David Harewood: The Chilling Story Of How A Hollywood Star Lost His Mind | E185

David Harewood tells Steven Bartlett about growing up as one of the only black families on his Birmingham street amid relentless 1960s-70s racism, and how that othering destabilised his sense of identity. After drama school, ferocious race-focused press hostility, drinking and sleeplessness led him to spiral into psychosis and be sectioned at 23, hearing a voice he believed was Martin Luther King. Years later, a 2017 tweet and his BBC documentary forced a public reckoning, and reading his own medical records revealed how his crisis centred on race and identity. He reflects on his father's earlier sectioning, the over-representation of black men in the mental-health system, and being given triple the legal dose of tranquilisers. Now back in the UK building a production company, he frames trauma as something that 'had to come down' so he could rebuild himself.

• Harewood heard a voice claiming to be Martin Luther King telling him to sacrifice himself that night and become an angel, the night he was sectioned.
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• The first line he read in his recovered medical records was 'patient believes he has merged hearts with a young black boy.'
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• As a teen he found his father's typewriter with the single word 'illness' typed before his father was sectioned.
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• He was sectioned for about five days initially, then again in Birmingham for another five days.
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• His consultant told him he was given three times the legal dose of tranquilizers, which he was later told is standard practice with large black men.
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• He says if the voice had told him to jump off a Thames bridge that night he would have done it.
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• A single 2017 World Mental Health Day tweet got 50,000 retweets and launched his book, documentary and public mental-health work.
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• As a child he was told 'you're not black, you're normal,' reflecting a generation pressured to assimilate.
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• A Jamaican psychologist's study found far less psychosis among black communities in Africa than in Western cultures like England and America.
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• Harewood frames being a black professional as 'tall poppy syndrome' in a predominantly white space.
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• He cites labeling theory and the famous prison study to explain how being told you are something can make you become it.
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• He references Jay-Z and a 'gold, silver, bronze' framework of blackness from the book How to Be Black.
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• A black reviewer publicly urged people to demonstrate against Harewood taking the role of Mr Sloane.
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• During mania he walked up to a stranger's Doberman and screamed its name, and the dog cowered and whelped on the floor.
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• Since returning to the UK he has not been offered a single leading dramatic role, doing mostly documentaries instead.
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