The Lazarus Project star Paapa Essiedu on his ‘rambunctious opposition’ to typecasting – even when it’s to his detriment
Paapa Essiedu, star of The Lazarus Project, says he’s taken a proactive approach to avoiding typecasting, even if it means turning down great roles in the process.
The 33-year-old actor has a complex part to portray playing George, a rule-breaking secret agent who needs to be both the everyman and action hero of the high concept show – as well as being able to get his head around time travel.
Caroline Quentin as project leader Wes. Pic: The Lazarus Project/Sky Max
The second series of the BAFTA-winning sci-fi picks up with the world stuck in a time loop in which the world ends every three weeks.
Essiedu’s co-star, Caroline Quentin, who plays Elisabeth ‘Wes’ Wesley, the leader of The Lazarus Project admits: “I struggle to remember what I did yesterday in real life. So, trying to find my way through the backwards and forwards of the script was very challenging for me.”
Also challenging were the show’s filming conditions – with series one shot in the middle of the first COVID lockdown, and the second during a brutally cold winter.
Paapa Essiedu is the star of The Lazarus Project, now in its second series on Sky Max
Essiedu says he had to train for the role, which sees him take on numerous adversaries, fighting and shooting his way to saving humanity.
“It was a long shoot, very intensive… It requires a lot of mental resilience, emotional resilience, and physical resilience”.
Admitting to being somewhat accident prone, he didn’t survive the shoot injury-free.
“I could get injured like sat on this chair right now, you know? It really is a joke. My physio thinks I’m very talented in that particular sphere. So, yeah, I had a couple of injuries and a few fight scenes and whatever, but you keep calm and carry on.”
There are fight scenes aplenty to contend with. Pic: The Lazarus Project/Sky Max
So, in a show where the characters frequently live the same three weeks over and over again, do Essiedu and Quentin ever feel as actors they’re asked to play the same roles on repeat?
Essiedu, who’s played parts including Hamlet, Prince of Denmark; George Boleyn the brother-in-law to Henry VIII and a demon called Gaap in the guise of a disco star, says he’s taken a strong stance to avoid getting stuck in a career loop.
“I think for me I’ve had to be like quite conscious in things I say yes and no to in order to stop that from happening. Because you do a thing and people see it and they’re like, ‘OK more of that, more of that, more of that’.
“I’m quite rambunctious in my opposition to that, you know, and sometimes to the detriment of really great parts. I think if you’re lucky enough to get the opportunities that allow you to stretch your range or to show different sides of your capabilities, then you’ve got to be conscious to chase those opportunities.”
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Quentin, 63, who is perhaps best known for the role of long-suffering girlfriend Dorothy in 90s hit sitcom Men Behaving Badly has also had to battle with lazy casting.
“I’ve always struggled with that, you know, because I’ve done a lot of comedy and sometimes you just want to go, ‘I don’t just do that’. This is nice, it gives me an opportunity to do stuff that isn’t like that…
“If you’re good at something you don’t want to be bad at something, so people don’t ask you to do it again. But on the other hand, if you’re good at it, you don’t want people keep asking you do the same thing over and over again.”
So, what would they have done if their life paths had taken a different turn, and they hadn’t been actors?
For Essiedu, it would have been a complete jump away from the arts into the sciences: “I very nearly became a doctor. I had a place at medical school, and I often think about what my life would be like if I was doing that.
“I obviously love working with people and that’s one of the reasons I love being an actor because you get to meet many different types of people.”
Quentin would have stayed a little closer to home, becoming “either a potter or a painter or an illustrator or something in that world”.
Series two of The Lazarus Project is streaming now on Sky Max and NOW TV.
Disgraced hip hop mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs has asked a judge to release him on a $50m bond as he waits to be sentenced for prostitution-related offences.
Combs’s lawyer has argued that conditions at the Metropolitan Detention Centre in Brooklyn are dangerous and noted that others convicted of similar offences were typically released before sentencing.
“Sean Combs should not be in jail for this conduct,” Marc Agnifilo said in a court filing on Tuesday.
“In fact, he may be the only person currently in a United States jail for being any sort of John, and certainly the only person in jail for hiring adult male escorts for him and his girlfriend.”
A “John” in the US is a slang term for somebody who hires a prostitute.
A spokesperson for the US attorney’s office in Manhattan did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Prosecutors have previously insisted he remains a flight risk and should therefore not be granted bail.
The 55-year-old, one of the most influential hip-hop producers of all time, faces up to a decade in prison after he was convicted earlier this month of two counts of transportation to engage in prostitution.
The charges relate to how he flew people around the US, including his girlfriends and male sex workers, for sexual encounters.
Read more:
The rise and fall of Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs
What it was like in court for start of P Diddy trial
Combs knelt at his chair and appeared to pray after the verdicts
Combs was cleared of three more serious charges – two for sex trafficking and one for racketeering conspiracy – following his landmark trial in New York.
A conviction on one of those charges could have put him in prison for life.
Immediately after he was acquitted of those charges on 2 July, Mr Agnifilo had asked that Combs be released on bond.
But Judge Arun Subramanian denied it, saying Combs at the time had not met the burden of showing by clear and convincing evidence a “lack of danger to any person or the community”.
Combs is the latest celebrity inmate to be locked up at MDC Brooklyn, the only federal jail in New York City, joining a list that includes R Kelly, Ghislaine Maxwell and cryptocurrency fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried.
Ozzy Osbourne fans will be able to say goodbye to the heavy metal pioneer at a procession for his cortege through his home city of Birmingham tomorrow.
