Lennie James doesn’t want people to "ignore" his race.
The black actor – who created and stars in Sky Atlantic drama ‘Save Me’ – insisted a character or actors’ race is "always relevant", but he explained that doesn’t mean it has to be a focus.
Speaking to Radio Times magazine, he said: "I hate the term ‘colour-blind casting’ because I don’t know what it means.
"I don’t want anyone to ignore my race. It doesn’t have to be the major topic of conversation. But to ignore something about someone just seems a little odd.
"Would you ignore that someone was from Liverpool or France? … It’s part of what they are."
Lennie – who plays Nelson ‘Nelly’ Rowe in the series – is excited for the upcoming second season ‘Save Me Too’, even if his writing style has had to change since the first launched in 2018.
The 54-year-old star planned on the original run being aired weekly with cliffhangers, but with all six episodes dropping in a box set it meant people binge watched the entire story.
He added: "I’m based in Los Angeles, so there was an eight-hour time difference. And, by the time I woke up in LA on the day of release of ‘Save Me’, close to 100,000 people had already watched the whole series from beginning to end.
"Which was ridiculous. So, this time around, I thought of it more as a six-hour story."
He previously admitted while he was delighted with the positive reaction to the programme, he was "quite happy" to be in the US when the show aired in the UK, because he would’ve felt "overwhelmed" by the response.
He said: "I was quite happy with the distance that I had from the reaction to it, being out here in America because otherwise it might feel like there was an undue pressure on me to write the second series.
"But I’ve been able to get a sense of how people have felt about it and reacted to it without being completely overwhelmed by it."
Lennie James doesn’t want race to be ignored
