top. Soraya Oronti jeans. The Attico @ Designer Exchange
Jessica Brown Findlay ‘s journey to Charlotte in ‘Silo’ feels almost serendipitous. Years before joining the show, she auditioned for its first season but didn’t get the role.
Then, after watching and falling in love with the series, she received an unexpected call from her agents: writer/creator Graham Yost wanted her to play Charlotte, the mysterious and confident Navy pilot at the center of the Season 3 flashback timeline. It was a second chance to enter the dystopian world she’d already admired and one she leapt at.
Brown Findlay connected with Charlotte almost immediately, finding something familiar beneath the character’s contradictions. Across the season, she brings an instinctive, quietly powerful presence to a woman grappling with memory, identity, loyalty and the meaning of truth.
When Schön! speaks with her, Brown Findlay is tucked into a cozy corner of a holiday rental, where she and her family are spending one of their increasingly precious weekends away from London. With work about to begin again, they’re making the most of these stolen stretches of time together, creating the kind of memories that, as it turns out, are particularly fitting for a conversation about ‘Silo’.
jacket. Gucci @ Designer Exchange opposite body. Eres
How did you find out about Silo, and what made you interested in joining the show?
Years ago, before Silo came out, I auditioned for a role in the first season and didn’t get it. If you have your self-protection switched on as an actor, when you don’t get something, you respectfully just let it go.
A few years later, I was watching a bunch of shows at the Edinburgh Fringe with a friend. I had these two little nights away, which, with kids, felt extraordinary—just two nights away with a mate, watching comedy.
Then I got a phone call from my agents: “Do you remember Silo?” I was like, [cheekily] “Yeah, I do.”
I’d watched the first season and absolutely adored it. I thought it was brilliant.
When you read something great, you have to take your ego out of it, and I really wanted to watch it. I loved watching Silo.
Then they said, “Well, Graham Yost, the creator, wants you to play Charlotte.” That blew my mind because it’s so rare. A very familiar phrase from actors from their agents is, “Well, you never know where it could lead.” Often, it doesn’t really lead anywhere.
This led somewhere.
I was offered the role of Charlotte from an audition I’d done years before. My life had changed astronomically between auditioning for that first role and getting this one.
I’m so glad the opportunity came back around because you play Charlotte beautifully. She’s such an interesting character. We get glimpses of her in the first couple of episodes, and as the season has progressed, she’s become even more fascinating. What drew you to Charlotte and made you want to play her?
I leapt at the role like… like a panther! I couldn’t believe what it felt like to then read this character. When you audition for things, you sometimes shoehorn yourself into thinking that you could be like the character you’re playing. More often than not, you’ve either deeply connected with the character or you haven’t.
Charlotte, as she was written in the scripts for season three, I just got. I got her immediately. It felt like the undercurrent of Charlotte was somehow like me in a way that I wouldn’t even have been able to express to someone else. She’s intrinsically different from me in so many ways, but there was something about her that I understood.
To join Silo, something I’ve adored and admired, and then to play Charlotte—to explore a character all the way around the edge and eventually, in season four, get to the zest of her—is honestly mind-blowing. It’s just been amazing.
dress + shoes. Stella McCartney opposite dress. Lurline
You mentioned Charlotte is a character whose peripheries we get to see. You portray so much about her with so little—the way she’s dressed, the way she moves, her intuition, groundedness, confidence, and intelligence. So much comes through in your performance. Could you talk about how you embodied and presented Charlotte on screen?
I’ m so glad! She is such a bag of contradictions.
She is sort of unparented and yet, as a younger sibling, insists on parenting her older brother. She is institutionalized in such conformity and conservatism in her job, yet authority from a bad place riles her in a way that cannot be repressed.
She will wear the uniform and conform in every way that you can imagine, but I also imagine her on the first big float at Gay Pride. She’s sort of all those things at once.
There is something about her that I don’t just want to call a soul. It’s as deep as that.
There is also this thing within the silo that is perhaps misunderstood. The idea is that we can all have rules, and we’re all given the same prospect.
