Bayo Gbadamosi
Bayo Gbadamosi played Vincey in the Doctor Who television story Empress of Mars. Vincey is a member of the British Army in 1881.
Mark Gatiss' objections[[edit] | [edit source]]
Writer Mark Gatiss protested against Gbadamosi's casting, as he believed that "there weren't any black soldiers in Victoria's army". He put historical accuracy over ethnic representation, and "mak[ing] everything less homogeneously white", as he put the BBC's general mission. He claimed an email he wrote to a colleague on the matter was "very difficult". Gatiss eventually backed down when he discovered, on doing some research, that there was one African soldier in the army at the time: Jimmy Durham.
"I got kind of obsessed with this great story," Gatiss recounted. "This boy, when he was 18 years old, was rescued [from the Nile] by the Durham Light Infantry. And they made him their mascot - they called him Jimmy Durham. And he became what was called a listed officer, by special dispensation of Queen Victoria. He retired to the North East, married a white girl, and his descendants still live there. It's an amazing story."[1]
External links[[edit] | [edit source]]
- Bayo Gbadamosi at the Internet Movie Database
- Bayo Gbadamosi at Curtis Brown
- Official Twitter account
Footnotes[[edit] | [edit source]]
- ↑ Camilla Turner, Tony Diver (11 June 2017). Exclusive: Doctor Who writer protested against 'problematic' casting of black actor as Victorian soldier. The Telegraph. Retrieved on 13 June 2017.
