Patrick Robinson on the Relevance of “Sitting in Limbo”

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: Obviously, this film was shot way before the George Floyd killing and the national and international movement that that has sparked. How do you feel about this happening and airing now?

PATRICK ROBINSON, ACTOR, “SITTING IN LIMBO”: Well, it’s serendipitous, I feel, because it was due to go out a lot earlier than it went out. So, I suppose it’s just — the timing has been quite crucial to crystallize what’s happening in the world, and obviously, this is just one story, one scandal perpetrated by the British government.

AMANPOUR: So, tell me about it. What made you want to take this role? Tell me, you know, for viewers who might not know as much about Windrush as you do, what was the heart of the matter that attracted you to this role?

ROBINSON: Well, the heart is because of it’s what you may call my heritage. I am West Indian, I’m Jamaican, and I’m part of that troupe of folk that obviously came to the U.K. in the late ’40s, ’50s, ’60s, ’70s, and I’m one of the children of that generation, if you like. So, it could have been me or my elder brothers and sisters that this could have happened to. It’s just by chance that I got a passport in the, you know, 1980s, and that was that. And that’s kind of what says, you know, you’ve got a system in place which obviously everyone is not quite aware of. If you think about people coming from the colonies, as it was then, that they didn’t believe that they were part of Britain because it was always stated that, you know, England was the mother country. And all the colonies, all the people, were the British subjects. So, of course, it’s something which hits home for me very hard, because it’s part of my family.