But if you order people, if you make some people live in the “down deep” and let some people live “up top,” there’s something so human about the curiosity of “other.” Of “What is that?” or “What is this?” She has that in spades, and she absolutely does not abide cruelty toward humans for the sake of ego. If something feels unjust, she’ll explode herself before a single person even stubs their toe.
It’s not a martyr space; she’s not aware of it. There is just something in her that is pesky and cheeky, and under pressure, she absolutely becomes like a force field.
I think for a lot of people, if they lost a lot of their memory and then were given a lot of it back, but the really painful stuff was held from them, there are a lot of us who would think, “Well, wouldn’t that be wonderful?” In a weird, very Black Mirror-esque way. Charlotte is someone who goes, “No, I need to understand all the darkness,” because that’s the only way for someone like her.
That makes her who she is, too.
It was so extraordinary exploring that as an actor, knowing all of that and then having to go to work. My first day was when I was in the wheelchair, looking at a fellow actor and going, “I don’t know who you are.” But I knew everything.
Having to not express any of it was really tough. It was also really exciting to play someone like that, who would choose to have all of it and not even delete one percent of the sadness in our lives.
I think most people would probably choose to exist in the light, and she’s like, “No, give me all of it.” It’s brave. It’s very faithful.
corset + skirt. Lurline opposite top. Wolford skirt. Zimmerman shoes. Kalda
There’s a resilience to Charlotte. Having her memory erased and then getting it back would be heavy for anyone. Could you talk about the memory-loss scenes and the dynamic between Daniel, Victor, and Helen during that time?
There’s a reason why Charlotte reached out to Helen. When we find out why Helen was blacklisted, I’m sure Charlotte had inside information about that.
For someone to be that morally profound would make Charlotte trust her intrinsically. For Daniel, he’s her only link.
He’s her entire family. He’s the only one.
It’s like when someone passes away: if you were the only person who knew them, all the stories die with you. That’s sort of how he feels about replacing or making sure that she has her memories.
He knows she would want to have them.
Do you know “the body keeps the score?” It’s a really interesting thing. You can know something in a narrative way that you can describe, but you can also know something in your body. It was a really extraordinary thing to explore with the other actors. They’re telling you a narrative, but there would be this other inexplicable thing.
With Ash, who played Charlotte’s brother, I had this moment of deciding that our joints look the same. There’s this moment where he holds my hands, and it’s almost like, if our joints were the same, maybe it would feel like holding my father’s hands in a way that I wouldn’t be able to express, but would feel deep in the body’s physical memory of holding my father’s hands.
That would make me trust Daniel in a way that almost couldn’t be disputed. If he’s telling me something and I can feel this person who feels physically linked to something I can’t explain, I will believe him.
More than if someone serving me coffee said, “Oh, you always used to get a blueberry muffin.” I’d be like, “Did I? I don’t feel like that’s true.”
There was something about that which was really, really interesting, especially if you’re playing someone who’s forgotten everything as an actor. I had this rule in my head that I really didn’t want to interfere with other people’s processes.
With remembering and forgetting, there’s a lot of crossover. If I encroach too much on someone else’s idea of what I was, then it would fill in blanks for me that, in fact, I needed to keep empty for longer.
As season four came on, there was so much more to grapple with. In season three, so much of it is instinct. In a funny way, I had to sit much further back from everyone else’s history because the more I knew, the more I’d be pretending to forget.
top + trousers. A.W.A.K.E Mode opposite jacket. Jacob Cielecki top + trousers. A.W.A.K.E Mode earrings. Maison Lumiere
Did you and Rebecca Ferguson talk about playing characters who had lost their memories, given that Juliet and Charlotte go through similar experiences?
What was really interesting about season three was that there was no crossover in filming between the timelines because we’re not in the same silo. The way that Graham plots things and the way it’s written in the script, there’s so much there. When I was reading the way that she would react to something, without delving into someone else’s process, I was just trying to listen to what was on the page.
I’m sure there’s a world in which I could have been on the phone going, “Tell me how you’re doing this because I want to do it like you.” I was too shy to call. There was also something about the way it was written that made it so clear to me.
