In Lucy Prebble’s play The Effect, two test subjects, Connie and Tristan, meet during a clinical trial for a new antidepressant. They fall for each other as the trial progresses, but they cannot discern whether their feelings are just one of the drug’s side effects. Their psychiatrists privately wonder about it, too.
Prebble, who recently wrote for HBO’s Succession, first staged the show at London’s National Theatre in 2012. It earned her the U.K. Critics’ Circle Award for Best New Play. After returning to the National Theatre, at the end of 2023, it’s now playing in New York City, at the Shed, for its second run. (It debuted in 2016 at Barrow Street Theatre.) Paapa Essiedu stars as Tristan, a working-class boy. Playing the role with lightness and sensitivity, he acts opposite Taylor Russell, best known for her role in the 2022 film Bones and All. She portrays Connie as reserved, in control, and analytical.
Essiedu, 33, discovered The Effect when it premiered. He’s admired Prebble ever since, and he jumped at the chance to work with the “prolifically brilliant playwright.”
He takes his work seriously. Acting just to “be on telly or wear fancy clothes, it’s embarrassing,” he says. Essiedu leans into the politics of the profession. He understands “the impact that [my] work can have in social discourse.”
Growing up in Walthamstow, in East London, Essiedu had to shape his own definition of the job. “There are no actors in my family or friend circles,” he says. “I didn’t really have the context of what it means to be hustling in this industry.” Essiedu is the only son of two Ghanaian parents, and his father died when he was 14. He attended middle and high school on a scholarship and imagined becoming a doctor. Then he developed a crush on a girl with an interest in theater. He quickly became invested in the world of drama and intoxicated by the energy of a group of people with a shared passion.
Acting just to “be on telly or wear fancy clothes, it’s embarrassing.”
Essiedu became interested in Shakespeare while attending Guildhall School of Music & Drama. He had always found Shakespeare’s work impenetrable, but he was finally able to grasp it thanks to classes at Guildhall. “I find it so thrilling,” he says. “It’s the foundation upon which I’ve grown.”
After graduating in 2012, he joined the Royal Shakespeare Company. In 2016, he became the first Black actor to play Hamlet for the company, and he won the Ian Charleson Award for the role. Since then, he’s expanded into film and TV. He’s perhaps best known for his part in the 2020 hit series I May Destroy You, created by his friend and former classmate Michaela Coel. He’s also appeared in the crime drama Gangs of London, The Lazarus Project, and Black Mirror.
While Essiedu doesn’t suffer from stage fright, he does stick to a pre-performance routine. He listens to music, does some yoga and breath work, turns off his phone, and looks out the window of his dressing room. He waits until the last minute to put on his costume and needs a moment of connection with each actor before going onstage. What Essiedu does feel pressure around, however, is paying respect to his audience, to “really allow [the play] to be born anew in each and every show,” he says. “It should be for the people. Therein lies the skill.”
The Effect will be on at the Shed, in New York City, beginning March 3
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Jeanne Malle is an Associate Editor at AIR MAIL