Tachia Newall: 'My path to performance may have been accidental, but it is where I should be'
From Waterloo Road to Coronation Street, to underground success as rapper Truthos Mufasa, actor Tachia Newall is now taking on the role of Macbeth. He tells Natasha Tripney that it hasn’t always been easy, but it’s been worth it
Like many performers, the pandemic took its toll on Tachia Newall. Alongside acting, his other live work – gigging and hosting – evaporated overnight. “I spent the first year of lockdown just in my flat, rinsing all my savings.” But now, almost two years after theatres were forced to close because of Covid-19, he finds himself preparing to take to the Leeds Playhouse stage, to play Macbeth in Amy Leach’s upcoming production.
It’s the kind of character he likes playing best: one that is complex, layered. On the one hand, he says Macbeth is a “simple guy who just works for his king, but he’s also a war hero”. One of the aspects they hope to draw out in the production is the idea that the Macbeths are not just driven wholly by ambition. “In our version they’ve had a few miscarriages. In the time it’s set, one of the main purposes is that you have a line after you – you have children – and that isn’t something they’re going to have, so it drives him to want to achieve something greater.” His Macbeth is also a soldier dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder. He’s a good person to begin with – “he has a soul, but eventually he just gets rid of it”.
He is performing opposite Jessica Baglow, who plays Lady Macbeth. They’ve resisted the urge to make her the architect of his downfall. “They’re kind of on an even footing,” he says. “They’re really tight. They don’t have to express to each other what they’re thinking deeply – the other one just knows.”
His Macbeth is a northern warrior. “Everyone’s using their own accents. When you use another accent, no matter how natural it is, there is an element of not being in the role fully. You’re trying to be something else – whereas we’re trying to embody the characters as fully as possible.”
Q&A
What would you have been if you weren’t an actor?
A musician, 100%. I’m still doing music. But I was also really into environmental science.
Who is your greatest influence?
Frances McDormand. She’s got such a convincing way of performing. Sometimes it’s humorous, but it’s so genuine. Will Smith was also a massive influence on me when I was younger.
What advice would you give to actors about auditions?
Just try to be truthful to the text. Don’t try to impress anyone – just be truthful. A lot of the time it’s not even about your ability, it is about whether you as a person fit into the broader picture that they’ve created. So just be truthful and you’ll get picked if you’re right for it.
Do you have any superstitions or rituals?
I have a rap of my own that I try to do before every show. It’s pretty difficult when you say it at speed. And I like to jump. That’s probably the weirdest one. It requires you to jump over the whole room, but it warms me up very well.
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Born in 1990 in Manchester, Newall moved with his mother and sister to Mozambique at the age of three. When he moved back to the UK after three years, he struggled for a while to fit back in and communicate because he spoke Portuguese better than he spoke English.
Performing helped him overcome this. His sister was into poetry, and he used to go and watch her perform. “She just really inspired me and I wanted to be like my big sister.” He acted in school productions and attended a youth centre for acting, where he got an agent, but his real focus was music. Then, at the age of 17, he landed the role of Bolton Smilie in Waterloo Road, the BBC drama set in a comprehensive school. Ironically, he was then kicked out of college because he couldn’t attend regularly. His path into performance, he says, “may have been accidental, but it is where I should have been”.
Having said that, he didn’t have a plan after that: “I coasted for a little while.” Newall landed some bit-parts on TV shows – he played one of Rosie Webster’s boyfriends on Coronation Street – and focused more on his music again, gaining a bit of underground success in Manchester as Truthos Mufasa. Then he made the decision to get back into acting because of the opportunities it afforded him, to work with creative people and visit different places in the country – and the world. It has not always been easy, he says: “There have been a lot of hand-to-mouth years.” But he got to work at the Royal Exchange in Manchester and in 2017 he played a memorable Tybalt in Amy Leach’s production of Romeo and Juliet for Leeds Playhouse.
The pandemic led to some hard times, as it did for so many people, but he used the time to improve his self-taping skills – “auditions still make me nervous” – and has landed a few TV roles as a result, before the opportunity to play Macbeth came along. In some ways he’s emerged from this difficult time in a better place professionally. When he got the call, he remembers thinking: “Oh my God, has Covid boosted me on somehow?”
He also appears briefly in the new Dune movie, though he’s quick to point out it’s “one of the smallest characters ever”. You can see him in one scene talking to Sharon Duncan-Brewster, he laughs, and he was very happy to be part of it.
While he’s done some gigs recently, this is first onstage acting job since the pandemic. He can’t wait to experience it again: “The moment when everything goes right. And the whole thing lifts.”
He clearly relishes working with Leach and speaks passionately about how her productions place accessibility at their heart. They’re tailoring the production to the blind and D/deaf audiences, he explains. A lot of elements have been included to create an interactive and accessible performance for everyone. He thinks this is something the industry should also look at improving going forward: “We’re not where we should be in terms of accessibility.”
It worries him that young people might have fewer opportunities than he had at school to explore the arts, to find their path. “I think about someone like myself, who came from the area I came from, where there were a lot of potential avenues that I could have ended up going down that would not have seen me be the best version of myself. A lot of friends have ended up in sticky situations with the law and stuff like that, which I managed to avoid.”
When he talks about his acting influences, Frances McDormand is one of the first names he mentions. He talks in awe about her skill, but admits he’s yet to see her Lady Macbeth in Joel Coen’s recent film. He’s never seen any Macbeth on stage or screen before, but he considers this an asset. “I don’t want to try to emulate anything or to have any pre-existing stuff in my head. I just want it to be fresh.”
CV Tachia Newall
Born: 1990
Landmark roles:
TV
Waterloo Road, BBC
Theatre
Romeo and Juliet, Leeds Playhouse (2017)
Agent: Rachel Young, United Agents
Macbeth is at Leeds Playhouse from February 26 to March 19. Visit: leedsplayhouse.org
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