I don’t think I should’ve known too much about the way she, for example, physically reacted to a memory. These experiences can be the result of the same change happening to their brains on paper, but in fact, they’ll be really different because we’re all so different.
The nuance of our performances being ever so slightly different might mean, in a weird way, that our differences are the thing that joins us more. If we’re almost exactly the same, sometimes it can have the opposite effect.
In a different show, in a different context, I might have wanted to dive into someone else’s process more. Trusting is the thing I love about my job.
I’m sometimes, to a fault, incredibly trusting as a person. When I read something, I just listen to what feels right for me and trust that, if it’s really not the right reaction, one of the directors will say, “It’s not quite right,” and direct me.
All the directors have their own episodes, but everyone knows what’s come before and what will go after. They would just say, “Go more this way, not that way.” When I didn’t hear any big pushes towards a different direction, I just kept exploring.
In episode eight, Charlotte realizes her team was essentially used as cannon fodder, which ties back to her understanding of good and bad authority. Why do you think she agreed to join Silo in the first place?
It’s an amazing question because I had to play that scene like I had no idea if I’d been manipulated. It was almost like I’d made all these lists about why that happened. Then I had to forget them and ask, “Why does she say yes?” There were two reasons. One is massive, and one is really superficial.
The first one is that there’s something in her that is intrigued, and she’d always rather know all the facts. She’d rather take all the consequences—the pushback, being sued for billions of dollars because she’s rebelled—than not know.
I think she wants to know the truth and understand. The idea of being shut out might mean that other people will suffer.
Unquestionably, she’d rather be killed than have anyone else suffer. Weirdly, in that moment, that’s what she’s going towards.
The other isn’t superficial, but it’s just a big part of being human. She has instantly found someone in Anna. Call it being a hopeless romantic, but there’s also that part of her that is an absolute softie and loves love. She’s thinking, “If this woman is getting on this plane, I’m getting on this plane.”
It’s the hugeness of everything about being human, and also the deep part of being human. When you feel something like that, you don’t run. You go towards it.
jacket + belt. Gucci @ Designer Exchange shoes. Nomasei opposite top. Soraya Oronti jeans. The Attico @ Designer Exchange
Let’s get to the big reveal in the finale. We learn that Silo One is the command center running the operation. Why do they operate this way, with the cryo pods and memory wipes?
In Silo One, they’re having to function almost like robots, in the sense that they can’t have what came before. They’re using people who existed before all of this, but those people can’t have any of that history because loyalty, family, a sense of right and wrong, and the way society is structured in our world can’t serve the silo.
In the same way that the other silos have had rebellions over decades and generations, it’s part of the human condition to question your surroundings and want to evolve and grow. It’s irrepressible.
The only way for them to make people do things within the silo is to delete all their history. They listen to their instincts about who they are.
People are taken in there based on their skill sets and what they think they could achieve without their memories.
dress. Stella McCartney opposite corset + skirt. Lurline shoes. Ettore
We see Charlotte with David, which raises the question of why her and Daniel’s memories had to be manipulated so completely that they no longer recognize each other. How does that affect Charlotte, knowing that someone who loves her is still manipulating her?
Daniel is Charlotte’s only family, and because of what he was able to rejoin in her memory, they knew they’d have to completely erase as much as humanly possible from both of them for them to function the way they wanted. What’s really amazing is that within season three, you see these two come back to themselves, giving little glimpses of who they really are.
Then you see a brother and sister who share so much, who went through so much trauma and understood each other so brilliantly, just walk past each other. It’s a really haunting image.
As a jumping-off point into season four, it gives you so much understanding about how the silos have survived. If you can’t remember the person you shared your whole life with, growing up together, what Thanksgiving was like, what food tasted like, or what your favourite foods were, then you become a functional person.
He’s there as someone who can make cutthroat decisions, and Charlotte is there as someone who can make those decisions physically happen. They can do what’s needed in an academic way.
Yet in that moment, you see the difference between them. You see that he’s gone all in, and she can’t.
