This City Is Ours star James Nelson-Joyce: ‘I thought kids like me don’t act’

When James Nelson-Joyce was in his first year of drama school, he was told that he’d better lose his accent because he wouldn’t work much as a scouser. It’s safe to say that he’s since proved that assertion completely wrong by, well, working a lot as a scouser (and giving some indelible performances in the process).

In a truly unsettling turn in Jimmy McGovern’s 2021 drama Time, he played Johnno, the prison bully who tormented Sean Bean’s character Mark Cobden; he was responsible for one of the show’s most talked-about (read: harrowing) scenes, involving a bag of sugar, a kettle filled with boiling water and another inmate’s face. He’s also appeared in the Liverpool-set thriller The Responder, cropped up in Industry and played the bad guy in Stephen Merchant’s comedy The Outlaws. Later this year, he’ll star in the new season of Black Mirror.

Few of these parts have been particularly breezy, to say the least; most are firmly situated on the wrong ’un end of the character spectrum. And Nelson-Joyce is so convincing in those roles that I’m half expecting some spiky version of one of them to come through the doors of the coffee shop where we meet, just around the corner from Liverpool’s main shopping street. Off screen, though, he couldn’t seem further from that persona. “You know what, everyone comes up to me and says, ‘you were horrible in that’ or, ‘I was scared to come over’,” he laughs, shaking his head.

The 35-year-old grew up in Walton, in the north of the city, and has recently arrived back after a stint in London promoting A Thousand Blows, the brutal, propulsive drama about East End bare knuckle boxers, written by Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight. It was his first proper period piece (and required some proper period sideburns). Stepping onto the hyper-realistic Victorian set made him feel “like a kid in a candy shop, [thinking] ‘I’m not supposed to be doing this!’”.

In the show, Nelson-Joyce plays Treacle, younger brother to ageing prize fighter Henry “Sugar” Goodson, played by his offscreen friend and mentor Stephen Graham (he does a pretty good rendition of the actor, who’s from nearby Kirkby, phoning him up to give him a quick rundown of the role). For this one, both Liverpudlians played cockneys – and faced off in some truly wrenching scenes, emotionally and physically. “We trust each other, and that brotherly chemistry was there for free,” says Nelson-Joyce. “Me and Stephen are both open books. But men in that age were very stoic, they didn’t really talk about problems or issues. They still don’t now, do they, really?”

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His next big project sees him back on home turf, taking the lead role in the BBC’s sweeping new crime drama This City Is Ours alongside his Time co-star Bean (“working with Sean, honestly, it’s a doddle”). Nelson-Joyce plays Michael, a drug dealer and protégé of organised crime boss Ronnie (Bean). The two have a twisted father-son dynamic, the older man a sort of “surrogate father” to the younger, despite his having “kind of groomed Michael” into a life of crime. As the series opens, Bean’s character is looking to retire to his sprawling house on the Wirral, on the other side of the Mersey, and to hand over the business to Michael.

But Ronnie’s real son, Jamie (Jack McMullen), isn’t happy with this succession plan, and the power struggle that ensues is a brutal one. And in counterpoint to all those machinations, we also see Michael trying to start a family with his girlfriend Diana (Hannah Onslow), with the couple going through fertility treatment. Nelson-Joyce is one of those actors who can slip from vulnerability to violence, and vice versa, with disconcerting speed; it’s a role that certainly makes good use of that knack.

The story held his attention from the off. “I’m dyslexic, so when it comes to me getting scripts in, I usually have to read 10, 15 pages, put it down and come back to it, just because I lose concentration,” Nelson-Joyce says. “I don’t know if that’s a bit of ADHD as well. But I genuinely read all three episodes [sent over] in the space of three and a half hours, four hours. It [was] a page-turner, and I remember thinking to myself, ‘I’m not letting anyone else play this character’.” Although, he admits, a touch of imposter syndrome still crept in, with a voice in his head telling him: “They’re gonna want someone really famous for this” or “I haven’t got that profile that a lot of actors have”.

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His first scene on location in Liverpool was filmed round the corner from his old flat; another was near his school, and “when we were doing stuff on the street, I’d have mates walking past, or family members. It was a bit weird, but I loved it”. It’s a telegenic place – not for nothing is Liverpool the second most-filmed city in the UK, outside of London – but it looks especially good in this series. “I just want to show the city off as much as I can,” he says, “and, whenever I can, to use my accent in a project”.

