His mother warned him not to overstretch; his partner tells him to be more choosy. But Lenny Henry (actor, comedian, campaigner, author, hobbit) just can’t help himself
Lenny Henry’s mum used to say to him: our lives are like gardens. Be careful what you plant in them because everything needs tending. “And I don’t think I’ve planted my own garden very judiciously,” Henry says when we meet for lunch on a mild September afternoon. It is three weeks to the day since he published a volume of his memoirs, Rising to the Surface. In another three, his children’s novel, The Book of Legends, will appear in bookshops. Overnight, episodes of the new The Lord of the Rings TV show, The Rings of Power, will appear online; Henry has a small role as a hobbit. At home in Oxfordshire he keeps a copy of The Sopranos scripts on his bedside table, to help him sharpen his showrunning work on an imminent ITV drama about the Windrush generation. GQ magazine recently suggested that Henry was undergoing a renaissance (a “Lenaissance”, they said) but honestly, all through his long career, Henry has flitted and filled his days like this, gigging, writing, acting, campaigning, broadcasting, studying.
“My partner Lisa [Makin, a theatre producer] thinks I’ve got to figure out a way to be more choosy,” says Henry, who recently turned 64. “She thinks I should do less. Reap more. I just don’t like ruling anything out. I run around my metaphorical garden saying, ‘Look at that big weed! No need to dead-head anything here!’”
