Spotlight Interview with actor, activist and playwright Martina Laird

Martina Laird is an award-winning actor, acting teacher, activist, director and now award-nominated playwright who is widely known for playing the beloved Comfort Jones in the world’s longest running primetime medical drama, BBC1’s Casualty.

A cultural custodian who has championed overlooked black women actors and directors in theatre, Laird’s connection with the arts started early with parents who were supporters of Trinidadian artists and were friends with Nobel Prize winning poet and playwright Sir Derek Walcott.

Laird speaks passionately to Joy Francis about her artistic grounding in Trinidad, navigating racism and misogyny and adding another feather to her creative bow as a playwright, with her debut play Driftwood, premiering at the Royal Shakespeare Company in April 2026.

Trinidad is never far away from your thoughts, your commentary, your creativity and your identity. But you weren’t born there?

I was born in Basseterre, St. Kitts and was taken to live in Trinidad at three years old. I identify as Trinidadian and continue to identify as Trinidadian even though I’m here, in Britain. Trinidad is my heart’s home.

When did your interest in acting and theatre begin?

At seven, I started going to drama and dance classes at the weekend. I have brothers and sisters who are much older than I, so I grew up as an only child. My parents said, ‘you’ve got to do something’. I was very lucky because at that moment in Trinidad, Tony Hall and Noble Douglas had just returned from studying and working abroad and wanted to share what they had learned as students with new generations of performers in Trinidad. Tony produced a whole approach to theatre eventually called the Jouvay Method. Noble Douglas continues to run a wonderful dance troupe where they express through Trinidadian choreography as well as the Lilliput Children’s Theatre, which has been running since I was seven.

Classical composter and fellow Trinidadian Dominique Le Gendre is also passionate about and committed to her cultural history. What strikes me when I think about your journey is the healthy tension between culture and politics within the arts landscape in Trinidad. Is that an observation you would agree with?

Absolutely. That time, for me, must have been some kind of golden era. Trinidad gained independence in the 1960s. As a child of the 1970s, we were the ones who benefited from all that blossomed from that change in terms of claiming a national culture and identity. Noble had worked with the Alvin Ailey dance troop in the US. Tony had done wonderful things in Toronto, Canada. The Black Power revolution that happened in Trinidad started with Caribbean students at York University in Toronto. Tony would start [classes] for children with meditation. It was a holistic kind of exposure. Trinidad theatre was full and busy, and hosting all the new works by Derek Walcott which were all fundamentally political and responses to the Caribbean situation and legacy.

We had an amazing bunch of actors, writers, etc, all working at a theatre called The Little Carib, which was founded by the wonderful and very important Beryl McBurnie.

I was going to ask you about Beryl. Did you study under her?

Yes, when I was a child. Beryl McBurnie was a great dancer, but also this anthropologist of Caribbean dance and culture and music. Beryl was considered to be the next Carmen Miranda and was in line for a career on Broadway, but she came to back to Trinidad. She was absolutely set on recording and bringing into the performance space aspects of folk culture that were happening elsewhere, including bringing steel bands to audiences. It was a very exciting time. Also, my dad had worked with Beryl. He was an architect, and he put together the first construction of The Little Carib Theatre and, I believe, he even participated in some of the productions.

This sort of alludes to the connection between your dad and the arts. What about your mum?

My mum participated with The Little Carib [Theatre]. She would tell me stories of helping at the so-called ticket desk, and they would run out of tickets. Beryl [McBurnie] would just write out more tickets by hand. My mother is responsible not only for sending me there but would take me to London [England] on holiday, and every time she would book us theatre tickets. I saw some amazing plays. I saw A Madhouse in Goa with Vanessa Redgrave. I saw Amadeus with Simon Callow. I saw Another Country with Kenneth Brannagh and Rupert Everett. I saw the original Evita with David Essex and Elaine Paige.

I came to do a summer course at RADA, which was great fun. I think my fate was kind of sealed even though I went to university wondering what to do with myself because in Trinidad you couldn’t just be an actor. You had to have a steady job.

I wasn’t aware of just how much London played a part in your upbringing. You came here to study languages at university. How old were you? 