There is something in her that can’t be deleted.
That’s such a huge question about humanity. Why do some people run away, and why do some people run towards the fire?
To go, “I don’t care about me. I care about someone else I’ve never even met.” That question burns through into season four, which is so extraordinary.
I found it really hard to shoot those scenes because, by that point, Ash and I were such good friends, and I adore that man so much. I found it really hard not to smile at him.
Then Maddie Craven, who plays Victor, the three of us were trying to keep straight faces in a scene. At one point they had to pause and go, “Guys, you’re at work.
Like, stop it.” So that was really, really funny.
Season four has already been shot and is slated for release next year. Can you tease anything before we wrap?
It’s freaking brilliant! It’s so good. As a fan of the show, I was really happy I got to read all the seasons. I closed the last page of the last script, and it’s really, really good.
photography. Rhys Frampton fashion. Celine Sheridan talent. Jessica Brown Findlay hair. Davide Barbieri @ A-Frame Agency make up. Victoria Bond using Clé de Peau Beauté production. Clara La Rosa editor. Kelsey Barnes photography assistants. Ethan Elliott + Rory Ronnie fashion assistant. Janine Daruwalla interview. Suhaila
For Alexandre Nero , acting has always had a soundtrack. Before he became one of Brazil’s most recognizable television actors, Nero spent years making music, touring Brazil and Europe, and absorbing the rhythms that would eventually become part of his approach to performance. Today, he builds characters not only through gesture, costume, and psychology, but through the musicality of a voice — its pitch, rhythm, pauses, and melody.
That instinct may help explain the extraordinary staying power of his characters. From the ruthless José Alfredo in ‘Império’ to the charismatic villains who have made him a fixture of Brazilian television, Nero has developed a particular talent for making complicated, sometimes deeply flawed men impossible to look away from.
His latest turn as Marco Aurélio in ‘Vale Tudo’ has only reinforced that reputation, earning him the affectionate title of “the audience’s favourite villain.” But Nero’s career has never belonged to one medium or one kind of character. He has moved between television, film, theatre, and music, portrayed real-life figures such as pianist João Carlos Martins and continued to pursue music alongside acting.
For him, creativity is less about innate genius than about the discipline to keep working, experimenting, and looking for something new.
Now, with new music, new projects for film and television, and a return to the theatre in development, Nero chats with Schön! about discovering what is coming next.
shirt + trousers. Louis Vuitton necklace + ring. Guerreiro
You started as a musician in 1990, decades before your first Globo telenovela. Looking back, how did those years playing in bands and touring Brazil and Europe shape the way you approach building a character today?
For many years, the two things were intertwined. I used to confuse the names Stanislavski and Stravinsky.
One is an icon of world theatre and acting technique, and the other is considered one of the greatest composers of the 20th century. Both are Russian, with names that sound extremely similar: Stanislavski and Stravinsky.
Early in my career, I was embarrassed about confusing the two. Today, I realize it was simply a Freudian slip and, in fact, I am very proud of it.
It means that the two things, my two professions and my two influences, were intertwined and remain intertwined to this day.
So, as an actor, I now pay close attention to the tone of voice, to the low and high notes and, especially, to the musicality of the text, its rhythms, and what kind of melody I am using to “sing” the text. This is very present in my characters. Each character has a musicality, a rhythm, and a tone of voice that are essential to how I build a new character.
‘Vale Tudo’ made Marco Aurélio one of the most talked-about villains in Brazil this year and gave you the nickname “the audience’s favourite villain.” What do you think it is about him — or about how you played him — that made audiences root for a bad guy?
First, because I don’t think he was that bad. That was a choice made by the writer: to give him complexity and humanity. He was a man who acknowledged his guilt and responsibility, a man who deeply loved his son and an orphaned child. He had empathy, even if it was biased. He was a man who wasn’t entirely bad, and people gradually picked up on that.
