TV shows on CBBC (Spirit Warriors) and E4 (Youngers),
while also promoting her rap music on sites such as
Soundcloud. By the time she turned 21 she had released
four mixtapes, six EPs and an album (A Curious Tale of
Trials + Persons), all on her own label, Age 101 Music.
Ever since she was a teenager Simz has been steely in
her focus. “I knew no one was going to hand me this.
I had to work hard,” she says now. She filmed Top Boy
during lockdown, for instance, in between making her
album. Now in its fourth series, Top Boy is the cult TV
series about rival drug gangs set in London’s housing
estates that has become something of a who’s who of
young British talent — past and present stars include
Ashley Walters, Michaela Coel and the rappers Dave and
Kano. Simz plays Shelley, the love interest of the titular
Top Boy Dushane (played by Walters). “In season one you
really saw one side of Shelley — she’s a single mother
with a dream of opening a nail salon. She’s a maternal
figure, she’s very caring. This season you get a deeper look
into her past and find out that not everything that glitters
is gold. She’s not a bad person but she’s not squeaky
clean.” Simz plays the role with a quiet power. What she
says may be laconic, but her face conveys a rich depth of
emotion. She says the concept of “performance” as an
actor and a musician involves accessing different parts of
herself, but they “cross-pollinate”. “I think at the core is
wanting to tell something true and to be as authentic and
honest as I can with the emotion I’m trying to convey.”
When she’s acting, she says she feels like a tiny, tiny part
of a big thing. “Whereas with music I am the big thing.”
Simz is open to taking on blockbuster movie roles like
her good friend and creative collaborator Letitia Wright,
(another Top Boy alumna) who starred in Black Panther and
Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame, but having “a name”
attached isn’t enough: for her it needs to
be a passion project — something she
really cares about — for her to give “her
best self ” to it. “I think you get the best of
me when you get all of me,” she says.
Simz answers my questions thought-
fully and her soft north London accent,
though less polished than it sounds on
her album, is just as compelling in its
studied cadence and tone. She says she
was greatly inspired by Lauryn Hill,
whose Miseducation was one of the
defining albums of her youth. “Shemade me feel like it’s OK to be vulnerable. And it’s OK to
wear your heart on your sleeve. That doesn’t make you
weak, it makes you stronger.” Simz ended up touring
with her heroine in 2016, but she “was there but not
there” — Simz kept her distance and studied the artist
from afar. “I once crossed her in a hallway, and I thanked
her for the opportunity and then I just kept moving.” She
says she treats people how she wants to be treated.
“Some people love attention and lap it up. I really appre-
ciate it when people respect boundaries and space. And
just normal human interaction stuff, like if I’m with
someone and you only address me and don’t say ‘Hi’ to
them, that’s rude.”
She gets this from her mum, who, she says, “has always
treated the janitor the same way as the boss”. During her
“rebel” teenage years they often clashed,
but once Simz moved out of home their
bond got stronger. “As I got older I
started learning about her, the person as
independent of her being my mum.”
Bringing her mum on stage at the Brits
and announcing, “Mum, look what
you’ve done!” to rapturous applause was
all a “spur of the moment thing”. Chuck-
ling at the memory, she admits: “She just
jumped up. And I know I can’t now tell
her to sit down. But I’m very protective
over my mum. Like you look at my mum‘It’s OK to wear
your heart on
your sleeve.
That doesn’t
make you weak,
it makes you
stronger’
Netflix, Getty Images
This picture Little
Simz on stage in
London last year.
Below As Shelley
in the new series
of Top Boy, and
with Drake, Ashley
Walters and
Micheal Ward at
the series three
premiere, 2019The Sunday Times Style • 21