David Harewood is still changing the game

David Harewood is scrolling through his phone, searching for the music that crystallised his new Channel 4 legal drama Pierre. Then he happens upon it: French DJ St Germain’s jazz-house fusion track ‘Rose Rouge’. Playing it out of his phone’s speaker, its infectious rhythm filling our quiet corner of a South London branch of Soho House, a big grin crosses his face. “So late ’70s, jazzy, New York,” he muses, almost to himself. “People just wandering around, busy.” READ MORE: The best TV shows of 2026… so far! This was not the refrain we’d associate with Pierre, a dignified-if-flawed British duty solicitor who “keeps chasing justice” or with the Birmingham-born Harewood, who grew up in the early ’80s, listening to The Specials and the synth sounds of OMD and Heaven 17. “It just felt right for the character because it’s percussive, and the story for me is percussive,” he says, noting just how its rhythms fit Pierre’s lifestyle, rushing from one case to the next. Dressed today in a cap that might give the Peaky Blinders a run for their money, Harewood is bursting with pride over Pierre. Remarkably, after nearly forty years in the industry with roles in Homeland and Supergirl, as well a...