I was 17 going on 18.  I had won a national scholarship for my A-level results. In Trinidad, each category of humanities, sciences, etc, are awarded scholarships and I won one for languages. It was assumed, therefore, that I was going to study languages. Not knowing what I wanted to do that option seemed fine because I loved speaking languages and loved the physicality of language, the freedom it gave me. So, I was happy to go to the University of Kent to study French.

When you graduated, you went to the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art, which I believe Derek Walcott may have had a hand in?  

It’s true. My dad was having a conversation with Derek and said, ‘Martina wants to be an actor. Where’s the best training?’ And because he’s a man of words and language, Derek said that Britain was the best place to train because of how they approach text. I’ve got to say I love American actors as well. I would be going through these huge tomes of old movie stars and old [film] reviews by Pauline Kael. I grew up loving Jimmy Stewart, Bette Davis, and I was then exposed over here to Gena Rowlands and the work of John Cassavetes and Ingmar Bergman.

Based on your rich childhood acting experiences, including starring in a Trinidadian miniseries called Epiphany when you were 13, how did you experience Britain? What were your expectations and were they met?

I realise how strong the sense of limitation was, like having a lid on my head. There was a really weird response, at the time, to actors who had been to university. So, I was walking a strange line that I did not know how to negotiate because I was here on my own. My parents might have been part of the art world in Trinidad, but they weren’t actors. They weren’t experienced in navigating this kind of profession. It was hard. It’s kind of like when you hold your breath, you don’t realize quite what you’ve done to yourself until you breathe out, and you exhale.

I became quite reticent about exposing too much of myself or being seen as too intellectual or too Caribbean or too political. There was still typecasting. We were still having to represent with characters that were not us and were upholding some kind of stereotype. There was an unhappiness growing within me, if I’m being honest with you. I remember a TV job that was a period piece where I was very cautious about accepting it because I didn’t want to play people who were enslaved or imprisoned unless there was something worthwhile in the part.

In one scene, there was a bit of a confrontation between my character and a white character, a rich, young white lady. The actress and I rehearsed the confrontation. We liked it. We were happy that we were combating as equals. But when they came to stage it, she was made to sit down at a big grand table, and I was made to stand over her. She had a reflector under her, lifting her light and her colour, which I wasn’t given. I was made to stand over her and be slightly more aggressive. I tried to refuse doing this. I was thinking, I know what you’re doing. You are cheaply buying into the aggressive mama kind of archetype. I am not here to do that. I’m here to do this scene as two women. The director just absolutely wouldn’t entertain me at all. As a black actor then, you’re on set and you’re not only dealing unequally with the instructions and the representation you are also going through a personal set of small traumas by being forced into doing this. And then you’re also having to act and be okay with it, otherwise, you’re risking unpopularity with the crew and the rest of the cast.

I appreciate you sharing that difficult experience with me. I wanted to ask you about your experience on Casualty, the longest running primetime television media drama on BBC1, and your role as Comfort Jones, which you played for five years. This was back in the day when it was a water cooler moment, with millions of people following your storyline at the same time. Considering what you’ve just shared, what was it like securing this very visible role? Did you have any scope to develop her in the way that you wanted to?

When I joined Casualty, I had no idea what to expect. The industry was different back then. If you’ve not been exposed [to the public] in this way before it’s a big surprise. I was lucky to have Kwame Kwei Armah there to indirectly counsel me on certain matters. Mervyn Watson and the producers were very happy for Comfort to be Trinidadian. I was glad I was able play her authentically because as an actor, you don’t want to restrict your performance and be unable to touch your heart when it comes to highly emotional scenes as that’s when we all really sound like ourselves. Kwame and I were aware that we were playing the only black couple on primetime television, and we were quite proud of that.

I want to take you back to where you started, in theatre. You’ve done multiple Shakespeare plays and have played leading roles in many others, including Errol John’s Moon on a Rainbow Shawl, directed by Michael Buffong, Marcus Gardley’s The House that Will Not Stand at the Tricycle Theatre, directed by Indhu Rubasingham, and in August Wilson’s play King Hedley II, alongside Lenny Henry. After discussing your early career here, it’s interesting that after Casualty you transitioned into these productions directed and written by artists of colour. This must have been a relief after your initial journey where you almost shut down internally as a form of protection. What was it like moving into theatre at a time of great scrutiny and change around diversity, and being exposed a range of different black voices and expressions?  

