David Harewood is the man behind the desk who has to say no, and his gift is to make the no cost him something. Television has kept him in offices ever since it noticed, and we wish the offices were larger.
Fi1m perspective
In Homeland (2011), David Harewood plays David Estes, the boss who has to say no. It is the least loved job in a spy story: the man behind the desk exists so that Claire Danes can be right and he can be wrong, week after week. Harewood does not play it that way. He plays a man who has read the file and reached a conclusion he does not enjoy, and he delivers the refusal as a decision rather than a reflex. We found ourselves on his side in rooms where the script plainly was not, and it was because he let every no visibly cost him something. Our review said Estes was given more decency than that job usually gets; most of it came from Harewood.
The habit started on stage. He trained at RADA and began working in 1990, and in 1997 he was the first Black actor to play Othello at the National Theatre. Television and film here were slower to find him parts of that size, and he has said so: "It’s almost impossible for me to play a role of this magnitude in the U.K." Blood Diamond (2006) gave him Captain Poison, opposite Leonardo DiCaprio, and then Homeland gave him Estes and an American career. He spent six years on Supergirl (2015 to 2021) as J'onn J'onzz, the Martian Manhunter, and directed episodes of it, which is not the usual path for the man in the office. He came home for The Night Manager (2016), as Joel Steadman in Susanne Bier's series.
Our review of The Night Manager did not single him out, and that is the risk of the kind of actor he is. He is good at intelligence men, police officers, people with clearance, and he is cast that way often enough that a viewer can stop noticing him doing it. The gravity is real: he listens like a man who will be blamed for whatever happens next, and he never asks for our sympathy, which is why we give it. What we have not seen enough of, on screen at least, is what happens when the desk is taken away. The stage has had that from him; the camera has mostly had the desk.
He was appointed president of RADA, the school he trained at, in 2024. The first three seasons of Homeland remain the place to watch him, and to notice how much of a scene he holds while the camera is on someone else.
Biography
David Harewood is an English actor. Born on 8 December 1965 in Small Heath, Birmingham, he trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.
He is known for his television roles as David Estes in Homeland (2011–2012) and J'onn J'onzz / Martian Manhunter and Hank Henshaw in Supergirl (2015–2021). Film credits include Captain Poison in Blood Diamond (2006). He appeared as Joel Steadman in The Night Manager (2016). In 1997 he became the first Black actor to play Othello at the National Theatre.
Harewood has presented BBC documentaries on mental health and race. He was appointed president of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in 2024 and received an OBE.
