Damson Idris on Racing, Roots, & Red Carpets

Matt Bubbers June 9, 2025

Damson Idris is about to be a movie star. The 33-year-old actor from London stars opposite Brad Pitt in F1, a high-stakes blockbuster with a reported budget in excess of $300 million USD from the director (Joseph Kosinski) and producer (Jerry Bruckheimer) behind Top Gun: Maverick. Not only is this by far the biggest movie of Idris’s ascendant career, but it’s also among the most expensive productions of Pitt’s long tenure in Hollywood.

So, yes, F1 is massive. It’s the kind of life-changing, career-altering role that most actors simply never get. It’s not a superhero movie. It’s not a sequel. It wasn’t shot on a green screen but in real race cars at real F1 races. It hits theatres on June 27, but when we spoke in April ahead of the release, Idris is in his hometown of London, doing photo shoots and press ahead of the premiere, and fielding requests from his extended family for tickets.

“So, everyone’s texting me like, ‘Make sure I get a ticket!’ But I’m the youngest of six, you know. I got my mum, then I’ve got like 17 nieces and nephews, you know, so everyone’s hitting me like, ‘Yeah, I’m coming, I’m coming,’” Idris laughs. It’s a good problem to have. “I’m sure I’ll figure it out,” he adds, “and if I can’t get everyone to the premier then I’ll throw my own premiere, just like a big Idris premiere.”

The whole movie is kind of a “big Idris premiere.” It’s his debut on a higher plane of Hollywood existence, and there’s no telling how high he’ll go from here.

“It definitely feels like a big step,” Idris says of F1. “But at the same time, it was something that I prayed for. I remember saying to myself, ‘I’m ready.’”

“No matter how far I get in my career, I’m never going to forget where I came from.”

Damson Idris

That’s not to imply he hasn’t been in big projects before; he’s been working. There was an episode of Black Mirror, the 2018 thriller The Commuter starring Liam Neeson, and the dystopian Netflix war movie Outside the Wire in which Idris played opposite Anthony Mackie. Idris also runs in big circles, being pals with Tyler, The Creator and going from box to box at the Super Bowl, popping up with Rihanna, Daniel Kaluuya, Jay-Z, and LeBron James.

Still, Idris is probably best known for his six seasons on the FX drama Snowfall, playing the lead role in the series created by the late great John Singleton. It was a role and a show that never really received the attention it deserved from the media, and certainly not from the awards circuit, but Snowfall had a devout fanbase.

“There’s kids who come up to me saying my monologues [from the show],” Idris says. “I wanted to get into movies with the same gravitas and respect that Snowfall holds amongst my community. […] Those are the roles I wanted to chase.”

Idris was born in Peckham, an area in South London with many first-generation immigrants and strong African and Afro-Caribbean communities. He’s previously described where he grew up as something like the South Central Los Angeles of London, and as a great place to be a kid and run around with your friends.

“When you have a big family, I do believe I’m fortunate in the fact that being the youngest, you’re kind of shielded away from some of the realities and everything is fun. You know, I just remember growing up with a lot of love,” he says.

“That environment has helped me to be able to be a chameleon, and move through this world with empathy.”

Damson Idris on growing up in Peckham, South London.

Asked what that upbringing gave him, he thinks for a moment and answers: “perspective.” You don’t need to go far in London to see someone living a completely different existence, he says by way of explanation.

“I’m first-generation British, my mom is Nigerian, and she’d throw African parties in the house and Fela Kuti’s playing,” Idris recalls. At the same time, he remembers being immersed in American culture, the movies, and music. Then, riding on buses and trains, he’d be around bankers, or guys in tracksuits.

“That environment has helped me to be able to be a chameleon, and move through this world with empathy,” he says. “No matter how far I get in my career, I’m never going to forget where I came from.”

After his soccer career came to an end — one day he realized he’d never be as good as Lionel Messi — Idris studied acting and fell in love with it.

What inspired him back then, in drama school? “Harry Potter,” he says deadpan, before breaking into a cackle.

“I actually thought maybe I’d be a drama teacher,” he admits. But after his first role in a play, agents came knocking.