I love the term scrutiny and change. I think that is and was the case throughout. Coming here in the 1980s, there was a lot happening in terms so-called black theatre. There were still many groups and companies that were soon to be disbanded. You had the Black Mime Theatre Company, Black Theatre Cooperative, among others. You also had a lot happening at Theatre Royal, Stratford East under Philip Hedley who created great careers for actors like Jo Martin. Matthew Zia cut his teeth there, as did Clint Dyer, The Bibi Crew and The Posse. Rudolph Walker was on the telly. But ironically, I didn’t identify with the experiences that were being reflected in those homegrown productions because they, rightfully, were specifically Black British experiences. I was very much a big fan and supporter, but I wasn’t included in it.

So, when I auditioned for Moon on a Rainbow Shawl, it took quite some persuading by my agent for them to see me, even though it’s a Trinidadian play and how Sophia is described on the page is literally what I look like. I wasn’t fulfilling a perception of a Caribbean person and that has followed me quite a bit in my career. It was just one of the most profound pieces that I could have hoped to work on.

One is what isn’t discussed enough is around black actors and self-censorship. An act that is often done quietly by us. The other point is that there is the unhelpful stereotype is that the lighter you are the more passive you are and the darker you are the more aggressive you are. As soon as you, Martina, walk onto the stage and open your mouth, no one can be in any doubt that you are a black woman. You not only embody and encapsulate vulnerability but also strength, with emotional clarity.

I know what you’re talking about. I do not fit in life or on stage the expectation when a light skinned female is being cast. I love how you’ve identified that. It is, absolutely, at the very forefront for me, especially as a Caribbean person. The passing down of the ancestral experience, what is in the blood, the messages in the blood, you know. It’s trauma and it needs healing. It needs attention and it needs love.

Women and the next generation of actors are important to you. To this end you hosted a series of pre-Covid symposiums at the National Theatre centring black women actors and directors.

Yes, the National [Theatre] had been doing a series of play readings on Saturdays [Black Plays Archive] with different themes. These readings were being directed largely by Ola Ince and largely curated by Natasha Bonnelame who is an encyclopaedia of all thing’s theatre, certainly black theatre. Inspired, I told Natasha that I’d love to gather some of the black women who had created our legacy and were the shoulders on which we stood yet who are being erased. I wanted them to talk about themselves. I wanted them to be seen, and I wanted that exchange to be known and recorded.

We did the first one in 2017 [Palimpsest: Symposium – A Celebration of Black Women in Theatre] and it was wonderful. We had Anni [Domingo] and Yvonne Brewster. We had Angela Wynter, Noma [Dumezweni], Suzette Llewellyn, all these people. I tried to get a cross-section in terms of how long they had lived their careers. The second one featured Carmen Munroe, Doña Croll, Corinne Skinner-Carter and Adjoa Andoh. The third one was going to be on mental health and black women in the industry. Unfortunately, we hit 2020 and the world stopped.

You are not only an actor and activist. You’ve directed The Night Woman and now you are rehearsals with your first self-penned play, Driftwood, set in 1950s postwar Trinidad, at the RSC. Why are you focusing on writing at this point of your life and career?

I wrote Driftwood years ago during a gap in filming Casualty. I’d been to St. Kitts to meet my birth mother, and I had stories in my head that my parents had told me about the 1950s, including the music. It was all coming together, forming this solid story. I thought, what am I going to do with my spare time? I’ve got to be creative. And I sat down and I wrote the first draft of what is now Driftwood. Then it was called All Fours, which is a card game we play in Trinidad. I didn’t identify as a writer. I knew I needed help with it. So, I just left it in the drawer. Years later I showed it to a few people who said, “You’ve got a talent” or “This is good,” and they just left it at that.

In 2019, I thought, I’ve never even heard this play. I don’t know what it even sounds like. I gathered some friends in my living room, plied them with Trinidadian food and rum punch, and we read it. I really enjoyed it. I was then encouraged by Sebastian Born, who had read the play and was mentoring me, to submit it to the Verity Bargate Awards 2024. I was the runner-up. Someone from the RSC was at the awards and here we are.

I’ve had the privilege of sitting in the audition room and being bowled over by the young black women whose work is excellent. Women who are also writing and filming and applying to Arts Council England for funding for their vision. They are multi-creatives and are both determined and know they have a right for their voices to be heard.