Only a lucky few have ever heard Damson Idris rap. When he was a teenager, he and a few friends recorded some tracks at the infamous Unit 10 in Walworth, southeast London – the same studio where Peckham rapper Giggs recorded his debut album, Walk in da Park. “We all wanted to be like Giggs,” says the 33-year-old actor. “I had a squeaky voice,” he tells me. A friend recently sent some of the old tracks to their WhatsApp group chat and, despite him never wanting the rest of the world to hear them, Idris listened back with pride. “I was like, ‘Rah.’ I was kinda hard!”

Idris was ‘hard’ at football back in those days too. He’d even trialled for Charlton Athletic FC. “I wanted to be like David Beckham,” he says. That’s no surprise – every kid in the 00s did. But Idris had taken it a step further when he sent a tape of himself to CBBC to be on a show called Beckham’s Hotshots, in which eight kids competed to train with Beckham in Madrid. He was one of the 20 kids selected from the open call, but ultimately missed out on making the final cut. Still, his desire to be on screen was just beginning to burgeon. “Whether it was being a class clown in school, trying to be a footballer, or making everyone laugh at the back of the bus on our way to face the team. There was always a level of performance that was in my DNA.”

Fast-forward from those jovial school years to now, and Idris has become known as a craftsman when it comes to his acting performances. For his breakout role as drug dealer Franklin Saint in Los Angeles-based series Snowfall, he perfected the accent and mannerisms specific to South Central by working with rapper WC. In the 2018 film Farming, in which he played a Nigerian boy who grows up to become a member of a white skinhead gang, Idris stayed in character throughout the entirety of filming.

Now, for his new film, F1, co-starring Brad Pitt, Idris spent seven months learning how to drive supercars. It paid off. “We went from track to track of Grand Prix racing and caught footage of me and Brad actually driving on a track with the real fans. What it does for the movie is that you’re right there in the car with us.”