught to normalize. As a result, I just have decided that's not the life that I'm going to have, and my children won't, God willing I have them.

You are, when you look at your career, a tremendous outlier in terms of the journey you've taken and what you're doing now. Then you trace it back and go, "You came from a council estate not too far from here." For you to have gone on that journey and achieved the things you have, I always think there must have been certain factors in those early years that made you take a different course to those friends that might still be on the estate now. Do you know what the factors were that made you an outlier?

You sound as though you've done a lot of work on yourself. I get to meet people and ask—I learn so much from these kinds of answers. I’ve made documentaries for over 10 years, so it's the same thing. You learn so much from your environment if you're willing to drink in the information. Between therapy and also being present in moments like this—yes, there are cameras, but I'm having a conversation with you and I'm learning from you. That certainly was the case in 10 years of making films for the BBC.

When it comes to me looking at how I’ve become the person that I am and how my journey has played out, it's an amalgamation of different moments and instances. But fundamentally, it comes down to a desire even as a kid to understand and be aware. It's progressed into this idea of being present and understanding the moment that you're in and why you're there, taking as much from the moment as possible.

As a child, I would always ask questions, and I was far too aware of my environment for my own good. I'll never forget going to my friend Kieran Buckley's house in Barnsbury. My mom was very protective, so she wouldn't let me play at friends' homes. I went to Kieran's and was in the garden, and he had this massive, beautiful Islington garden with several trees in it. I asked him, "How come you've got a park at the back of your house?"

His mother sort of overheard and laughed a bit, and it stayed with me. He was like, "It's not a park, it's my garden! What are you talking about? Come on, free-in, you're in goal mate!" You play this game and you don't think about it. Then I remember going back to my council estate and looking at the one tree that me and Corey used to climb and thinking, "I don't have what he has. Why is that?"

Then you start to think about these things and start to understand class and where you are. I started to really recognize the power of my walk to school, even as a kid. Before I got to secondary school, I was like, "This is really weird." I live in a borough, Islington in North London, that has everything from council estates with immigrants and white working-class people right through to multi-million pound houses. I lived on a road called Liverpool Road, which is such an important road. I've only become aware of how important that road is to my journey in recent years.

I lived at the Holloway end of Liverpool Road. Liverpool Road is a long road that runs through Islington, and at the other end is Angel. Angel gentrified years before Holloway did. Angel is a very different place now. They had a Waitrose, they had a Sainsbury’s, and you had these gorgeous, massive townhouses. If you deviated off Liverpool Road, you'd be in Barnsbury and there were these beautiful little villagey roads.

Holloway was where the people that I grew up around lived, and you had these estates. You had every kind of madness you can imagine happening on my estate. I remember the first time I saw a machine gun was in my estate at like nine years old, when the police were raiding a flat on my floor because there was all kinds of craziness there. You're just playing on the balcony on the floor that you live on and you've got armed police there, let alone the other times that you see other weapons or see other things happen. Those walks that I would go on where I would be like, "Wow, the bit that I live in versus the bit that I'm walking through versus the bit that I'm going to to go to school... I know what bit I want to live on, so I better start thinking about how I'm going to get to that bit of the road."

It's so fascinating you'd say that. It took me in my head back to my own experiences being a kid. I have this really vivid memory one day of looking up at the sky and seeing a plane, and then looking down at my street and thinking, "I wonder if all of these families—this is what they wanted from their life." The plane for me was the juxtaposition of a family going on holiday. I'd never been on—other than coming from Africa, we'd never been on holiday.

I was thinking, "Oh my god, people are going on holiday." Then I looked down at my street and I looked up again and I saw this plane. A lot of people will have that, but it takes a different mind to then think, "I want to be on the plane. I want to be at the other end of Liverpool Street." Then also, I have some idea about how to get there. Maybe you didn't have an idea about how to get there, but maybe just the—I don't know if you believe in manifestation—just the "I want to be there, so I'm going to make decisions over the next 10 years in that direction."

My journey's super weird, right? Because from the age of eight, I was a working actor. I was constantly reminded about my difference just by being present and by being aware even as a child. It didn't take much for me to realize, "You're not like your friends, Reg, because you're currently working while they're at school." You've been allowed time off school to work. Straight away you're like, "Okay, I'm a bit different, and this is a bit of a weird situation to be in."

Then you look around and there's 100 people on set and you're the only black person, both in front of or behind the camera. You go, "Okay, wow, I'm not like any of these people here." The conversations that you hear about what people did on the weekend, or where they're going that evening, or even conversations about wine—little things that people take for granted culturally. Nobody's drinking wine in my house. Shloer was a big deal. Going to Sainsbury’s was a big deal. We used to walk to Dalston with backpacks to go and buy meat and tin tomatoes and carry them back because we never had a car.

What does that do to you though? When you're on set, everyone else is a different skin color and they're talking about things that you're not familiar with in terms of, let’s be honest, class. What does that do to you? Does it put a chip on your shoulder? Does it make you more ambitious? Does it make you think, "I'm out of place, I'm an impostor"?

It could have put a chip on my shoulder, and I'm incredibly thankful that it didn't. What it did do was make me so hungry to create an environment where I could feel comfortable. What that progressed into was understanding that it's going to take me a while to get to the point that I'd like to be at; therefore, it would be and become my responsibility to create that for someone else. To create that for another eight-year-old me or 15-year-old me.

I feel incredibly proud that I'm able to do that now because I recognize the power of it. Regardless of those moments of feeling out of place or being sort of—feeling as though your class is being waved in your face. I told this story the other day to a friend of mine, Sam Wilkinson, who I made a lot of my documentaries with. He's got my gorgeous little godson in his hands, little Teddy, and we're chatting away.

I was telling him a story about being at this primary school in Islington where you've got kids from estates and kids from quite affluent homes all in the same school. At lunchtime, you had these kids with Thundercats lunchboxes and these incredible sandwiches and KitKat Minis—all the things that I never had in my house. You're sort of looking at tin foil that hasn't been used 50 times and you're like, "Oh my god, they're throwing the tin foil in the bin! What the hell is going on?" Not being made to fold it and put it back because you could use it for dinner tomorrow.

