Josh Tedeku on The Craft, The Calling and The Habit of Going Again

Tucked into a corner of the Lyric Hammersmith café, Josh Tedeku, currently playing Cory in Daniel Bailey's production of Fences, is scrolling through the Spotify playlist he put together to ease himself into his character. Having just posted a story on how neatly "Father Time" by Kendrick Lamar, featuring Sampha, distils the message of the play, he skips to the very end of the song, pausing to recite its closing lines, "They can't stop us if we see the mistakes, till then lets give the women a break, grown men with daddy issues", lines he says sum up Cory in the final scene of Fences. What becomes clear very quickly is that this is an actor who has fallen for the process of slipping into whoever he plays, a process he calls "human nature". He has a real affinity for it, and listening to him put it into words is quietly compelling. Even the way he likes to be directed gives him away: he can't stand being told a take was good. "Of course," he shrugs. "Let's go again. What do we need to do?"

He spoke to us about faith, family and the fight it took to get here.

Born in Birmingham to a pastor whose church moves its ministers on every four years, Tedeku describes himself as "a nomad", his childhood a trail through south London, Enfield (where his heart, and his Arsenal allegiance, still lie), Manchester and finally Harlow in Essex, where he stayed from Year 8 to the end of sixth form. His path to acting was met with resistance from his parents, which he sees as the root of the resilience he now brings to every setback in his career. It began innocently enough: in Year 3 he came home and mentioned that he liked science, and "from that day forward, they wouldn't let it go". His father held out until Year 13, when, at a parents' evening, he asked Josh's drama teacher outright whether his son was good enough. She said yes, and he paid for the drama school auditions himself. "Something my parents instilled in me unintentionally was resilience, because I had to fight against them to be here as an actor, so that kind of fire and resilience came from that battle first," he says. "So I appreciate that actually. A lot of people would be like, I wish my parents would support me. I'm very grateful that they didn't.”

His parents are now among his biggest supporters, his mum, somewhat ironically, insisting that she "prayed for this to happen". They have pushed him to always strive to be the best, while his three older brothers, all directors under the Tedeku production banner, taught him what it means to know his worth. When their lockdown football videos took off and brands came offering what Josh calls a "baby fee", the brothers turned it down and held out for what they knew they deserved. "As a young boy I was like, wait, that's money," he laughs. "That was a huge lesson." A family affair, then, and one that has shaped the self-possessed young man across the table, whom most people take to be several years older than 23.

"From a young age I just had a mindset of knowing that I had to be different from the people before me to get to where I want to be, and to change things within myself, within my family and whoever comes after me."

That mindset runs through everything he says. The ambition was settled early. A girl in his class at school in Harlow had already appeared alongside Liam Neeson in A Monster Calls, and if she could make it, he decided, he had no excuse. "You could have asked anyone. I told people from then I'm gonna make it." He has little time for the language of manifesting. What he believes in is closer to overconfidence, the kind Nicolas Anelka described as a teenager at Clairefontaine, refusing to walk onto the pitch thinking anyone there was better than him. "It's less of a speak it out and it comes back to you," he says. "It's a fact of: are you ready to die about this or not?" Add to that what he calls "a constant need to seek betterment", and the maturity starts to make sense.

At 23, Tedeku has become something of a proof of concept for the next generation of young black British actors. When the Black Boys Theatre Club, founded by Munya Chawawa, came to watch the production, he reflected on the part he feels he's playing in the industry, and on what he would tell a young black boy whose parents aren't yet on board: "Never waver and just show them. Show them how much you want this thing, how passionate you are about this thing and how willing you are to get better." It is, he admits, a very Cory way of going about it, working behind his parents' backs (watching the performances he needed to study when he was meant to be revising) to prove the thing was real. "Is it a risk? 100%. Would your parents flip out? Maybe. But for me, it was worth it." His message to the parents on the other side of that argument is a gentler one: be a little more patient with your children.

Though only at the start of his career, Tedeku has already made a quiet but unmistakable mark. Recommended by his friend Muhannad Ben Amor (Andor) to his own agent, who took a chance on a self-tape filmed vertically on his Snapchat camera, he booked Moonhaven from his first two auditions and hasn't stopped working since. He has played Eddie Carter in Sky's A Town Called Malice, a troubled teenager drawn into his family's web of hidden pasts and criminal connections; Jaheim in the BBC's Boarders; and Tazer in Netflix's Supacell, where the school uniform and head boy badge give way to the red bandana of the Tower Boys and a quietly menacing presence. On paper, it all looks meticulously planned. He, however, places the credit elsewhere: with God, and with an agent willing to take a chance on him.

It's fitting that this conversation began with a playlist. It's a small detail, but it says more about Tedeku than any list of credits could. With a Sky drama, a BBC comedy and a Netflix series already behind him, he could easily spend an interview talking about premieres and press days. Instead, what he wants to talk about is the work: the table work where the cast swapped songs that spoke to the play, the Matt Smith episodes he learned from as a boy, the performances he studied when he was meant to be revising, and his habit of meeting a good take not with praise but with "let's go again". This is an actor whose passion lives in the rehearsal room rather than on the red carpet, and who, three screen hits in, still treats every role as a chance to get better. Ask him about any of it and he will happily talk until the café closes.

Fences is at the Lyric Hammersmith until Saturday 31 October.