In a 2020 interview with Actors Live Life, Nathan Armarkwei Laryea revealed that he was “currently out of work as an actor,” though considering the impact the COVID-19 pandemic had on the theater industry, this wasn’t particularly surprising. Just a few months later, in January of 2021, he’d appear in Season 12, Episode 11 of “Doctor Who” (“Revolution of the Daleks”), and by 2023, well, you know the rest.
But although the actor is a relative newcomer to the small screen (in 2019, he appeared in an episode of “Doctors”), he’s been making a name for himself on the British theater scene for years. The actor’s lengthy list of credits includes portraying young Simba in the West End production of Disney’s “The Lion King,” Tybalt and Balthasar in “Romeo and Juliet” at Exeter Northcott, Hamlet in “Hamlet” at the National Theatre, and the Devil himself in the Almeida Theatre’s 2023 production of Lulu Raczka’s “Women, Beware the Devil.” Time Out called Armarkwei Laryea’s Devil “camply malevolent,” adding, “It’s not hard to see the shadow of Milton’s heroic Satan informing the play’s thinking.”
Netflix made ample use of Armarkwei Laryea’s vocal talents and stage experience for Season 3, and considering the central role his performance plays in Episode 5’s timekeeping and multiperspectivity — and his delightfully antagonistic chemistry with Joey Batey — it seems unlikely we won’t be seeing more of him.
In the meantime, newly acquainted fans who happen to live in the U.K. can catch Armarkwei Laryea in Michael R. Jackson’s Tony Award-nominated musical comedy “A Strange Loop” at the Barbican Theatre in London.