Of course, I took advantage of that and added charisma and humour as well. There was humour in the text. Bad temper can also be funny when it is directed that way. I took advantage of that situation to ride along with the writer’s idea and make people laugh and have fun. I think that was it. It was an interesting marriage between what the writer wanted and what I planted there alongside it.
opposite shirt + trousers. Louis Vuitton necklace + ring. Guerreiro
José Alfredo in ‘Império’ is often cited as a landmark role for you. Ten years on, how do you see that character differently now than you did while you were playing him?
He is, without a doubt, the most memorable one. To this day, he is the character I am most remembered for.
Of course, many people mention other characters, but there is no doubt that he is the most memorable, which makes me very proud. It means that 12 or 13 years later, he left a mark on Brazilian television drama.
I do see him differently, yes. Today, I think he is much more of a “villain” than I thought he was at the time.
Of course, back then, I defended the character. When you are playing a character, you try to find a great deal of truth in him; you try to defend him and understand him.
It is like trying to enter the mind of a murderer, right? Not defending him in the sense of condoning a murderer, but understanding him.
That is the best way for you to defend a character.
Although he had a lot of charisma, which I also brought to the character precisely because he was the protagonist, I think he was quite a bad person. It is very important for a character, whether he is a villain, a good person, or anything else, to have at least some charisma.
Because a telenovela lasts eight or nine months, and people watch it every day. It is different from a film or a series, which people watch for a shorter period of time.
You can reject that character; you can hate him with all your might for two hours and never want to see that person, that character, again.
That is not the case with a telenovela. You have to want to see that character every day for nine months.
You have to keep that audience loyal, so there has to be at least some desire to watch him. No matter how cruel that character may be, you still have to keep people interested in seeing him.
He needs to have some charisma, even if it comes through his cruelty, wickedness, or villainy. People still have to be interested in watching him.
You cannot create such a strong sense of rejection that the audience no longer wants to see you. I think that is what I try to do with my characters: always give them at least some magnetism.
I think that was the case with Zé Alfredo. I think he is a villain in reverse.
You’ve played villains across very different eras and worlds — Romero Rômulo, Tonico Rocha, Marco Aurélio. Is there a common thread in how you build a villain, or does each one require you to throw out your previous approach entirely?
It is very difficult to create new characters when, in theory, you are always being placed within the same recurring profiles. Whenever I am given a villain, I always try to take a different path: in the way he behaves, the way he dresses, and the way he walks.
I think the main thing — and I mentioned this in the previous answer — is to maintain at least some charisma and appeal, especially when we are talking about a telenovela. You have to make sure that people can watch the character every day without creating a sense of rejection in the audience because a telenovela is a marathon, not a hundred-meter sprint.
You have to make the audience want to watch you for nine months.
shirt. Louis Vuitton necklace + ring. Guerreiro opposite shirt. Louis Vuitton necklace + ring. Guerreiro
Portraying João Carlos Martins in ‘O Maestro’ meant embodying a real, living musician with an extraordinary personal story. As a musician yourself, did that role feel different from your other work — did it carry a different kind of responsibility?
Yes, it did. So much so that my first conversation with Mauro, the director of the film, was precisely about that.
I said, “Well, if we are going to make a film about a musician, one mistake that happens very often in films related to music is in the editing.” It seriously compromises the music. As a viewer, I notice it, and I don’t like it.
I think it is very bad and compromises the film. I believe that the editing of the audio and video is extremely important.
Finding out that Mauro was also a musician made it much easier for us to understand each other. I took piano lessons.
I don’t play the piano. Obviously, even if I did, I would never play like João Carlos Martins.
No one does; that is why he is João Carlos Martins.But I learned the choreography of playing, which is very important: the position of the notes and their timing. I understood it choreographically.
I knew exactly where the notes were and their exact timing. I was dancing with my fingers.
I didn’t play, but I danced with my fingers, which made the synchronization in the editing process much easier.
Your new album ‘Quarto, suítes, alguns cômodos e outros nem tanto’ features Elza Soares and Milton Nascimento, as well as a collaboration with Aldir Blanc. What did working with artists of that stature bring out in you creatively that you hadn’t tapped into before?