Anyway, you're taking all of that in. Every lunchtime, I'll never forget Pat, God bless her, the head dinner lady. This big lady would walk out and she'd go, "Free school dinners!" And all the kids that were on free school dinners used to have to stand up and go and get your food. It sort of broke you a little bit as a kid because your mates were just a bit like, "Oh my god, can you imagine?" I told this story to Sam and he started crying. Sam started crying, I think, not because—well, I think he felt a little sad for little mini me, but he also as a father imagined his son in that position.

I'm sure we'll get on to family and fatherhood and stuff, but I realize how much fatherhood has softened a lot of my friends and also has made me very sort of cognizant of my journey and also just how important my childhood was in shaping who I've become.

And when you were there, when you were in school, when you were eight years old and working in acting, what were your dreams for the future? How big were they? What was that internal monologue saying that the end of Reggie's story would look like?

I don't know what it looks like now. And then I never had any sort of desire to create it or paint it. I just knew that it was fun and I enjoyed it and I didn't quite understand why I was getting paid to do it. I just didn't get it because it was like, "You mean I get off school and I get to play make-believe with people that I've seen on telly, and you're going to pay me for that?" I remember my mom opening a bank account for me because I did a job and this money started coming in. Suddenly you've got tens of thousands of pounds in your account and you're not even in secondary school yet.

It's like, well hang on, this is crazy because mom's desperately trying to save to put this on the table or to make that happen, and I'm getting to do something that's fun and it's paying me really well and I get to do it with Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie. Like, what?

That there, for me, speaks to a really critically important part of success which is: at a very, very young age, you got to see behind a curtain. And the curtain was, in my view just from hearing what you said, "I can do something that I actually like and people will pay me for it." Imagine most kids from that estate—all they'll ever get to see is you work in the factory or whatever, you have to hate your work and you get paid fuck-all for it. That's what they know.

It's interesting you said it because you've actually weirdly picked up on a really interesting point. Something happened on set in a moment of realization even as a child that only came back into my head, popped back into my head a few years ago. I recognized how important it was and actually put it in my book. And that was work to me, based on my grandparents and my mother, was something that you hated.

My grandmother worked the buses, she was a cleaner, she did all sorts of stuff. She was a cook for London Underground at one point. My grandfather had two jobs: at night he was a security guard at some random factory in King's Cross, and during the day he was a mathematics professor at a university. This is an incredibly educated man, but because he wanted to build a home in Ghana and he wanted to look after everyone, he literally worked all the hours that God would send. Whenever anyone spoke about work, they hated it.

Then the first job that I ever got as an actor when I was eight years old was *Desmond's*, which for anyone that has seen it will know retrospectively how important that show was. For those that don't know what it is, *Desmond's* was about a black family in Peckham who owned a barbershop. It was a comedy about black life, and just about life. Because it was so human, even though it was massively flavored by this Caribbean family, people loved it and it was massive and it ran for, I think, seven seasons.

The first audition I go for is *Desmond's*. I remember going up to their production office and my mom was excited. She was prepping me on her little cards to get my lines down and everything, and I got the job. Then I had this random moment that when I think back, it's crazy for me as a kid to have made this realization. I was on set surrounded by people that looked like me and my family. You had Shirley who was the matriarch of the family, who actually looked like my gran. You had Norman who played Desmond, who was like this super funny old guy, and my granddad was this funny old guy that used to make inappropriate jokes all the time. All the makeup artists were black and they would give me little boiled sweets, and everybody was just so fun to be around. I was just surrounded by this blackness, but in a professional setting, and everyone was at work and they were having a great time. Something went off in my head and I was like, "Wait, hang on a second, maybe what I've seen in my family and their relationship with work doesn't apply to everyone. Because these people look like my family and they're having a great time. So what would it be like if I did that for me?"

And that's exactly it. A lot of people don't realize that, and that's why I referred to it as you got to look behind the curtain. And once you see it, you can't unsee it. Once you make that connection that you can love your work and it can be in line with your passions. Right now, the stuff you're doing in your career seems to be perfectly in line with your interests. You've really got closer and closer to doing work that's intrinsically fulfilling as the years have gone on.

A lot of people don't realize that, Reggie, and they don't ever get to see behind that curtain. So what would you say to those people who have the dreams but they've always believed that work is a 9-to-5 thing, it's a chore, it's something you do to fund your passion or your free time?

Well, it's really difficult in this era because there are so many "experts" on social media, on YouTube, who are releasing books or whatever. There's a ton of people who haven't had any life experience, which is why people like you, I think, are so important. You're having incredibly important conversations off the back of living a life and doing something, and you're still so young. You have earned the right to say, "This is what I think and feel," and you're willing to share it. You continue to learn on camera. Making documentaries was a huge part of me learning on camera and learning with my audience.

I'm sure that you can attest to this: there's something incredibly powerful about saying "I don't know, but I want to learn." When you do that and it's documented and recorded, people come along with you. In this moment, there are so many people that just see the end result, they want to be Gary Vee or want to shout advice and be the tough-love guy. There is merit in that, and I think for a lot of young men particularly, you can look at someone like Gary Vee—I think he's fantastic in some of the things that he does and the way in which he delivers a message because some people need to hear it.

Similarly, on the other side, a book like *The Secret*, for instance—if you don't have people constantly reminding you of things like some of the messages that are in *The Secret*, you might need to turn to a book that has them all in one place. I think it's incredibly difficult for people to be honest with themselves about what they're capable of without being willing to do the work. So many people want the end result but don't respect or understand the value in the journey.

We live in a microwave era where everything happens overnight and people come up and come down from social media stars to reality TV stars or whatever. It breaks my heart that nobody's willing to just look back a little bit and see that everything that they're doing has happened before, and it all ends in one way. I had a conversation recently where I realized how fortunate I've been to have been around for so long because I've had a career for over 30 years now and I've seen the cycle play out over and over and over again. Like being 12 years old and interviewing the Spice Girls and thinking, "Oh my god, this is the most amazing, exciting thing ever." And then seeing their peak—because you know, I interviewed them for "Wannabe"—then you see their peak, then you see the movie, you see them on a packet of Walkers crisps, then you see the fallout, and then you get to where you are today and you see how that has played out.

