James Nelson-Joyce on This City Is Ours and his mentor Stephen Graham

There are any number of ways a working actor can measure their career progress, and chart just how much their fortunes have changed. For James Nelson-Joyce, star of the BBC crime drama This City Is Ours, the moment came when he was invited for dinner by a visiting Hollywood superstar. “Oh yeah, things are definitely getting more interesting now,” Nelson-Joyce says. The invitation came from Michael B Jordan, who had been living in London for six months, and kept seeing Nelson-Joyce on his TV screen. “In the space of quite a short time, I was in, like, A Thousand Blows, Black Mirror and the first series of This City Is Ours. Michael was like: ‘Who’s this kid?’” (For the record, Jordan is 39, Nelson-Joyce a mere two years his junior). Jordan, still hot property off the back of his Oscar-winning turn in Sinners, was working on a remake of the classic 1968 heist film The Thomas Crown Affair, which had starred Steve McQueen. Jordan was keen to cast Nelson-Joyce, “but we couldn’t make it work because it clashed with This City Is Ours”. Another mark of the successful actor, of course, is just how cluttered their schedule is. Nelson-Joyce shrugs. “It wasn’t meant to be. But we had dinner, and it was lovely. We connected over a love of music, specifically Marvin Gaye. I do love my Motown.” It’s a Wednesday morning in mid-October, and Nelson-Joyce has just left his gym in Liverpool. “Had a workout,” he says, as he gets comfortable in his car, holding his phone up to give me full view of his grinning face, which is framed by cheekbones sharp enough to slice open envelopes.If he looks particularly happy right now – and he does – then it is with good reason. This City Is Ours is one of the best crime dramas to come out of terrestrial television in years, rightly hailed as a “Scouse Sopranos”. In a genre where things can slide so easily into caricature, this story of Liverpool’s criminal underworld is – for those unfamiliar with it, at least – horribly authentic. It’s unbearably tense, too, and the second series even more tightly wound than the first. It revolves around the city’s reigning crime family, the bulk of whose fortune comes from international drug smuggling and dealing. Head of the family is Ronnie Phelan (Sean Bean), who, in the first series, is preparing to retire. For what are entirely dramatic reasons, the subject of his succession then becomes an urgently pressing one. Who will step into his shoes? And will the transition of power be a smooth one? Nelson-Joyce plays Michael Kavanagh, the obvious heir apparent to Liverpool’s top crime family, in ‘This City Is Ours’ (Photo: James Stack/Left Bank Pictures/BBC) In short: no. Nelson-Joyce’s character, Michael Kavanagh, formerly Phelan’s right-hand man, is the obvious heir apparent, but he has no blood connection to Phelan. The crime boss’s bullish, brawny son Jamie (Jack McMullen) does. The battle between them is at first a psychological one, but by the first series’ end, turns physical – with fists, in a cage. “It is quite violent, yeah,” Nelson-Joyce acknowledges, with a certain pride. But for all its swaggering machismo, the women in This City Is Ours – Ronnie’s wife Elaine (Julie Graham), his niece Rachel (Laura Aikman) – are every bit as scheming and ambitious. The battle for supremacy continues in the second series, and is very often steered by the women, while several of their male counterparts are seen longing for a relaxing bath, hoovering the upstairs hallway, and changing the cat litter. When Michael is not busy imposing his authority, he and his girlfriend Diana (Hannah Onslow) are struggling to conceive via IVF. Michael would like a baby girl. “It’s a brilliant script, isn’t it?” says Nelson-Joyce, complimenting show creator Stephen Butchard. “The people in this world,” he continues, “they have to be quite clever, and business savvy. And they are. Michael, Jamie, and everyone around them, they’re strategic, because they have to be. They know what they’re doing. I think that if they’d been to a better school, or pushed into a different form of education, they’d have gone a different way in life, found other lines of work.” Not the kind to land you in prison, he means. When Nelson-Joyce first read for the part in 2023, he insisted to the producers that he was the right man for the job. It took him eight months to convince them. “They liked me, but they wanted someone more well-known. I wouldn’t take no for an answer, though. I was resilient. Had to be.” Nelson-Joyce was born and raised in Walton, Liverpool. His mother was a factory worker, his father tiled walls for the city council. He went through school with undiagnosed dyslexia but insists that “I knew no different, so it was fine. School for me was social. I hung around with my mates, played footie, had a laugh.” He left at 15, one year earlier than he should have. When I ask why, he gets sheepish, as if considering quite how much he should tell me, or confess to. “Look,” he says, “I wasn’t a bad kid. I was just… cheeky.” Leaving school without qualifications wasn’t ideal, but his former English teacher recommended drama school to him. Why did he listen to her? “I fancied her,” he says, laughing. The more he considered her suggestion, the more it appealed, though he had to be secretive about it. Young people round his way tended to consider acting the highfalutin ambition of those from perhaps nicer neighbourhoods, with greater means. When one friend did find out, he said to Nelson-Joyce: “Are you going to wear a f**king tutu?” It was at drama school that he took his mother’s maiden name, Nelson, and sandwiched it between his own names, lest anyone confuse him with the long-dead author of Ulysses. He cites Stephen Graham – with whom he would act in the BBC prison drama Time, and, later, A Thousand Blows – as one of the working-class actors responsible for making acting seem like a viable ambition “for kids like me. There’s less stigma these days. It’s not just for the elite, acting, it’s for everyone.” Opposite his idol Stephen Graham in ‘A Thousand Blows’ (Photo: Robert Viglasky/Disney+) Nelson-Joyce first encountered his acting idol in a branch of Nando’s. Nervously, he approached Graham, who was dining with his wife Hannah Walters, to tell him: “You’re the reason I got into acting.” They first worked together in the 2017 TV drama Little Boy Blue, in which Nelson-Joyce played a gang member. “That was a pivotal moment for me,” he says. After Little Boy Blue, he went on to appear with similar criminal intent in shows like The Responder and The Gold. But it’s in This City Is Ours that he gets to play the lead for the first time. “And I’m enjoying it!” Those initial convictions of his have been proved right. He’s perfect in the role of de facto godfather Michael Kavanagh. While the character may reveal a sensitive side to his girlfriend, he’s an otherwise terrifying presence, a panther made flesh. When I tell him this, he laughs. “You’re not the first person to say I look scary. But, listen, ask anyone who knows me, and they’ll tell you I’m a big softie. I love my animals, I love my nephews, I love music.” This notionally softer side, however, has been comprehensively concealed. Frankly, who’d believe it of him? I wonder whether he’s ever fearful of becoming type-cast, having played quite so many bruisers on screen? Before I’ve even finished asking the question, he’s nodding, insisting that he wants now to reveal other facets of his personality. “There’s lots of different sides to me, you know? I can play vulnerable, I can show unrequited love.” He’d also like to try his hand at comedy. For the past few years now, he has been linked to a proposed biopic of Mancunian band Happy Mondays’ dancing talisman, Bez. “I got to meet him, and spend a little time with him, and he’s absolutely lovely, heart of gold,” Nelson-Joyce says. “He talked to me about his bees.” Bez liked him, and approved of the casting – but with one caveat. “He said to me, I can’t believe I’ve got a f**king Scouse playing me…” All episodes of ‘This City Is Ours’ are available on BBC iPlayer now