The star’s hearse will make its way down Broad Street towards the Black Sabbath bridge and bench – where thousands of fans have left flowers, messages and other tributes since his death.
Osbourne, 76, died less than three weeks after performing his “final bow” in the city – the Back The Beginning reunion with his Sabbath bandmates at Villa Park, which raised about £140m for charity.
Ozzy Osbourne on stage at Villa Park just a few weeks before his death. Pic: Reuters
Large crowds are expected to gather tomorrow as fans pay their respects to the performer who shaped heavy metal music and “proudly carried the spirit of Birmingham throughout his career”, the city council said.
Members of Osbourne’s family will also be in attendance and have funded the event, the council added.
“Ozzy was more than a music legend – he was a son of Birmingham,” said the city’s lord mayor, Councillor Zafar Iqbal. “We know how much this moment will mean to his fans. We’re proud to host it here with his loving family in the place where it all began.”
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The life of Ozzy Osbourne
Mr Iqbal said it was important to the city to give the star “a fitting, dignified tribute ahead of a private family funeral”.
Osbourne and his Black Sabbath bandmates Terence “Geezer” Butler, Tony Iommi and Bill Ward were awarded the Freedom of the City in June, before the Back To The Beginning show, honouring their “significance to the cultural and musical identity of Birmingham”.
The star’s cortege will travel down Broad Street from about 1pm tomorrow, accompanied by a live brass band, Bostin’ Brass. For those not able to make it, a live stream of the Black Sabbath bench, which has been running since Osbourne’s death, will continue.
There is also a book of condolence for public messages at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, alongside the Ozzy Osbourne Working Class Hero exhibition, highlighting his solo career achievements.
Metal, bats, and reality TV: The wild life of Ozzy Osbourne
Osbourne, the self-styled Prince of Darkness, pioneered heavy metal with Black Sabbath before going on to have huge success in his own right. He was famous for hits including Iron Man, Paranoid, War Pigs, Crazy Train and Changes, both with the band and as a solo star.
The singer also found a different kind of fame thanks to noughties MTV reality show The Osbournes, which followed his somewhat chaotic life with wife Sharon and two of their children, Kelly and Jack.
Following his death, his family released a statement saying he died alongside them, “surrounded by love”.
Entertainment
The 1975 star Matty Healy warns of musical ‘silence’ without small stages as he backs new UK-wide festival
The 1975 frontman Matty Healy has warned of a musical “silence” that would come without the pubs and bars that give UK artists their first chance to perform.
Fresh from headlining Glastonbury in June, Healy is backing a new UK-wide festival which will see more than 2,000 gigs taking place across more than 1,000 “seed” venues in September.
The Seed Sounds Weekender aims to celebrate the hospitality sector hosting bands and singers just as they are starting out – and for some, before they go on to become global superstars.
Healy, who is an ambassador for the event, said in a statement to Sky News: “Local venues aren’t just where bands cut their teeth, they’re the foundation of any real culture.
“Without them, you don’t get The Smiths, Amy Winehouse, or The 1975. You get silence.”
Oasis, currently making headlines thanks to their sold-out reunion tour, first played at Manchester’s Boardwalk club, which closed in 1999, and famously went on to play stadiums and their huge Knebworth gigs within the space of a few years.
Oasis stars Liam and Noel Gallagher, pictured on stage at Wembley for their reunion tour, started out playing Manchester’s Boardwalk club. Pic: Lewis Evans
GigPig, the live music marketplace behind Seed Sounds, says the seed sector collectively hosts more than three million gigs annually, supports more than 43,000 active musicians, and contributes an estimated £2.4bn to the UK economy.
“The erosion of funding for seed and grassroots spaces is part of a wider liberal tendency to strip away the socially democratic infrastructure that actually makes art possible,” said Healy.
“What’s left is a cultural economy where only the privileged can afford to create, and where only immediately profitable art survives.”
He described the Seed Sounds Weekender as “a vital reminder that music doesn’t start in boardrooms or big arenas – it starts in back rooms, pubs, basements, and independent spaces run on love, grit, and belief in something bigger.”
Read more from Sky News:
Oasis photographers recall the early days
Heavy metal to reality TV: The wild life of Ozzy Osbourne
The importance of funding for grassroots venues has been highlighted in the past few years, with more than 200 closing or stopping live music in 2023 and 2024, according to the Music Venue Trust. Sheffield’s well-known Leadmill venue saw its last gig in its current form in June, after losing a long-running eviction battle.
In May, Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy announced the £85m Creative Foundations Fund to support arts venues across England.
And last year, the Culture, Media and Sport Committee called for a levy on tickets to large concerts at stadiums and arenas to help fund grassroots venues, which artists including Coldplay and Katy Perry, and venues including the Royal Albert Hall, have backed.
But most seed venues – the smaller spaces in the hospitality sector that provide a platform before artists get to ticketed grassroots gigs or bigger stages – won’t qualify for the levy. GigPig is working to change this by formalising the seed music venue space as a recognised category.
“The UK’s seed venues are where music careers are born,” said GigPig co-founder Kit Muir-Rogers. “Collectively, this space promotes more music than any other in the live music business, yet it has gone overlooked and under-appreciated.”
The Seed Sounds Weekender takes place from 26-28 September and will partner with Uber to give attendees discounted rides to and from venues.
Tickets for most of the gigs will be free, with events taking place across 20 UK towns and cities including London, Liverpool, Birmingham, Manchester, Glasgow, Leicester, Newcastle and Southampton
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