That's sort of like a bigger arc, but you could go even smaller, in the boy band era. You name them, I interviewed them—from the Backstreet Boys to Five over here to whoever. I met them when they were new and excited, then I met them when they were arrogant and horrible, and then you meet them when everything isn't happening anymore and they've got that album that no one wants to buy. You see the cycle happen over and over again. Today it's reality TV stars. Only the cycle isn't three albums; if you're lucky, it's three years. Sometimes it's three months. They do *Love Island* twice a year now. You don't get to a million followers before there's a new, sexier you on the show, you know?

And what does that take? To reinvent yourself through—as the world changes, as platforms change, to stay relevant? What does that take?

I have no desire to remain relevant. I don't care. I will just continue to follow my passions. I recognized the power of platform when I was 18, when some random kid's mom stopped me on the street and said, "You're a role model for my son." I hated her for it. Then I realized I have no choice in the matter. The minute I realized that regardless of how I feel, people are going to look at me because I have a platform, I understood the power of that platform. That started a thinking process that made me desperate to get out of entertainment and get into documentaries because I felt as though with that amount of eyeballs, I should have something to say. That's why I think documentaries have naturally led on to me becoming a writer, director, and filmmaker and using art to actually say something.

That journey you've described over 30-odd years and the cycles and staying at a point now where you can still do what you want on a big platform—there must have been a ton of failure through that journey. People don't talk about that because that doesn't make for good Instagram posts typically—the day you get rejected from the audition or whatever. What are some of the critical moments in your journey where you encountered failure or rejection and you had that mental conversation with yourself to figure out what the hell this means and what we do next?

I have done a lot of therapy and I'm really thankful for it. I started in my 20s and now in my late 30s, I understand the importance of getting to know your shadow. My current therapist, who I've been with for a while now, is an incredible human being who has given me new tools for the tool belt. Some of the things that he's given me have really helped me to understand me at my worst.

One of the big triggers for me is when my character is questioned. I've always struggled with the idea of people getting me wrong or thinking that my intentions aren't pure. I had a situation a few years ago now where I said something publicly that offended a lot of people. My argument was, "No, no, but I didn't mean that! I didn't mean that!" And what I came to realize was your intentions mean nothing if you hurt people.

In sitting with the community that I offended deeply, which breaks my heart because my first ever mentor Anna Scher, who gave me my career in television, is from that same community as well. I learned and have learned so much about that community and that faith. I felt as though I let so many people down. In having those conversations and understanding that, bro, it's not actually about you. It's about knowing the power of your platform, understanding that you have a responsibility when you open your mouth because you've worked so long that people listen to you now. Respecting the fact that regardless of what your intention is, if you hurt people, you have to behave accordingly. That was a huge moment of failure for me that I have learned so much from and that I am proud of the lessons that came from it. Those lessons, I think, have set me up in such a way that I'm excited about my future because regardless of everything that I've done, I feel as though I'm only really getting started now. Everything that has happened feels like practice in a way.

I'm going to ask these questions because I'm scared that at some point—I'm on *Dragons' Den* now, I have a podcast where I speak my mind, and I'm going to say some shit at some point. I've said to my team before, "I know at some point I'm going to say some shit that is going to get me in trouble, something that I didn't mean or something off the cuff." Again, to your point, it doesn't necessarily matter if I meant it or not or what my intentions were.

We're talking about cancel culture here, talking about someone that has a platform that's speaking their mind, that is using words in various ways. You're referencing there was some comments made, there was an uproar within the Jewish community. What was your mental journey from the second you said those comments to where you are now? Is the initial feeling of, "You don't get me, that's not what I meant"? Is there anger there?

There's no anger; there's just disappointment because you know better. It feels as though it's the biggest thing that's happening anywhere in the world to anyone, and it really isn't. But the bottom line is that you have caused offense to people that you care about. You have working relationships with people and so on and so forth. There's a lot of vanity that kicks in, hence me saying what I said about you feeling that it's the biggest thing because suddenly your entire world is made up of people who are either disappointed or let down or angry with you, and rightly so.

You just have to sit in it. You just have to sit in it and make those difficult phone calls and also be willing to learn and understand that you were wrong. I think when you are at your core a good person—which I believe I am—when someone tells you you're not, oh, it's really difficult to get your head around. But leaning into that and, like I said, getting to know your shadow, understanding why that's such a trigger, understanding what that is setting off for you in terms of things that may have happened in the past, etc.—it's a process that you kind of have to go through that gets really dark and difficult, and then you come out the other side saying, "Okay, I'm proud of that dent."

I'll never forget it, actually—and this isn't a horrible name-drop, but Daniel Kaluuya said to me that—actually, off the back of that, he and I had a conversation about this whole situation. He said, "Bro, there's a reason that golf balls have dents in them." I was like, "What do you mean?" He said, "Well, you know, golf balls with dents go further." And I was like, "I'm going to steal that!" Kaluuya is so right. I learned so much in that situation that it weirdly strengthened my relationships with a lot of people from that community, and also my knowledge is better, and my knowledge of self is better in terms of how I manage myself in complicated moments.

This idea of the shadow, getting to know your shadow—I find that so fascinating.

It's good stuff, isn't it? It's really good.

I've never heard that expression before.

I wish I came up with it, but I'm going to pretend I did. But it's just knowing—it's knowing what your triggers are, knowing yourself at your worst and being comfortable with it. I can proudly say that there's very little that could happen to me now that I don't have something in place to help me navigate it.

I’ve been having this conversation with one of my best friends. He was saying to me the other day that he is so easily triggered in the moment by certain things. He thinks it's because he used to get bullied when he was younger on the playground. But for example, if someone were to say that he was wrong or present evidence which proved he was wrong, or his romantic partner were to get in a little bit of a tiff with him, it's kind of like this red mist and he can't control it. And then 10 minutes later he'll go, "I don't know why I do that." How did you find out what those triggers were? And you said you've got something in place to deal with it—what is that? Because he was like, "In the moment, when I'm sat with my girlfriend at dinner and the trigger goes, if I walk off, that's storming off. If I go silent, that's sulking. So what the fuck am I supposed to do?"

