Sarah Solemani: ‘Fascists aren’t just monstrous robots. Understanding this might help us’

The actor and writer on her new series about the British anti-fascist movement, arguing with Steve Coogan about #MeToo and learning to surf

Writer and actor Sarah Solemani, 39, was born in Camden, north London, to an Iranian father and Northern Irish mother. She studied politics at Cambridge, where she became vice-president of the Footlights. Her first major TV role was alongside Russell Tovey in the BBC Three sitcom Him and Her. Subsequent credits include Bad Education and No Offence, and the films Bridget Jones’s Baby and How To Build a Girl. Solemani is writer and executive producer of Ridley Road, a new BBC drama adapted from Jo Bloom’s novel. She lives in LA with her husband and two children.

Ridley Road is about the 62 Group, an anti-fascist resistance movement in London’s East End in the 1960s. How did you become interested by their story?
I used to live near Ridley Road, so when Jo Bloom’s novel came out in 2014, I pounced on it. It’s insane how little I knew about the area’s history – how close the far right got to power and how organised the anti-fascist movement became to fight it off.

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from The Guardian https://ift.tt/3F7x7Lb

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