After landing Snowfall — the first season aired in 2017 — Idris went out and bought himself a used BMW M3 convertible with the first paycheque. A few of his older brothers were “car obsessed.” One had a Porsche. The other had an Audi R8. “I was 23 or 24. I went and got the M3 and all my brothers were like, ‘Let’s race!’ ” he says, before quickly adding that they always drove the speed limit and followed the rules.

“It was deep-end, but it was cool, and yeah I dropped some tears when I sold it,” he says of the M3. After that, as his acting career continued its upward trajectory, he bought a string of sports cars: a Mercedes-AMG GT, and Porsche 911 GTS.

Sheer talent and work ethic have afforded Idris toys worthy of a Hollywood star. He fits the role so naturally — it’s easy to forget that it wasn’t too long ago that he was merely a young boy in South London watching his now-co-stars from the sidelines.

“First time I ever saw Brad Pitt on film was probably Troy,” Idris says, perfectly aging himself as having come up in Pitt’s Y2K frosted-tips Aniston era.

He almost played alongside Pitt in the 2022 Netflix action-comedy, Bullet Train but couldn’t do it because of Snowfall’s schedule and COVID-19. “I was like, man, that was my opportunity! And then, boom, along came F1. So, God had a different plan for me,” says Idris. Putting on a Texan accent he quips, “Never in my wildest dreams did I think I’m gonna be working with Achilles!”

Landing the starring role in F1, out of what must’ve been hundreds (perhaps thousands) of hopeful actors, involved script reads and then a driving test in F3000 and Palmer JP-LM race cars on track. “So, while internally I was losing my mind, I had to give them a straight face and be like, ‘Yeah, I could do that.’”

Researching the role involved putting in time in a racing simulator and, of course, playing video games. “Before even getting the part — this has to be the most insane manifestation ever — I downloaded the Formula One game and I created a fake character called Joshua Pearce,” which is his character in the film. “Yes, and I won a championship.”

All that gaming, combined with his early (and of course very law-abiding) driving experience in all those fast cars with his brothers, paid off.

“How I am right now is how I’m going to be when I’m 90 with 10 Oscars, or no Oscars. I’m still going to be that humble Southeast London boy, you know, who just wants to make his family happy.”

Damson Idris

When it came to the filming of F1, well, there’s a good reason nobody has made a decent F1 film since the 1966 John Frankenheimer classic Grand Prix: it’s hard. F1 is already a huge travelling circus, and throwing a big Hollywood movie crew into a race weekend has all the hallmarks of a terrible idea. But, having seen how the success of Netflix’s Drive to Survive docuseries took the sport from a niche player to a major business in North America, the powers that be in F1 wisely embraced the Pitt production.

The film crew shot during and around real F1 races all over the world.

“The beauty of it was that we got to go ahead of the Grand Prix. We’d train at the track, and then we’d have these 10-minute slots during the race weekend to get our shots with the crowd, with the mayhem of Formula One,” he explained. At times, Pitt and Idris would be in their F1 cars — actually F2 made to look the part — on the starting grid with Lewis Hamilton, Max Verstappen, Lando Norris, and all the rest.

“It’s the most fun I’ve ever had making a movie ever,” Idris says.

And now, Damson Idris is a movie star.

“As long as I kept quiet and let my work do the talking, as long as I prepared today for what I may need or be in 20 years, I knew this career would take me as far as I wanted it to take me.”

Damson Idris

He’s not on a spending spree — which, be real, is absolutely what most of us would do — far from it. “I’m not spending money on nothing,” he says. “I’ve got a big family and although they don’t ask for it, I just want to make their lives as cool as possible.”

Despite the fact his career has been on a singularly skyward trajectory as an up-and-coming actor, Idris is aware things can turn.

“How I am right now is how I’m going to be when I’m 90 with 10 Oscars, or no Oscars. I’m still going to be that humble Southeast London boy, you know, who just wants to make his family happy.” For his next car, he’s thinking it’ll be something humble, to balance out the movie-stardom and fame.

“Perspective,” he declares. “That’s the title of this whole interview: perspective.”

Was being a movie star always the goal, even as a young drama student? Idris smiles, looks away, and sidesteps the question.

“I knew from the very beginning,” he says in a slow, deliberate cadence, “that as long as I kept quiet and let my work do the talking, as long as I prepared today for what I may need or be in 20 years, I knew this career would take me as far as I wanted it to take me.”