He sees Michael as someone who, “if he was given the opportunities”, would thrive on a more legitimate path. “I think that’s the case for a lot of people. We all need an opportunity. And I’m fortunate that I got mine.” Growing up, Nelson-Joyce describes himself as “not the cleverest kid in school”, a “bit of a class clown”. He “wanted to be a footballer, wasn’t good enough” (he’s a Liverpool fan; when his phone rings, it does so to the strains of Gerry and the Pacemakers) but he used to “put accents on” while reading in his English class, to get his teacher’s attention.

She put him forward to do a speaking and listening exam and suggested that he pursue acting. “And I thought, ‘kids like me don’t act.’” When he went to college – “God, I was at that college for five years… I was a nuisance!” – he started watching the work of local actors like Graham and Pete Postlethwaite and realised: “People from my walk of life do this.” His parents, he says, were “made up” when he decided to take acting seriously and try out for drama school. “As long as I wasn’t up to no good… It was never like, ‘you can’t do that, you’ve got to get a proper job’. And anyone who knows me knows you can’t say that to me anyway, because I’m stubborn.”

But if it wasn’t for a chance meeting with Graham more than a decade ago, Nelson-Joyce says, “I don’t know where I’d be”. They crossed paths not in a rehearsal room or on a set, but in a London branch of Nando’s. Nelson-Joyce was fresh out of drama school and had “just come out of an audition” – and when he saw Graham, “the reason why I got into acting”, having dinner with his wife (fellow actor Hannah Walters), he ‘thought, ‘you know what, f*** it, I’ll go over and say hello’”.

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He ended up chatting to them about his ambitions (and taking a selfie), before leaving the couple to their peri-peri. Later, “Hannah comes over and she says, ‘There’s something about you. Here’s my email. If you’re ever in anything, or you’re ever on the telly, just send me an email and we’ll watch it.’” But when he ended up getting “bit parts” in Casualty and Shameless, he was “too embarrassed” to take Walters up on that: “Oh I’m on telly tonight, with my two lines,” he jokes, imagining his email.

A few years passed, and Nelson-Joyce was cast as a gang member in Little Boy Blue, the drama based on the murder of Rhys Jones, the 11-year-old boy caught in the crossfire while walking home from football practice in Liverpool in 2007. Graham had signed up to play the police officer tasked with bringing the killer to justice. The weight of this real-life story inevitably hung over the cast, so Nelson-Joyce was glad to see a familiar face at the first table read. “I just felt these eyes burning in my head, and I look up and it’s Stephen. And he just goes, ‘are you that lad from Nando’s? Boss that, lad!’” Graham was impressed with how Nelson-Joyce handled the role and recommended him to his agent.

He doesn’t hold back when it comes to praising the support that the older actor has provided since. “He’s put me in front of so many doors and helped me open them. OK, I’ve had to work, and I’ve worked hard, but [Graham] is a bit of a saving grace for working-class actors.” He cites the recent statistic that only eight per cent of people in television and film are from a working-class background. “It’s not good enough. And then you’ve got drama schools charging an arm and a leg even to audition. It’s just harder. I think Stephen and Hannah realise that they have a platform and they can create opportunities.”

He tries to follow their example now when he works with younger actors (“I sound like a w***** saying this,” he caveats) because “I know how important it is to get that opportunity, even if it’s just to ask for advice: to say, how do I get into this industry? What do I wear to an audition?” He recalls how, before an audition for Shameless, he was told by a teacher to “go wearing smart clothes – for Shameless!” he says, eyebrows raised. When he arrived, he ended up talking to the casting director about Shakespeare, “saying all the right things. And he let me waffle along for a couple of minutes, then he goes, ‘you’re lying! Just make yourself at home.’”

It taught him, he says, that he didn’t actually have to pretend to be some idealised version of a drama student in order to succeed. “That’s the thing. There's only ever one of you. There’s such pressure to be like, ‘I have to be an actor’. It’s all b*****ks. Be yourself.”

‘This City Is Ours’ is on BBC iPlayer and BBC One from tonight (23 March)