He went from being the east London boy who was expelled from school to becoming the Bafta award‑winning star of Alien: Romulus. Ahead of his prison drama Wasteman, David Jonsson discusses the pressures of being a leading Black British actor

David Jonsson is the kind of actor who disappears so completely into his roles that it’s easy to forget you’re watching the same person each time. In Rye Lane, he’s a lovestruck south Londoner; in Industry, an Etonian banker with ice in his veins; in Alien: Romulus, a paranoid android. He’s now starring as heroin addict Taylor in the ultraviolent British prison drama Wasteman and, for the first time, the 32-year-old actor claims he is playing something close to himself. “This is the most personal role I’ve done,” he says. “It’s so messed up because it’s a dark story about rehabilitation and addiction, but I know these men really well. Especially when you’re growing up somewhere like where I did.”

We meet on a Friday afternoon at a photo studio in Islington, closer to where Jonsson lives now in north London than to Custom House in the East End, where he grew up. He arrives wearing a beanie pulled tight over his cornrows and a windbreaker. He looks stylish but carries a delicate shyness that mirrors his character’s air of desperation. Wasteman, which opens this month after a critically acclaimed festival run that netted five British Independent Film awards (Bifa) nominations including best lead performance for Jonsson, tells the story of Taylor, a young father who has spent 13 years in prison for a crime he committed as a teenager. In the film’s unflinching depiction of the British prison system, he’s referred to as a “nitty” – UK slang for a desperate, pathetic drug addict. Jonsson lost 1.8 stone to embody Taylor’s “wasted” physique. “I was mawga, properly skinny,” he says, slipping into patois.

He didn’t look like a stereotypical ‘drug addict’, but when he fled to South Africa with all our savings it was obvious that is what he had become

When I tell people that a drug addiction nearly killed my dad, I know what most of them are thinking. Heroin. Crack. Maybe meth or ket. Those substances that steal your soul and slowly wreak havoc on your body. They’re imagining Trainspotting; too-skinny frames and protruding hip bones, the physical effects of addiction that are impossible to miss.

But that isn’t how it played out in my family.

Lego and Crocs have joined forces to create oversized Lego-shaped shoes. Are they as ridiculous as they sound? We sent our most podophilic writer to find out

Everyone knows that standing on Lego is the worst pain known to man, but standing in Lego Crocs – how bad can they be? And are they really worth £199? I got hold of a prototype pair to test how my feet would survive.

The trees morph into sand dunes to protect homes on the seafront against rising sea levels and serve as habitat for rare species

Britain’s fight against climate breakdown may usually look like windfarms or solar energy. But on miles of Lancashire coast the frontline is rather more festive.

Tens of thousands of discarded Christmas trees have been partially buried on beaches south of Blackpool as a frontier against rising sea levels.

Monogamy may be held up as an ideal, but evolution has other ideas

Most of us know people in committed relationships, even lifelong marriages. And we also know stories about relationship transgressions, of partnerships tested or broken by infidelity.

As an evolutionary biologist who studies sex and relationships, I’m fascinated by these two truths. We humans make romantic commitments to each other – and some also break those commitments by cheating.

The Beloved author’s refusal to conform made her a hero to many – and the only black female writer to have won a Nobel prize in literature

There are many ways to be difficult in this world. You can be demanding, inconvenient, stubborn, complicated, troublesome, baffling, illegible. Black womanhood is one place where all these forms of difficulty overlap. I feel like I have always known this; I have been called difficult more times in my life than I can count. But I only began to understand – to discover the meanings and uses of – my own difficulty because of Toni Morrison.

Morrison has shaped the way we think about everything from literature to politics, criticism to ethics, to the responsibilities of making art. In 1993 she became the only black woman ever to win the Nobel prize in literature. But the facts remain: she is difficult to read. She is difficult to teach. Notwithstanding the voluminous train of profiles, reviews and scholarly analysis that she drags behind her, she is difficult to write about. More to the point, she is our only truly canonical black female writer – and her work is highly complex.

High court said the then home secretary had not followed her own policies when bringing in the ban last summer

Shadow foreign secretary, Priti Patel, said she was “appalled” by the high court’s ruling on Friday that the proscription of Palestine Action was unlawful and supports the government’s intention to appeal against the decision (see post at 09.35 for more details).

Speaking to Sky News this morning, Patel, a former home secretary between July 2019 and Septmeber 2022, said:

I’m pretty appalled by that ruling, and clearly it’s now going to be subject to a legal appeal. And I think it’s right that it should be appealed …

It is right that they feel the full force of our laws, including the proscription that has been put in place. They are on par with how terrorist organisations conduct themselves, and they plan their attacks.

Four directors of communications

Two chiefs of staff

Two cabinet secretaries

US ambassador

EU’s foreign policy chief says many countries still ‘want to join our club’

EU’s Kallas appears to be slightly sceptical about the idea of appointing an EU envoy for talks on ending the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

She earlier said that “what matters more than having a seat at the table is knowing what to ask [for] when you are sitting there.”

“That’s why I proposed to the member states [a] concrete mandate [of] the asks that we would have to Russia. So whoever goes to that table, whether it’s individually or bilaterally, they should ask [for] these things from the Russians.

We have a saying in Estonian that if you demand a lot, you get little; if you demand little, you get nothing, and if you demand nothing, you pay on top.”

Egyptian with history of disruptive behaviour was taken to hospital and then returned to detention

A Home Office private deportation flight for one man had to be cancelled on Thursday morning after he was able to swallow a lithium vape battery shortly before being taken to the plane.

Officials are now investigating the circumstances around the incident. The man, an Egyptian foreign national offender with a history of being disruptive during removal attempts, was due to take a flight from the UK via Albania to Egypt.

Trades Union Congress says women have worked a month and a half for free this year and legislation is needed

Women in the UK will not be paid the same as men until 2056 at the current rate of progress, according to a Trades Union Congress report.

The gender pay gap, which stands at £2,548 a year, means that women have in effect worked for free so far this year, the TUC said.