On 11 April, Bukky Bakray won the Leading Actress and EE Rising Star awards at the 2021 Baftas. We spoke to the Rocks star in the week leading up to the show.
Before she was an actor, which was not very long ago at all, Bukky Bakray used to like to watch people from the bus. “I was able to stare at people from the window without them knowing,” says the 19-year-old from East London, who has been nominated in both the Leading Actress and Rising Star categories at this year’s EE Bafta Awards for her stand-out performance in the 2019 indie drama Rocks. “When you look at people’s faces, there’s just so many stories. I guess that kind of watchfulness and mindfulness is being extended in my work,” she says, before erupting in laughter. “I need to stop staring because people think I’m crazy!”
What makes Bakray’s nominations all the more astonishing is the speed of her journey (no bus analogy intended). Bakray was at secondary school – she still is, in fact, doing her A-levels this year (or rather she would have been, had the pandemic not put paid to them) – with no professional experience in acting, when director Sarah Gavron and casting director Lucy Pardee came to her classroom. They had been scouring Hackney schools and youth clubs for acting talent and picked Bakray from 1300 or so other students to play Olushola, nicknamed “Rocks”, an introverted teenager who finds herself alone and in charge of her kid brother when her mother disappears. The film, which was workshopped heavily with its young cast, is a hugely original and moving portrayal of young female friendship, anchored by Bakray’s subtle, affecting performance; “With all the makings of a star, Bakray manages to outshine her marvellous screen mates,” is how the Los Angeles Times gushingly put it.
It might not be a surprise to those who’ve seen Rocks that she has received such plaudits, but Bakray herself took some convincing. “The first time I watched it, I didn’t think it was a good film,” she says. “I didn’t watch it properly; I was watching everyone else watching it, to make sure they liked it. I felt like I underperformed everyone; I felt kind of disappointed. But after watching it again, I think at the London Film Festival, I could kind of disassociate myself and remember I’m watching a character. I looked at Koser [Ali, her co-star and now close friend] and I was like, “We actually made a good film, you know.” And she was like, “YES!”
If there is one scene in the film that encapsulates both Bakray’s approach and her talent, it is the film’s climax: an emotionally charged interaction between Rocks, her younger brother Emmanuel (D’angelo Osei Kissiedu) and some intervening social workers. Rocks is distraught, her world risks being torn apart, but Bakray remembers that in the first few takes she couldn’t deliver. “I wasn’t getting it. I grew up with a lot of boys in my house [she has three older brothers], and I’ve always been taught to suppress feelings, and now I’m jumping into the acting world and there you have to be emotional every day. The stakes are always so high, whether you’re walking across the street or in a hospital bed. As I said to Sarah, crying to me felt like being naked.”
After reducing the number of people on set, and giving Bakray time to listen to some music, the film-makers asked her if she would like to try tear stick, the menthol and camphor under-eye rub that actors sometimes use to make them cry. “I said, ‘What?!’ I didn’t know that was a thing! And that felt like such a cop-out to me. I think there’s nothing wrong with actors using tear stick, and I might decide to use it at some point in the future, but for me it just felt like… buying ready-made cake. That’s what it felt like. [The emotion] was difficult to tap into, but I felt like if I could do everything now, it would make way for me being able to do it later, but even better.”
When we speak, Bakray is in Birmingham where, as well as revising for imminent sixth form exams, she’s filming You Don’t Know Me, a four-part series for Netflix. It stars Samuel Adewunmi (The Last Tree) as Hero, a young man defending himself against a murder charge and seemingly insurmountable evidence; Bakray plays Hero’s sister, Bless. Working in television has been another learning curve – “so many ears! So many eyes! So many mouths!” – and she says that though she’s enjoying the work, it has reconfirmed her love for film: “The nature of TV is there’s just so much going on at the same time. I feel like with film, with Rocks especially, we just had so much time to talk about things.”
![london, england october 11 bukky bakray attends the rocks uk premiere during the 63rd bfi london film festival at the odeon luxe leicester square on october 11, 2019 in london, england photo by tristan fewingsgetty images for bfi](https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod/images/gettyimages-1180463362.jpg?resize=980:* ""Rocks" UK Premiere - 63rd BFI London Film Festival")
As far as the future goes, she hasn’t ruled out drama school (she recently spent time training with Rada Youth), but says she wants to “utilise the time I have now, while my name is still in people’s ears”. Her favourite actor at the moment is LaKeith Stanfield (“he would give the most stand-out performance of the Joker ever”), and she recently “dived into Barry Jenkins”, watching Moonlight and If Beale Street Could Talk, but also the director’s old shorts from film school. “Watching Moonlight I felt physically elevated and lifted and warm. I don’t know many people who have been able to make you breathe in a film. And he’s always been that amazing film-maker.” So he’s someone she’d like to work with? “A thousand per cent! I would feel blessed just to be in conversation with Barry Jenkins.”
First, though, the Baftas, which she will make a brief sojourn from Birmingham back to London to attend, virtually, with a friend; she says she‘ll have a “glam squad, which is kind of cool,” and that they might “pop a bottle or have some food”. Rocks is nominated for several of the big awards, including Director for Sarah Gavron and Supporting Actress for Kosar Ali, but whatever the outcome, she and her Rocks “family” plan to meet up for dinner, restrictions permitting: “It’s due. My body’s been missing their energy as people.” Her main aim on the night, though, is just to soak up the experience. “These things are a rarity. It doesn’t always happen. So I’ve got to carpe diem. Seize the moment. Be present.”
All in all, it’s been quite a time for Bukky Bakray. “I just never thought it would be me,” she says, of the accolades that have come – and may yet come – her way. “I’m so happy to be behind the scenes. I’m so happy with not being written in history. But this has changed things. Made me feel like more of a person. And it’s not necessarily because of the acclaim: it’s how I’ve changed as a person in the process. And it’s why I love Rocks. Rocks is the love of my life, because it gave me so much confidence. It made me feel like an indispensable human being.”
The EE Rising Star 2021 Award is announced on 11 April. Vote here for the winner.
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Miranda Collinge is the Deputy Editor of Esquire, overseeing editorial commissioning for the brand. With a background in arts and entertainment journalism, she also writes widely herself, on topics ranging from Instagram fish to psychedelic supper clubs, and has written numerous cover profiles for the magazine including Cillian Murphy, Rami Malek and Tom Hardy.
