Boxing is a criminal enterprise,” declares Nicholas Pinnock’s character Kingsley Marshall in the first episode of Fightland. “Always has been, always will be.”
“I’ve never played a role like Kingsley before, and it was really appealing because he disappears,” says Pinnock, who’s chatting from his home in south London. “It was interesting to figure out how I could bring him to life – have him disappear but still have that presence. And the whole show is about Kingsley. He has control over everyone and everything in his kingdom.”
Kingsley is a rare villain role for Pinnock. He got his big break four decades ago as a child actor in the Rod Hull show Emu’s Wide World’s and has since starred in high-profile dramas including Top Boy, Fortitude, Marcella and Two Weeks in August.
“The duality in boxing and life are similar,” says Pinnock, who’s a lifelong fight fan. “Day-to-day, we’re all fighting for something. Some people are fighting for their lives, to keep their jobs, for their families… to stay healthy.” It resonates so much with Pinnock that, in 2005, he wrote a poem about it. “It charted my mental health journey and how I saw things through the analogies of boxing.” One year after writing that poem, he had a nervous breakdown.
“I had another breakdown in 2023,” he reveals. “And I was almost going to have another one in 2024. I ended up in a facility in Nashville for originally four weeks, but stayed for six weeks. It not only changed my life, it saved my life.
“I’m telling you this, because prior to that stay in the residential facility for trauma, and without extensive therapy that I have here with my therapist, along with the guidance from my psychiatrist, I wouldn’t have been able to play Kingsley. I don’t think I had the emotional, mental and psychological capacity to hold who he was in my body.”
He’s similarly candid when I ask how meaningful it is that Fightland has a majority-Black cast. “I don’t get bogged down with things like that. Genuinely. I’m a bit of an outlier. I don’t let my colour and my culture get in the way of how much I want to do a project.”
Equally, “There are some roles that need to stay as they are. If Mr T [star of The A-Team] were to change into someone of European descent tomorrow, there would be absolute outrage. And I can understand why, because he’s an iconic figure.”
“What I would like is for the industry to put the same amount of money, care and attention into another character that doesn’t look like James Bond. If they put posters up tomorrow saying ‘008’ in the same font, everybody would be at the cinema, they wouldn’t question it and they would love it. And it could be me. It could be Idris Elba, it could be Dev Patel. It could be anybody of non-European descent and it would be amazing.”
“That was a great entry into the entertainment industry. I’ll forever be grateful to Rod Hull and that puppet on his arm [for giving me] a chance to understand what it was about. I don’t think I would be here still if it wasn’t for shows like that and those opportunities.”
Building an empire
“I watch the dailies,” he tells RT, regularly going through the raw footage captured on a day’s shoot. “I was already thinking of how to create a UK version of Power. I was talking to Idris [Elba] about it. But when I got the concept for Fightland, I was like ‘I’ve got to do it.’”
The eight-parter sees Top Boy’s Howard Charles take the lead as boxer Duke. On the night he becomes world heavyweight champion, his brother is killed, but Duke’s reaction costs him eight years in a US prison. When he’s released, he’s set on getting revenge against his former promoter and criminal kingpin Kingsley Marshall (played by Nicholas Pinnock).
“I embrace those comparisons because Fightland is better than Power,” he says. “What’s interesting about how this is written is that it feels like a feature film.”
“London is one of my favourite places outside of New York,” he says. “I think it’s a character in the show.”
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