Mr Paapa Essiedu’s introduction to fashion was at his childhood kitchen table in north-east London, where his mum, a designer and fashion and design teacher, would make clothes. “From when I was little, our kitchen – which wasn’t a big kitchen, we didn’t live in a big house – was a huge table, which she’d use for pattern cutting and, like, an industrial sewing machine. It was basically 80 per cent clothes-making equipment and 20 per cent a microwave,” he emphasises. “So, it’s been a presence in my life from when I was young.”

That presence has grown into an appreciation of the ways that fashion and style can be a boundary-pushing expression of art and culture. The British-Ghanaian actor, 31, has been a thrilling figure on the awards-ceremony circuit in the past year, following his widely hailed role in 2020’s I May Destroy You. “There’s something about fashion that transcends a lot of the more stringent social expectations that we have, which I really think is cool,” he says.

These aforementioned red-carpet ensembles have captured the attention of the fashion industry, from the custom rust-hued Valentino couture suit that he wore to the Bafta awards – on which he collaborated with creative director Mr Pierpaolo Piccioli – to a tailored Gucci tux in a midnight blue-purple silk for the Emmys. He works with the stylist Ms Rose Forde, who lives around the corner from him in north London. “We talk a lot about shape and silhouette and cut,” he says, adding that he likely gets his creative eye from his mum, who passed away in his first year of drama school.

“I wouldn’t say I’m a provocateur or anything like that. I actually don’t like the idea of people even looking at me,” Essiedu insists, leaning back into the sofa of the Soho hotel that we’re having breakfast in, after his morning workout nearby. “It’s obviously counter to my actual job, [but] I really hate it.”

He is driven to push the limits of expectations though, across all elements of his work. “I do like the idea of stretching people’s paradigms of what’s possible: for men, for Black men, for people of a certain class structure. You know? I feel like we’re living in a time when we can really strive to stamp our individuality on the moment by what we do, by our actions. And I feel that can happen with the image you project as well… I want to look like what I want to look like, and I should be allowed to do that.”

Since his award-winning breakthrough playing Hamlet for the Royal Shakespeare Company in 2016, Essiedu has quickly risen through the ranks of the British arts scene. He has worked hard to get here, and attributes his committed work ethic to the environment he grew up in. “I wanted to achieve, but maybe the circumstances weren’t set up for me to do that easily, so I had to work quite hard to do it.”

He recalls arriving at drama school, having only been in one school play before. “People were talking about plays and actors and films and teachers, and I did not know any of that stuff,” he says. “I was, like, 500 metres behind everybody else, so even through that I had to work harder to get to the same level as my peers… And it felt like that to me at every stage of my career.”

Despite the turbo-charged career boost of Ms Michaela Coel’s I May Destroy You, Essiedu is conscious of making the most of the moment. “I’ve perennially got this feeling of, this might never happen again, this might be the only time,” he says, with a good-humoured and characteristic lack of ego. “If you’re DiCaprio, you know you’re probably going to get invited to every Oscar event for the rest of your life, [so] it’s probably all right if you just wear a suit, do you know what I mean?”

It’s to the stage that he returns first in 2022. We’re talking a few days before he starts rehearsals at The Old Vic for A Number, Ms Caryl Churchill’s two-hander, set in the near future, which explores a father-son relationship and issues of identity and human cloning. Getting back into the theatre, after the pandemic hiatus, is exciting. “There is still an energy that can be created in group communion that just doesn’t slap in the same way when you’re at home by yourself,” he says. “There’s something about the collective that is magical… There’s something primal about it.”

He is passionate about ensuring that experiences in the creative industries are made more widely accessible – a resolve he found was shared by the play’s director, Ms Lyndsey Turner. “We were talking about, how can we create a space that feels democratic and egalitarian,” Essiedu explains. The result is a programme offering paid opportunities in backstage roles on the production to young people from backgrounds that are underrepresented in the arts. “It’s an investment,” he says. “The issues [of inequality] are endemic and they are pretty universal, so we’ve got to do what we can when we’re put in positions where we can action those things.”

While theatre is where he cut his teeth, the past two years have seen the actor add to an impressive roster of TV roles: from Sky’s Gangs Of London to Channel 5 drama Anne Boleyn and, of course, I May Destroy You. The resonance of the latter, with its deeply evocative storylines around sexual assault, trauma and consent, has continued to grow.

Reflecting on it now, there is rightful, palpable pride in the ground it has broken. “I feel like that show was brave: its commitment to those stories, those experiences, those characters.” The responsibility he felt to his role was huge, and particularly “because the character’s experience is not my lived experience,” he considers of playing Kwame, a young gay man who is sexually assaulted while on a Grindr meet. “My responsibility was to explore and share his humanity, so that’s what I was thinking about and spent a lot of time preparing… To come up with something that felt true and honest. I suppose the biggest thing [it] demanded was vulnerability.”

A degree of the responsibility he felt also came from his friendship with Coel, which goes back to their time together at Guildhall School of Music & Drama. “She’s someone I love so much, and I wanted to contribute to her success,” he says. “She is relentlessly courageous and believes in the underdog, or the unrepresented.”

“She’s also an amazing collaborator,” he continues. “She hasn’t got a huge ego, she wants to share, she wants to use the people she’s working with to make the highest common denominator… She helped me a lot, and I think I helped her, too.”

His own career choices are driven from feeling “like my existence in the world is political, so that can’t help but influence the things that I’m interested in. There is often a political dimension to my decision-making process, be it great or small.”

Later this year, he will star in Mr Joe Barton’s action thriller The Lazarus Project, an eight-part Sky drama that tackles the aftermath of a global catastrophe. “It’s got this end-of-the-world type motif in it, but it’s fundamentally a love story… A story about what one will do for those that they love,” he explains. “It’s really what we’re going through right now. I suppose the question that it posits is: can love, the relationships between people, overarch those fears and that kind of low-level existential dread?”

What’s his verdict? He bursts out laughing. “I don’t want to freak out readers.”

He takes a beat to reflect. “I do think people do insane things for love, in a sad way and in a happy way. And, to be honest, it’s because of those things that surely we should be fighting to save the planet [and] fighting to protect each other, because we fucking love each other. So, it’s always hopeful, without maybe being optimistic. I’m a hopeful man, but I don’t know if I’m an optimist.”

With a demanding work schedule, downtime is a rarity for Essiedu. He does factor in exercise and therapy every week though, which is how he prioritises his mental health. The latter is “expensive, but an investment” and something he finds useful for “maintenance… And providing context and perspective”.

He also reflects on three ways that someone once told him to attain joy in life. “One is oxygen, so you need to breathe really deeply, feed your body with oxygen, so if that’s going for a run, going out into a field, just breathe. Another is food; eat the food that you like, that’s good for you and serves your body. And the other thing is collaboration and the time you spend with people, [how you] collaborate with them. If you’re trying to build something, build it together… If I’m honest, I do try to practise those things.”

“I’m not self-helpy, but it’s the same as that thing of dance in your room, move your body.” He pauses. “I don’t have it, like, posted on my wall,” he says, chuckling.

It is, however, an ethos writ large in Essiedu’s life. To navigate an industry that can “really drag you down”, he cultivates strong, supportive relationships. “I try to foster a community of either healthy competition or communal support, so I love to celebrate people,” he shares. “I like to surround myself with people who would do the same for me.”

It’s that spirit of collaboration, from the screen to the stage and to the red carpet, that serves Essiedu well. “It’s about creating a base from which you can feel, like, concrete steady,” he concludes, “but also find joy in what you do and what others do.”