It's going to sound ridiculous, but listening is really difficult when you feel as though you're being challenged. Nine times out of ten, any conflict that I've ever had hasn't actually been about me. So to have the resolve to shut the fuck up and listen sometimes allows you to get through the things that are triggering or annoying or make you angry or frustrated, and get to the heart of what's actually being said and why.

When you get to that, it just becomes so much easier because most of the time it's not actually about you. Maybe something you've said or done is triggering to the person that you really care about sat across the table from you. If you're willing to get beyond the fact that they're saying something that in the moment makes you angry, you can actually move forward together in a way that just didn't exist before.

The thing that's jumping in and that's commanding your brain to try to win, or to go for victory or self-defense though—that can come from the playground, that can come from a comment your dad made you when you were four.

Especially if you're someone who has come from nothing and has succeeded. It's you against the world for a huge chunk of that early stage. It's very easy to need to win everything in life, especially arguments. But most of the time, winning an argument actually ends up putting you backwards.

What you described there is ego. You have to build—and I genuinely believe this too, especially because I was a very young entrepreneur in rooms with people that were not the same skin color as me and three times my age when I was first pitching my ideas—at some point you have to develop a sense of huge confidence and self-belief, which has to kind of flirt with having a big ego. Because I promise you, as you'll probably know, people will try to fuck with you, especially if you're an outlier. If you are the T-1000, people really want to figure out how they can break you.

Some people get off on that. I'm sure you've experienced it; I certainly have. But in my experience, a lot of the time when I find those conflicts or I find people trying to push buttons, it doesn't take much thought to recognize where it's coming from. Most of the time it's not about you. Books like *Ego Is the Enemy*, or *Start with Why*, or *Leaders Eat Last*—the Simon Sinek book—that’s a great one for ego.

I sort of learned a lot from that about how to lead and also what true leadership can do. That sort of unnatural thing of not being submissive, but allowing someone to find their answers with your guidance as opposed to you telling them, is so powerful because it just makes the bond so much stronger.

Part of your therapy sessions was to really understand your issue with father figures and the sort of tricky relationship you'd had with father figures.

There was a disappointment that I felt even as a young age in that I didn't have the perfect dad at home, or at least a dad that I felt that I deserved as a kid. Because I was a good kid, I was working, I was doing well at school, I was kind to my sisters. I thought I was a good kid. And I felt that I deserved a different kind of dad at home, especially as someone who was so obsessed with TV. I'm looking at Uncle Phil going, "Why can't I have what Will and Carlton have? I want an Uncle Phil."

And in going to some of the houses of kids that I was going to school with and seeing how their dads fathered them, it made me disappointed that I didn't have that at home. But I've spoken about this before, and this is a book I've been working on called *Bits of Dad*. I was incredibly fortunate to have bits of dad because of what my mother invested in me. My mother taught me from quite a young age to recognize what a good man looked like, which helped me pick the right friends and ultimately pick the right mentors and people to follow.

I say "bits of dad" because I would look up to and ask questions of Mark, who worked at the play center at the after-school club at my school. He would help me with sorting some of the dynamics in my friendships at school. Then I had Billy McQueen, who I call my TV dad, a producer who I met when I was 12 years old at Disney, who would answer any professional question that I needed help or guidance with. Then there were these other men who helped me with self-discipline, or money, or even football, or even conversations about women and relationships. Amalgamated, they made the perfect father, but I had the bits. And the bits were enough for me.

When you were going to therapy, was it a question you posed to your therapist about how you get a better relationship with father figures, or was it about authority?

Bro, we've had so many conversations about dad. I couldn't tell you what it was specifically, but I think just knowing that being a good man is such an important thing for me in my future, and knowing that I didn't have "good men" at home, has always been something that I've revisited and tried to unpack and understand.

It's something that's in the front of my mind in a lot of ways, as I said, that so many of my friends are now becoming fathers, seeing how they parent and also seeing the decisions that they make. Now becoming a godfather for the first time—you know, I'm not dad, I'm "dad-adjacent." You go around, you pick up, you change nappy sometimes. I haven't changed Teddy's nappy just yet because he does massive doodoos. But knowing that when that kid gets a little bit bigger, I can help Sam in maybe the bits that he can't do, or the bits that he doesn't want to do. And I offer a different perspective as well.

There was something you said, a quote, where you talked about really understanding how precious your time was. The actual quote is: "No one like me has had this opportunity, so I'd be a fool not to make the most of it." I really want to understand that driving force within you that’s still driving you today. It tends to be a bit of a cocktail sometimes. Your story from the council estate sheds some light on that, Liverpool Road sheds some light on it as well.

The bit we talked about, being underestimated and feeling sometimes like the outlier in certain rooms. But that thing about time and that sense of responsibility you speak to—you used that word in your writing, that feeling of responsibility.

It’s really complicated. I think the idea of responsibility comes from understanding that I was one of the first people to be given a platform either on primetime or on children's TV and so on and so forth. Because I've always been myself regardless of who I was at that time, and having been on TV for so many years, that version of me has continued to progress. As a teenager, presenting kids' TV with Kane-ro and Air Force 1s and a Mecka tracksuit, your academic sweatshirt—knowing that I'm not just wearing this to my dressing room, I'm wearing this on camera—says something.

It says something. I’m on the BBC and I’m dressed like the boys that you cross the street from. That meant something. Subsequently, I’ve had kids come up to me over the year saying, "I grew up with you on TV and, bro, I loved watching you because we dressed the same, we talked the same, and you were doing that. And it just made me feel like I existed." When people say things like that to you, strangers, it’s so powerful. I assumed that that might be the case even as a teenager, and I'm so glad that I was right because that desire to be me, whatever room I'm in, has served me well.

That's gone from presenting kids' TV right the way through to writing and directing now. I’ve just completed my first feature film, *Pirates*, which will be out this year. I'm a producer, I'm a writer, and I'm a director on this movie about three men of color, 18-year-olds. I employed the crew. I am sat there in interview rooms interviewing heads of department, deciding who is going to ultimately set the mood for this thing that really matters to me.

