Josette Simon breaks down her trailblazing roles – and explains why we need to stop saying "colourblind casting"

When asked if she can remember seeing herself represented on screen as a youngster, Josette Simon's answer is an immediate and certain "No".

Since then, however, she has gone on to become the person she never had growing up, paving the way for younger actresses across stage and screen. But it certainly hasn't been easy.

When she was at drama school, Simon was told by her principal, in no uncertain terms, that she had no chance of joining the Royal Shakespeare Company. Since then, she has appeared in no less than 50 RSC productions.

On screen, meanwhile, her breakout role was Dayna Mellanby in Blake's 7, a groundbreaking woman in the world of sci-fi.

But she's also brought to life characters including Chief Superintendent Clark in Broadchurch, Mnemosyne in Wonder Woman, Lydia in Steve McQueen's Small Axe, Eithné in The Witcher, Angela Regan in Anatomy of a Scandal, and Talitha in Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy – among many more.

"For me, at school, then at drama school, then when I went into the profession, there was never anybody who looked like me that I looked up to," Simon recalls.

"I had to rely on myself a lot. I kind of had to be my own mentor. There were so many obstacles. There were so many people saying 'You can't do this,' and 'You won't do this,' and 'You're not allowed to,' and all the rest of it."

But that doesn't mean that there weren't people she was inspired by. Speaking to Radio Times to celebrate International Women's Day, Simon lists an array of incredible women who have inspired her, from Dame Judi Dench to Glenda Jackson, to Dame Helen Mirren, who Simon says "took me under her wing" when they starred together in the 1982 RSC production of Antony and Cleopatra.

And, in spite of her drama school principal's shocking warning, Simon has become synonymous with the RSC, something she admits she never could have anticipated.

"I come from a working class family in Leicester, parents who came over on the Windrush. I never in a million years thought I'd be spouting eulogies about Shakespeare," she explains.

"But Shakespeare is the greatest writer ever, because he covers every condition, every sex. He's the most incredible writer about women. This is a man in Elizabethan England – but there is no part of the human condition, gender, female peculiarities, sensibilities, details, minutiae that he hasn't covered."

Simon has also become inextricably linked with Shakespeare after she became the first leading actress who is Black in the RSC, playing Rosaline in Love's Labour's Lost in 1984, followed by Isabella in Measure for Measure, Titania/Hippolyta in A Midsummer Night's Dream and Cleopatra in Antony and Cleopatra.

But how do you begin to approach a role that so many have taken on before you?

"I had to learn about that right from the very beginning," Simon explains, "certainly with the RSC, because from the very first leading role that you get, any number of people will say, 'Oh, I saw Judi Dench, Vanessa Redgrave, Maggie Smith, they were absolutely brilliant.'

"Not only did I have that with my first leading roles, but I also had the spotlight that said, 'Actors who are Black can't really do Shakespeare, and you are the first one under the microscope,' so as a young actress, you had all that pressure, because if it had not gone well...

"What I learned to do was to, first of all, ignore it, and secondly, I treat everything as if it's the very first time it's ever been done. It's the very first time anyone has ever seen it. It's the very first time I've ever known about it."

Some of Simon's RSC roles are considered an early example of "colourblind casting", the casting of a role without consideration of an actor's skin colour. For her, however, it's a problematic term.

"I absolutely hate the term 'colourblind casting'," she says.

"I hate the term 'Black actor'. I'm an actor, we're actors, and we happen to be Black, which I love and very proud of and all the rest of it. But the thing about 'Black actor' is that people put more of the emphasis on the first word than they do on the second. I say 'actors who are Black'.

"Because you don't say 'white actor', you just say actor. And when you say 'Black actor', you're still doing the othering thing. It's still putting you in a camp, it's still putting you in a box."

While Simon is conscious that the coining of the term was meant as a positive, in order to make casting more inclusive, she adds: "No one's pretending you're not Black. I'm not blind to the fact that I'm Black or you're white. You are just a human being.

"The thing that I have fought for my entire career, from beginning, was to play a human being going through all the dilemmas and distresses and journeys and experiences and life stuff and relationships and love and loss, as a human being like everybody else, not like a Black human being."

With this approach, Simon has taken on some incredible roles – and has also played a big part in being the representation on screen for others that she never had as a child.

When Radio Times spoke to Murderbot actress Noma Dumezweni last year, she told us: "The first time, when I was young, that I saw a possibility of myself being an actor was actually Josette Simon in Blake's 7.

"A dark-skinned, Black woman with short hair. And here I am sitting in front of you because of that woman in Blake's 7, a sci-fi in the future. There's a possibility of different worlds. And she made me see myself as possible."

Simon was still in drama school when she was cast as Dayna for seasons 3 and 4 of Blake's 7. Looking back now, she says: "I loved that character. I loved being in it.

"I'm so grateful for it launching my TV career and learning so much about TV at a very early age, with a bunch of people who were just lovely and fun to be around and to learn from."

She adds of Dayna: "She was this wonderful weapons expert, this wonderful character, but she was just a person. She wasn't Black Dayna. She was just a person. People have told me that that had never happened on TV before, a role that was just defined as as a person not having to fit into some Black box."

While Sally Knyvette, who played Jenna Stannis in seasons 1 and 2 of Blake's 7, has criticised how women were written on the show, Simon takes a different view.

"I haven't sat and dissected it as much as you might do later, but look – this girl was a weapons expert. She was really cool! She had the suits that she kind of dashed around in, she was involved in fights, and she held her own. I don't think I ever thought of her as a stereotypical sort of female. She was not simpering. She gave as good as she got."

Most recently, it's been confirmed that Peter Hoar is working on a reboot of Blake's 7. When asked if she's seen the news, Simon can't help but laugh.

"The world and his wife made me aware!" she giggles. "I think it's great. It'll be very intriguing to see how it turns out. They'll certainly have a bigger budget than we had!"

Speculating what it could look like, she jokes: "Maybe it should be done with the same budget, with a shaky set and things stuck together with Blu Tack!"

"I've got a horrible confession to make," she goes on to say. "I don't really like science fiction. I did that part because it was a great part for me. It was an incredible opportunity, but I didn't do it because I love science fiction.

"Everything for me is about the character, the story, those things have to be really, really good – but the criteria is not science fiction. People say, 'Why haven't you gone and done more science fiction?'"

So, if not more sci-fi, what is next?

"I want to do things that are difficult, challenging, stimulating, brilliant, fabulously written. It's more about that criteria rather than one role."

And, as we look to the future of female representation, Simon is feeling positive – and points out how it's women off-screen who are taking charge of how women on-screen are portrayed.

"I think we’ve come a lot further along the path, where we see females as protagonists, much more, rather than women just being a cipher to a male hero," she reflects.

"It’s interesting though, that a lot of such projects are driven by more females heading their own production companies and making this happen. Otherwise, it would be less visible in the mainstream."

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