66 MAY 2017
»laughing. “The obsessiveness, the
lackof ability to read emotional
situations; he doesn’t even spot that
his girlfriend is suicidal, for goodness
sake!” Jules is nodding. He’s not
embarrassed to discuss his condition
and is painfully aware of its often
frustrating shortcomings.
“You know, it’s tricky living with
autism. It’s quite hard,” Jules tells
me later. “I have OCD [obsessive
compulsive disorder, a condition
which involves compulsive and
repetitious behaviour, such as turning
a light switch on and off, or excessive
hand washing]. I have luck theories, so
many luck theories,” he says, sighing.
“That’s things like wearing a special
shirt to bring luck,” explains Kathy.
“And I suffer from terrible
anxiety,” Jules says. “I always
need people to assure me that
everyone’s going to be okay.
I get so worried and I can’t
reassure myself.”
Currently, Jules is
inconsolable on the issue of
Donald Trump’s presidency,
for which he feels personally
responsible. He says he should
have realised and warned
people. “I have depression
because of this, because none
of us could do anything,
which hurts a lot,” says Jules,
who expresses what he’s feeling when
he’s feeling it.
“Trump has been a cocktail of
anxiety for him,” explains Kathy. “He
thinks if he’d willed Hillary [Clinton]
more good luck and put more on his
Facebook, he could have changed
things. I said, ‘Jules, you don’t have any
American followers and you don’t vote
there.’ And he said, ‘I know that logically,
but my luck theories override it.’”
It’s likely that Jules’ compulsive
conditions are a bonus in the acting
arena, where memorising lines and
repetition is key. Certainly it hasn’t
held Jules back. Having won a string
of awards on stage, he landed a
breakthrough role when the BBC cast
him in their hit hospital dramaHolby
City. It’s the first time a TV drama has
cast an actor with autism to play an
autistic character and “has done more
to take the stigma out of the condition
than a million dry documentaries,” says
Kathy. “My boy has put the artistic
into autistic and I could not be more
proud of him.” She grins.
Julius, who plays hospital porter
Jason, is now watched by six million
Brits every week. He’s recognised in
the street and frequently asked for
autographs and selfies. Not bad for
the lad who was bullied at school and
came home regularly with a sign on his
back saying, “Kick me, I’m a retard.”
“If you’d told me five years ago his life
was going to take such a positive turn,
I’d have laughed in your face,” says
Kathy. “I was busy building down my
hopes. Less than 15 per cent of autistic
people are in the workforce, which is amuch lower inclusion rate than other
disabilities, despite their often high IQs.
I presumed Jules’ only future would
be living in a bedsit on benefits.”
Jules, however, had no such
misgivings. “I decided I wanted to be
an actor a few years ago. I really could
see it in myself and when I saw my
favourite actors in movies, I thought,
‘Wow, I could do this.’”
Kathy was fiercely supportive, but
also quietly fearful. Jules feels very
deeply and says what he thinks without
a filter. Such searing honesty can be
hilariously funny, but it can also get
Jules into sticky situations. How would
he cope acting, which is, after all,
about pretending?
“I kept thinking how could someone
autistic be an actor because you have
to learn to emote and you have to be
so nuanced,” Kathy says. “But thenI thought to myself, actually autistic
people are acting all the time, trying to
act normal, to be neurotypical. And I
remember, Jules, you used to come
into a room sometimes and if we got
off to a bad start, you’d say, ‘Let’s do
it again,’ and you’d leave the room
and come back in. It was like take
two, just like it is in acting.”
“I remember that. I haven’t done
that for ages,” Jules says, with a wistful
air of maturity. Despite his anxiety
about so many aspects of his life, he is
completely confident about his acting
skills and forged ahead without any
help from his high-profile parents.
“I was amazed, honestly,” says Kathy.
“I would watch him on stage and think,
‘You’re really good.’ But I presumed I
was just wearing my
devoted-mum goggles,
totally blinded by love. The
part inHolbyhad nothing
to do with me. Hisagent sent
him to the audition and he
did it all by himself.”
“I auditioned and I was
so flawless and so smooth
that they decided that it was
my shot,” says Jules, with a
wicked grin. “I was nervous
at the beginning ofHolby
because I was walking into
something new and I wasn’t
sure how to approach it. But
once the early episodeswrapped up, I
started to feel really comfortable and
by the beginning of last year, I was
totally relaxed. The cast are great. We’ve
got brilliant actors from the Royal
Shakespeare Company like Jemma
Redgrave and Catherine Russell.”
“Jemma Redgrave just sent me this
beautiful email saying that they love
working with Jules because he’s so
enthusiastic and it reminds them how
lucky they are to work in this industry
and not to take it for granted,” says
Kathy. “Stories about autistic kids are
often so sad and soul-destroying. But
Jules proves that you can turn your
negatives into a positive. My advice
to other struggling parents is to find
out what your autistic kid is good at
and feed their obsessions.”
Jules is clearly having a ball. In
between shoots, he runs lines withJules has built up a
following in the BBC
TV seriesHolby City.