As a writer-director, it starts with the script, but as a director, you're on set and you've got 150, 200 people working for you. If you don't lead in the right way, they'll decide what this environment is going to be. The big concern for me was: I’m looking at three versions of me. I’ve got a Moroccan kid, a Ghanaian kid, and a West Indian kid who are 18, who are leading their first movie. I remember being 18, desperately trying to get auditions for movies and not getting them because it was a very different landscape then. So I understand the responsibility that I have today to put on for those guys. It’s my responsibility to put on for them and create an environment for them in a way that just wouldn't exist if the man at the top of the tree didn't intrinsically understand them because nobody understood me coming up. That's where the responsibility comes, you know?

In your own self-assessment, what is the best and worst part of your leadership style?

The bit I’m great at? It always is. Okay, let's start with worst. I think the worst part of my leadership style is that I want everybody to have a good time all the time. I do. Desperately. Well, when you're responsible for the environment, when you pick the people, if it goes left or if you pick the wrong person, it’s on you and it’s your fault. And that feels shit.

When you get it wrong and it affects the people that you care about, that feels terrible. So I desperately want everything to work out in an environment where I'm responsible. I think that that's probably one of the biggest failures that I hopefully will be better at in the next project. To be really transparent, sometimes you have to replace people midway through a shoot and it's knowing when is the right time and also having the balls to say, "You don't quite get what we're trying to do, so thank you for what you've done, but your services are no longer required." That's difficult, especially if you empowered them to begin with. To take it away is tough.

I think the thing that I'm good at is people management. I'm good with people, I'm good on a one-to-one basis as well as with a group. And I think the thing that I'm best at is understanding my actors because I once was one. Knowing that they just want to do a good job and are individuals—some might require talking to before a take, some might require being left alone, some might require some coaching or some confidence boosting, some might require being told to reign it in.

With *Pirates*, I decided that I wanted to make sure that my three central guys were a little family before we even got on set. So I contacted one of my mentors, Richard Curtis—writer-director who wrote *Notting Hill*, *Love Actually*, *Four Weddings and a Funeral*. He and his wife Emma Freud are an amazing couple. I met them through Comic Relief when I was 18, and they've been in my life ever since. When I started writing, off the back of spending New Year's at one of his places, I said, "Could it be possible to take one of your homes by the sea so I can go and write there?" And they gave me—they've opened their doors to me for me to go and write at one of their homes.

The desk that I wrote a few drafts of *Pirates* on is the desk that Richard wrote *Notting Hill* on. So I'm rubbing the desk going, "Come on, give me some of this good stuff, come on!" And prior to shooting, I asked them and they were absolutely fine with it—in fact, they actively encouraged me to bring the boys to the house for the weekend. We spent the weekend by the sea cooking together, watching coming-of-age movies, talking about the movies.

It’s very much about friendship and coming of age, but it's also set in 1999 with a whole UK garage backdrop, so the entire music in the movie is UKG. The boys are desperately trying to drive from North London to South London in a Peugeot 205 to get into "Twice as Nice" on New Year's Eve 1999. That's the movie; it takes place over one day. So we got like Spoony on the phone, or we got the Heartless Crew on the phone, and the boys were just sort of learning about garage and they were also forming these relationships.

When we got on set, everyone was like, "Oh, so you guys have been friends for years, right?" And they were like, "No, we just, you know, we just hung out." And now we're at the point where we've started doing screenings, people have watched it and they're like, "The chemistry between the boys is unreal." I say all of this to say that the thing I'm most proud of is that I recognize what is necessary to get the best out of my actors. As a result, I'm incredibly proud of what they've done and I'm just really excited for them because I know that they're about to have very exciting careers.

One of my actors, Reda, is a Moroccan kid and he's amazing. He turned 21 while we were shooting—or during our break, we got broken up for COVID, we got stopped mid-shoot and we went back thankfully and finished the movie. Reda’s this young, incredible kid from London of Moroccan descent, and he said to me in the audition, "I was like, you're so naturally funny, why haven't I seen you do more comedy?" And he said, "Mate, I only ever get the 'child of terrorist,' 'young about to be turned terrorist' role. I only ever get those parts." He said he'd never read for comedy ever because he was always reading for the same thing. Which is why when this came across his desk, he did everything he could to be good at it because he didn't want to just play a terrorist. He’s more than that. And for him to be in this film and to be so funny, it's just the most amazing feeling ever to give somebody that platform.

You've created so many critically acclaimed, amazing documentaries. They're so diverse in the subject matter. I wanted to know, of all the documentaries and all the moments and all those stories that you've told, is there something where you think, "This is why I started"?

Man, that's so tough because there's something in every film, genuinely. It might even be the lesson that you made a crap documentary and you knew it going in but you did it anyway. There've been so many amazing lessons. I think the thing that comes to my most whenever I'm asked this question is the South African preacher. I made a documentary called *The Millionaire Preacher*. There was this guy called Mboro, who is still active as a preacher—I mean, he recently I think got arrested for selling pictures to his followers that he took when he went up to heaven.

So he recently, I think, has been arrested for that. I'm not entirely sure what's going on with him now. Anyway, at the time when we went to make the documentary with him, he had a congregation of about 10,000 people and he was a multi-millionaire. Several Rolls Royces, you name the car he had it, mansions, the lot. And his entire congregation was made of poor black people. And he fell out with me because he didn't think I respected him enough.

Because I came to the film as somebody who isn't particularly religious but has a religious background. I grew up in the Pentecostal Christian church, my stepfather was Muslim, I converted to Islam when I was a kid, and in my teens, I decided that faith really wasn't for me in that context. So I’m looking at this man thinking, "You are literally exchanging people's faith for their pay packet." And I was disgusted by him and by everything that he represented before I'd even spoken to him. Before I'd even begun to unearth who he was and what got him to that place.

And it was an incredible learning experience when he decided that he didn't want to film with me anymore and his armed guards were sort of like, you know, had their fingers on the trigger as I was trying to force the point that he should keep talking to me and he was just not interested. I came to realize that it's not about me. The reason I was there was not to have a personal experience; the reason I was there was to make a film that could potentially shed light on an issue or teach something to people across the UK that I would never meet and ultimately the world as the film went on on Netflix.

