The east Londoner won a Bafta for her performance as the teenage lead in Sarah Gavron’s hit 2019 film. Now, on the eve of three new stage and screen projects, she talks about her whirlwind four years
At 15, Bukky Bakray was in drama class at school in east London, working her way through lines she can no longer remember, when she spotted two unfamiliar figures at the back of the room. “We all thought they were Ofsted inspectors,” she says. “We just ignored them and carried on.”
It turns out they were director Sarah Gavron and casting director Lucy Pardee, who were dropping into schools across London to find young actors for Gavron’s new film, following her star-studded 2015 historical drama Suffragette. Bakray’s presence stood out among the hundreds of students they went on to observe and she was cast in her debut role, as the lead in what would become 2019’s Rocks.
