BAZ BAMIGBOYE: It’s a scream as Darci Shaw dabbles in the supernatural

Up-and-coming young star Darci Shaw was unfazed by the frightening goingson during the filming of Netflix’s riveting supernatural thriller The Irregulars. 

‘You’re working with people with blood all over their face,’ she said of shooting the eight-part drama, which will stream from March 26. 

‘But then you also see them at the catering truck, eating a sausage butty, and it’s not scary.’ Nor did it affect her sleep. And then she watched it. And all bets were off. 

‘I had these crazy, vivid dreams about murders; and running away when someone was after me.’ 

Certainly the show made me jump — more than a few times — as I speedily clicked for each fresh episode, finding myself furious when it ended. So I watched it again. 

Writer Tom Bidwell has shaken up the world of Sherlock Holmes to fascinating effect. 

The Irregulars, orphaned street urchins raised in a harsh workhouse and now living in the damp basement of a London pub, do the dirty work on the cases that frighten even Holmes (a marvellously strung-out Henry Lloyd-Hughes) and Watson (sinisterly realised by Royce Pierreson). 

Shaw, 18, won through several rounds of auditions before landing the part of Jessie, initially seen as a frail, mystical girl ‘terrified of these places she’s visiting in her own mind’, she explained as we chatted over Zoom. 

The baddies include Game of Thrones’ Rory McCann (aka The Hound) as The Birdman, and Sheila Atim, who is terrifying as the Tooth Fairy.

Jessie is joined in the battle against the shocking evil seeping across London by her elder sister Bea, played by a powerful Thaddea Graham (so good opposite Tom Hollander, Saskia Reeves and Tom Taylor — another star in the making — in BBC mini-series Us). 

The rest of the gang is played by Jojo Macari, McKell David and Harrison Osterfield. The young misfits have a cool dynamic; and the dangers they encounter are savage and fierce. I found myself genuinely fearing for their safety. 

The Irregulars was filmed in Liverpool, including one site just 15 minutes from Shaw’s home in Mossley Hill, where she lives with mum Louise, a talent agent; retired fireman dad Pete; younger sister Claudia — and her beloved Cavalier King Charles spaniel Woody. 

I first spotted her when she was 15, on the set of Judy, where she played the younger Judy Garland. Producer David Livingstone told me that it had been easier to cast Renee Zellweger than it had been to find a teenager to play Garland. 

At the world premiere at the Telluride Film Festival, admiring movie buffs wanted to know what part of the United States the ‘Judy girl’ was from. 

They were stunned to find that the ‘girl’ was from Liverpool. Like the Beatles. And Jodie Comer. Indeed, Comer has been a treasured role model. 

‘There is some prejudice in terms of accents, but Jodie Comer has helped because she’s so widely known now,’ Shaw said. ‘But when you’re starting out, it’s difficult for people to see past this accent.’ And to be clear: she’s not the next Jodie Comer. She’s the first Darci Shaw.

Coming to America? You bet!

Nomzamo Mbatha was working in Abu Dhabi when she got the call to tape an audition for Eddie Murphy.

The South African-born actress, television personality — and United Nations Goodwill Ambassador for Refugees — decided: ‘I’m going to be the one coming to America!’

So she flew to Los Angeles, auditioned and then headed home in time for her grandmother’s birthday.

That same day she received another call; this time telling her she’d been cast in Coming 2 America (on Amazon Prime from today), the hilariously joyous sequel to Murphy’s 1988 hit. Her role as Mirembe, a hairstylist at the palace of Murphy’s Prince Akeem in Zamunda, is the film’s secret weapon.

‘She’s an independent spirit and speaks to the sense of female empowerment that’s spread throughout the film,’ Mbatha told me during a Zoom call in which I confess I was dazzled by the many, many gold rings on her fingers.

She said filming in Atlanta — standing in for Zamunda and Queens in New York — felt like ‘one out-of-body experience after another’. Like shooting her first scene with Murphy. ‘It was time for me to say my line and Eddie jumps up and screams: ‘Wait a minute . . . she has a real African accent?!’ And the whole cast and crew started laughing.’

Later, she said, they ‘discussed Zulu words, and I didn’t expect Eddie to know any — but he did, from watching Shaka Zulu films!’.

Comedian Tracy Morgan is part of the film’s Queens contingent, along with Leslie Jones (priceless) and love interest Jermaine Fowler.

Soon Murphy and director Craig Brewer were turning to Mbatha for help. ‘I added some African language textures in there, with the clicking sounds,’ she admitted.

Mbatha was born and raised in the KwaMashu township in Durban. ‘I’m literally the 1 per cent of the 1 per cent that makes it out,’ she said, crediting her teacher parents but particularly her late grandmother Mamaoli Mildred Nxumalo for ensuring that she studied hard at school.

When she addressed the United Nations last year it was a proud moment, but one tinged with sadness because by that time, both her father and grandmother had passed away.

At times, she said, she felt like an African queen on the set of Coming 2 America. When she works on productions in South Africa, she is used to a coffee and an energy bar. But in Atlanta there were ‘tables and tables’ piled with food, while Murphy’s trailer was the size of her village.

She was surprised to get a trailer all to herself, ‘and a double who blocked my scenes while they tested the lighting and I sat in my trailer reading lines’.

An abiding memory, though, is of Oscar-winning costume designer Ruth E. Carter dressing her in wonderful Afro-centric clothes. One gown was so huge that a production assistant — a small one — ‘sat on a crate with wheels under the train of my gown, because it was so long!’ So, now Mbatha’s staying in America.

Newly crowned Golden Globe winner Emma Corrin will morph into Gina McKee in the new film My Policeman, about a married couple caught up in a polysexual love triangle.

This page broke the news last month that Corrin, honoured this week for her sizzling portrait of Diana in The Crown, will star with Harry Styles in the film adaptation of Bethan Roberts’s 2012 novel about the sexual mores of the 1950s and the criminalisation of homosexuality.

Corrin will play Marion, with McKee (Bodyguard, Line Of Duty, Notting Hill) taking on the part 40 years later, when the story moves into the 1990s. 

The Amazon Studios production, directed by Michael Grandage, will feature Styles as Marion’s husband Tom Burgess, a police constable. Linus Roache (Homeland and The Vikings) will play the older Tom.

Rupert Everett has been cast as Tom’s lover, Patrick Hazelwood. David Dawson (Ripper Street and The Last Kingdom) will take on the part of the younger Patrick.

The movie will shoot from April 12 on locations in London and the South-East coast. The more intimate moments will be filmed at one of the big film studios.