I had a similar situation when I made a film about being young, black, and gay. I have a family member who I'm incredibly close to who is a gay man, and his coming out was this incredible moment for me in terms of realizing how difficult his life had been up until that point because of what he worried about. Because of what he thought might happen. And I wanted to make a film about that.

Long story short, ultimately the film for me didn't feel as though it nailed it. And I was really, really disappointed. The production company that I worked with at the time would always do screenings of the films as they went out, so we went to the exec's house and we’re in the house and we’re in the kitchen watching it. And the credits roll, and as the credits are rolling everyone’s sort of high-fiving each other going, "Yeah, we killed it! We’re trending on Twitter, this is brilliant, everybody loves the film!" And I’m just like, "That isn't the film that I had in my head. That doesn't speak to the specificity of the experience in the way that I wanted it to."

Anyway, point being, I went into my DMs on all the social platforms that I was on at the time and every single mailbox was filled with messages from young men and women saying, "We saw that you were making this film, so we purposely watched it with our parents and I've just come out to my mom because of the film you made. I was able to have a conversation with my dad because of some of the things that were happening on screen. Thank you for giving us that opportunity, thank you for opening the door." And I felt like an absolute idiot in that moment.

Because I was so busy worrying about being "Mr. Program Maker" and making this film that was perfect in my mind's eye, whereas in reality, the conversation that was being had had never been had before, let alone on the BBC. And as a result, it actively changed lives of people watching it. Literally changed the lives of people who messaged me. Wasn't about me. And I felt really embarrassed by myself.

Let's talk about money then. You've mentioned money there. What role does money play in all of this stuff in success in your view and in life?

Well, I've never chased it, which is probably why my accountant hates my guts. You know, I walked away from primetime TV that is a very rare air in terms of the amount of people that get to host those shows that get millions and millions of viewers, and also the payment that comes with it. I didn't enjoy hosting those shows. I didn't enjoy being in that space. I didn't enjoy being told what to do and say. I essentially was being asked to not be me, and that didn't work for me.

And in walking away from that and focusing on documentaries, I walked away from a lot of money. And knowing that I was going to take a hit financially ultimately being able to get to the place that I am now as a filmmaker was something I was very aware of. So money has never been a driver for me, but it's been something that I've been conscious on because you've got to live, right? And also, I look after a lot of people and I help a lot of people and I support people. So I’ve always wanted to do that. Money has always been important in that sense, but it’s never been important because "I'm going to show you."

That jump you described there where you swing from being like a TV host to saying, "You know what, I want to make my own documentaries," feels like a risk.

It is. Massively. Talk to me about the feeling you had when you thought, "You know what, I want to go and pursue myself now and my sort of intrinsic fulfilling passion despite that I'm going to have to take a financial cut potentially. I might not, you know, and the risk there's no guarantee here, right? This might not work out, might not get commissioned."

Well, it's the same thing with radio, you know? I hosted radio for 10 years, I was at Radio 1 for a decade, and I walked away. I left hosting the chart show, not because I was fired, but because I decided it wasn't right for me anymore because I stopped learning. And for me, it's always been about what you're learning, how much you're enjoying this, and does this align with where you are as a human being? Does this align with your passions? Does this align with what you care about?

When I recognized that I didn't want to talk to Harry Styles for 30 seconds about the new video—I wanted to ask, "How the hell are you managing all of this? You're 19 years old. Like, mate, how are you managing this? There are grown women that are hunting you down sexually, and you're figuring out who the hell you are as a person. How are you managing, bro?" I wasn't allowed to have that conversation on Radio 1, but I was in my documentaries, you know?

Every form has its limitations, which is why documentaries have grown into filmmaking, because now I can actively write the conversation as opposed to sitting down with someone hoping that they're going to give me the soundbite that makes that exciting for the audience. Now I can write it. And through some of my experiences in factual and life, I'm able to create people and create characters that are flawed and interesting enough that trigger conversations in the way that I would hope to do in the approach to making a documentary, whereas with a film, drama specifically, I'm able to literally lay it out and create it on my own terms.

And in terms of fulfillment, happiness, mental well-being, how important is it to be your true self? I know that, when you're doing it now, you're making extraordinary work because it's connected to who Reggie is. You're more happy, you're fulfilled, and it all seems to be a really positively reinforcing cycle when you get closer to that sense of who you are.

You know what it is? It's looking at your diary—and I'm sure you have a similar thing—you look at your calendar for the day and you go, "What am I actually doing today?" And we've all had those days where you see something in the calendar that you don't want to do. Seldom do I have those days now. It's very rare that I have something that I don't want to do professionally, particularly. And I'm really excited by that and I'm proud of that.

Everything that I'm invested in professionally comes from a place of passion. So for instance, I made a drama for the BBC called *Make Me Famous*, which was a standalone one-hour drama about the relationship between fame, social media, and suicide. And I created a character who is a reality TV star who after being on a hit show, suddenly his star begins to fade and there is a newer, younger, sexier version of him who is getting all the accolades and love, and suddenly his rate’s going through the floor. What that does to him on a mental health level.

The conversations and research that I was embedded within in the build-up to writing the screenplay were incredibly eye-opening for me because I was talking to stars from reality TV past and present and hearing the difference between people who had been on reality TV 15 years ago and today was heartbreaking. And seeing the way that these kids understand fame and what they're searching for. And also recognizing that I'm someone who's hosted reality TV, you know? And I have a really strange and unique relationship with it.

My point is, regardless of what it is I'm doing, I care about it. I care about it and that's anything from content to products. I have a dairy-free ice cream, you know? That sounds ridiculous, but I have a dairy-free ice cream. I'm a creative director and business partner on Blue Skies. But this is a dairy-free ice cream that is made in Ghana. It employs 3,000-plus people. The people that work there all look like me and my family, and they are being given an opportunity to not only have a career but be paid properly. And it's on Amazon Fresh and it's in Waitrose and people here are enjoying it in the summer not thinking about it, but what it's actually doing is incredible. It's changed a community. This is something that I'm connected to. So whatever it is I do now, if it doesn't align with my purpose, I don't want to be involved.

