Is that why you nearly quit?

I wasn’t getting satisfying work. It was stressful to be so poor all the time. I started to think I was just not very good and maybe I was wasting my time. So I applied to be a teacher. While I was applying, my mother told me to write the show I’d always wanted to. She said I had to finish on a positive note, otherwise I’d regret it. When I started writing Josephine And I it just came out of me so fast, like I’d been waiting for it for years. I put it on in a pub in Camden. It went completely mad after that.

What was the fascination with Josephine Baker?

I used to watch the matinees on C4 when I was six. I always wanted to be Judy [Garland] or Doris [Day], the star. I was aware these women didn’t look like me. One afternoon I saw Zouzou, a musical Josephine did in the 30s. There she was on the screen – a black woman, who looked like me, and she wasn’t the maid or nanny. She was wearing fur and diamonds with 50 white guys in top hats dancing around her. I was like, “Mum! You have to see this!”

And she stayed with you?

When I got older, I researched her life. She adopted 12 children, was a spy in the French resistance, the highest paid chorus girl on Broadway at the age of 19. She bravely resisted being told what to do. I found that inspiring because I don’t fit in anybody’s box. I’m just an artist.

Deadwater Fell star Cush Jumbo on representation, feeling fearless and meeting the Queen