Isn't it such a massive—I reflect on this a lot, especially when I'm speaking to someone that has immigrant parents—that our parents' central concern was survival. And what a privilege it is that people like me and you can sit here and talk about meaning and fulfillment and pursuing a dairy-free ice cream from Ghana. I think immigrant children will, hopefully, understand the weight of that responsibility. When you're so close and in your family tree, there were people literally fighting for survival.

But the difficult thing about that is—and this is a conversation I'm having a lot talking about people becoming fathers—a lot of my friends are from a similar background, children of immigrants or white working class. Now that they have worked hard and found a level of success and are now becoming the parents, the lives that their children have will be worlds apart from the struggle that they experienced. How do you navigate that relationship with your kid who is, to all intents and purposes, "silver spoon" because you've worked so hard you've now made it easier for your child? And are you going to be mad at that kid because things are easier? How do you raise that child with the same values?

I hope that's a rhetorical question because I definitely don't have the answer because I'm single and I'm not even a dad. So I don't have to have that conversation just yet, pretending to be. So you're single? Let's talk about that. Are you hard to date?

Absolutely. Why? For the same reason that you are. It’s the truth. I have a feeling everything I’m about to say you will identify with, and that is: disclaimer, everything I’m about to say will probably make me sound like a massive prat, so please don’t judge. You’re not like a lot of people. You’re not like most of your friends because of the life that you've chosen for yourself and, more importantly, the person that you've had to be to become the person that you are.

Which as a result means that your dating pool is small because if we're talking about someone beyond being attractive and needing to have the value system or the outlook or—and this is the really difficult thing—the understanding that you require, it suddenly becomes incredibly hard. One of the stumbling blocks I've found is hoping that someone will become the person that I really feel that I need in terms of their understanding of me, or expecting them to. And in doing the work and realizing the role that I play in that, I've been at different times very responsible in those moments of conflict, shall we say. Whereas today, I'm just very clear about who I am and also what I need. And I think if you're very open and honest about that in the beginning, it makes it easier, but it doesn't make it easy. And the pool continues to shrink the more my world changes. A guy that was like a mentor for me always described me as a moving target. He’s like, "Reg, we're moving targets, bruv. Like, it’s never going to be easy because you continue to learn, you continue to work on yourself, and you continue to have that hunger to be better for yourself and for others." And it's incredibly difficult to find someone that is either on the same path or has the empathy and understanding for you and the path that you're on and the knock-on effects that that will have romantically.

You said you've come to learn who you are and what you need. Who are you and what do you need?

I’m a fiercely creative person with a very young spirit who needs friendship and understanding and empathy. As a writer, when you're building characters, one of my favorite things to do for my characters is write down: what is the lie your character believes? And I think for the longest time I believed that I would find a "female me," and I couldn't imagine anything worse today. And also, you have to understand the difference between your character's wants and needs, which is why I find writing so cathartic because I'm essentially doing therapy on me as I'm creating different versions of me at different points in my life. It's never going to be easy to be in a relationship with someone like myself or, I imagine, you because we are moving targets.

What do you think you need now? Ten years ago, you might have said this hair color, these eyes, this waist size, this fashion sense. As you've got older and older, it's just come down to these fundamental principles or values.

I think it's very simple. It's to be with someone that I can love unconditionally and that will love me back unconditionally. That's the simplest version of it. And that is flaws and all. And I think it's also the desire to be understood and also the ability to understand.

I feel like there's a lot of women out there that would love you unconditionally, and I still feel like that might not be enough.

That’s an interesting point. I don’t know. I think the point I was about to make—and I think that this might—I don’t know, I’m interested to see if this speaks to you—is the understanding part of it. I say understanding, and it feels like quite a blanket term. But what I mean by that is: culture is such a huge thing for me. Like, I’m walking around at the moment with this tiny little chain on, but the pendants on it are Gye Nyame, which is a Ghanaian symbol which means "trust in God." I've got a little Africa symbol, and I've also got my family crest, right? I don't even think about these things anymore, but when I think about what I have on me, literally, my family is incredibly important to me. My relationship with my spirit is incredibly important to me, and where I'm from are incredibly important to me.

And there is a huge difference between empathy and understanding. And being in a relationship with someone that doesn't understand those three pendants and doesn't—well, if they don't understand those three pendants, they won't understand me. So when I say understanding, I speak to that. And it’s very easy to say that you can love someone unconditionally. But when you’re someone like you or I who meets a thousand people a week—some on the street, some in situations like this, some through crew that you’ll never meet again—you long to come home, look at your partner, and not need to say anything and for them to understand you. And that’s why understanding’s such a huge part of it.

Professionally as well, right? Because your work’s going to take you all over the world. An insecure partner might try and compete with your work, they might be jealous of your work.

It's part of it. Because work is and isn't work. It's a part of who I am. You know, I go to the cinema twice a week. I've just put a movie theater in my home and God forbid anybody tell me that I shouldn't be in there as much as I intend to be. Movies have got me where I am. I learned to shave watching Danny Glover teach his son how to shave in *Lethal Weapon*. Films are a huge part of my life. And you gotta understand that. You have to understand me professionally just as much as you do emotionally, spiritually, and culturally.

Do you think in relationships you're selfish?

I definitely was. Not so much now. I learned the hard way. I've been in failed relationships and I've also—even in my most recent relationship, my desire to understand only went so far. And I've done some more work on myself, and ultimately it didn't work out, but I think I understand why and I definitely understand the role that I played in that.

If you spoke to your former partners, what would be the one common theme as to why they think the relationship didn't work?

I think my previous partners will say that I always operated with the best intentions but didn't listen enough. And listening is so important. Oh my god, especially if you've got a lot to say. And especially if you've done work and you know stuff—you think you know stuff. You can, and I certainly did in my 20s, fall into this belief that I knew enough and I didn't need to listen to you because you don't know as much as me. I mean, it's incredibly unhealthy and potentially quite toxic. So yeah, I think my biggest failure romantically has been to not listen.

Where are you? I think I've been very uncompromising and I'd say selfish. I think I'm definitely probably in relationships other than my ex, who's taught me a ton of really important lessons about myself and about patience and about just really realizing that... because I used to once upon a time when I was younger, I used to think it was all about finding someone that was perfect. I was in search of the female equivalent of me that was super career-oriented, had the same beliefs as me. But it was such a contradiction because I wanted them at my beck and call, but then also wanted them to be busy. And when you analyze what I was looking for, of course, it didn't exist.

So the question in my mind moved from "are they perfect" to "are they worth it?" And when it becomes "are they worth it," it's an immediate appreciation for their and your lack of imperfection, and also that there's going to be some really tough, difficult times where it doesn't make sense to you. They're worrying about something irrational, they're upset about something that would never have upset you, but you have to, as you said earlier, you have to listen. And you don't have to agree. And in fact, you don't have to tell them that you disagree. You just have to listen and hear them out. And that's a skill that I've honed more recently where even if I don't agree on everything, I listen and I will hear them out.

In your own view, what is your potential?

Unlimited. And I don't say that because I think I'm LeBron James, because I definitely can't dunk like LeBron. But I do think that anything that I've wanted to do—like really wanted to do—and that I've really worked for, I've achieved. And because that has happened, it can happen in any way, shape, or form. My mother believes—she’s quite a spiritual woman as most West African women are—she believes that everybody's born with a gift. My mother believed that my gift is to see and to communicate. And she always said that to me since I was a kid: "You can see and you can communicate."

The communication thing has sort of panned out—sharing ideas. And the "see" part of it is quite ambiguous in a lot of ways because what I've come to understand that to mean is that as a kid, I used to dream quite vivid things and they would all come to pass. To learning about self and doing some reading, going to some seminars, watching some stuff, you understand things about manifestation and all the rest of it. When things start to happen that you had in your head, it teaches you that you can do anything. I had an idea at a funeral, of all places. Two years later, it’s a movie that is coming out in cinemas. I genuinely think that anything that I put my heart to and my mind to, I can make happen. I can make real.

If that's your worldview, and you believe that and you've seen it and you've got evidence for it in your life—that when you think about something, when you see it, you can then create it—is it frustrating when you speak to close friends or other people who express their dreams to you that they don't have that too?

No, it's not frustrating. No, you can't be like that. I’m very specific about words. I hate saying the word "can't." I feel really strongly about this: you can't allow yourself to think that way because who they are is based on their journey. And they may beat that and get beyond that, but you can't be mad at someone for where they are on their own trajectory.

It's like, when I—because I have the same worldview where I've built those personal case studies in my life that I could go from being in Moss Side stealing Chicago Town pizzas to believing in and chasing that dream, failing along the way, whatever, but being able to create the life that I was aiming for. And so when I see friends who express their dreams to me, I deeply believe that whatever—we're not talking about going to Mars, right? We're talking about "I want to be a whatever" or "I want to try..." I know they can do it. Every part of me knows it's possible because I've seen behind the curtain. And they have what it takes. To be fair, when I started I had nothing. So I know that the self-belief alone, the foundation of being born in such a privileged country, is more than they need to go after that. And I just have this thing in me where I'm like, "Go!"

I hear you because I've definitely felt that before, especially when it comes to young people that want you to help them or that want you to mentor them. You take a chance on someone and you give them all the information, you give them the blueprint, you give them all the tools, and they still don't listen. Or they agree and they do the total opposite. It’s like practice for parenting, isn't it? People that you love or are invested in aren't necessarily always going to do what you think they should do.

And you can't be mad at them for it because it's their journey. That is something that I'm incredibly thankful for, that the people that I've had around me have allowed me to not listen and make mistakes or go in another direction. Like I had a huge, huge desire to be a musician for a long time. I was making music and I was offered a publishing deal and I was collaborating with everyone. I mean, I won't even say the names, but you know, I made an album and I had a deal on the table. And I was adamant that this was what I was going to do. I was going to be the first person that could host *Top of the Pops* and perform on it. Like, that was my thing, right?

And when my god rest his soul music lawyer at the time, Richard Antwi, sat me down and said, "Okay, you see that *Top of the Pops* that you're hosting, you see that Radio 1 show that you've got? You're going to have to leave all of that, bro, to do this. Because you're going to tour, you're going to be in studio, we're going to send you here, there, and everywhere. The label will want you to record and blah blah blah." And I was like, "I don't want to give all that up." And he was like, "All right, so are we going to sign this thing or not?" And I walked away from what would have been another career because ultimately it wasn't what I was supposed to do. I wasn't willing to give up the thing that I loved. But I needed to spend three or four years of wasting the time of people that were producers and singer-songwriters who'd come and collaborate with me, and people gave me studio time, record labels were offering me contracts—all of this investment into me for me to say, "Nah, I'm just going to go back and do what I was doing before I met all of you lot. Sorry," you know? I've done it. I can't be mad at someone else who's doing a similar thing. Because there is that point in your life where you have to figure out through mistakes or through trial and error what you're ultimately supposed to do.

Reggie, the work you've done with your documentaries, I just think is tremendous. I remember once upon a time listening to, I think it was Neil deGrasse Tyson say that the most important work we can do or the most important people in our society aren't the people we elect into power, it's the electorate that elect them. And so therefore the most important, powerful work one can do is educating the electorate.

What that really means for me is like, the way that people think about whether it's sexuality or regimes in other countries, whatever it might be, is the way they think dictates who they then elect into power which then impacts our laws and the society we live in. And that's the work you're doing. And I find that to be the most admirable, important work of it all. So thank you for doing that work. Thank you for being a role model. I mean, I've watched you as a young kid growing up in Plymouth for many a decade and, you know, you've been one of the faces that I could relate to on TV because you looked like me. And so I want to thank you for that as well, but also thank you for your time today because I think the conversation we've had has been very honest, diverse. You've shared things which you didn't have to share. And I know that comes from a very selfless desire to impart some value on people that might need it in various areas of their lives. So thank you.

That’s incredibly kind. Thank you for having me. It’s been a real pleasure. Thank you.