What working with them awakened in me came precisely from the experience of working with them. Meeting them and seeing their humanity made me understand that what exists there is work — a great deal of obsession with perfection and with what one wants to create. It is not a divine gift that simply arrives, as though God had sent something. There is a great deal of work involved.
It brought me to a place I had already been exploring for a long time: I don’t believe purely in talent. I believe in aptitude and, today more than ever, I believe in working tirelessly and obsessively on the things you love and believe in.
Milton, Elza and, especially, Aldir Blanc made me believe in that even more. It takes a great deal of work.
Creativity and aptitude can help, but they are not everything.
opposite shirt + trousers. Handred bracelet. Guerreiro
You’ve moved between theatre, television, film, and music for over three decades now. Is there a discipline among those four that still challenges or scares you the most?
I think all of them are challenging. We are always looking for challenges, for things we have never done before or that encourage us to seek out new experiences.
As for being scared, none of them really scares me. It is like riding a bicycle: you don’t really forget how to do it.
But some muscles are used less often and, because of that, they can stiffen or hurt a little more here and there.
Music, which was absolutely my main profession for 20 years, holds me back a little today because it has been a long time since I devoted time to that particular craft. The same is true of theatre.
It has been a long time since I stepped onto a stage to practice the craft of a theatre actor. The languages of television, film and theatre come from the same raw material, but each has its own particularities.
Muscles atrophy when they are not used often. Artistic performance does too.
Performing Gonzaguinha’s songs with an all-women orchestra is a striking image. What drew you to that specific project, and what has it revealed to you about his music that you hadn’t noticed before?
What drew my attention to this project, beyond the fact that they are all women, is that they are young women between the ages of 13 and 19 who play brilliantly. So, I didn’t do it purely out of charity or altruism. I did it because I felt that it was an exceptionally well-run and remarkably accomplished project, thanks to its administrators, its conductor and, especially, the girls. That captivated me.
As for Gonzaguinha, I think everyone knows — and I knew it too — but it is always impactful to remember and revisit Gonzaguinha. Because he is a composer who is less remembered than he should be within our popular songbook.
Gonzaguinha is among the three or four greatest lyricists in Brazilian popular music. It is always good to revisit his work because it makes you think, “How did this man write this?” It is truly striking to realize what an exceptional lyricist he was.
shirt + trousers. Armani bracelet. Guerreiro belt. Reserva opposite jacket + shirt. Foxton
Brazilian telenovelas have such a devoted, vocal audience. How has the public’s relationship to your characters — the love, the hate, the memes — changed over the course of your career, from A Favorita to now?
It has changed completely. I was a man who was unknown to the wider public, and I became someone who is recognized everywhere I go.
I don’t notice the hate. I have never noticed hatred toward my characters.
Of course, people come up to me and point out the villainy of a certain character, but there has never been any hatred directed at me personally. It has always been expressed in a playful way in relation to the characters, and I have always been very well received by the public.
I always find the memes funny. Any meme about a character, whether it is mine or someone else’s, is always funny to me.
I love memes. Brazilians are, by far, the best meme creators in the world.
They are incredibly creative.
With this much range already behind you — leading man, comic relief, villain, real-life biopic subject, touring musician — is there a role or a kind of story you still haven’t told that you’re chasing?
There will always be new stories to tell and fascinating characters to investigate, and I am always attentive and open to those possibilities. But I also pursue more personal projects, because I believe it is only through them that an artist can give an exact voice to what they want to say.
At the moment, I have been developing some ideas and scripts for films and series, and I have also been working on a monologue for the theatre. That is what I am looking for now: stories and thoughts that I want to share.
shirt + trousers. Handred bracelet. Guerreiro opposite knit sweater. Handred
art direction + photography. Sher Santos fashion. Ju Sans talent. Alexandre Nero hair + make up. Débora Riete photography assistant. Bianca Passos location. Largo das Artes , Rio de Janeiro
Who do you become when your screen goes dark? The digital takeover may have democratised accessibility to information and opportunity, but its dark side includes a cultural disconnect and an entire generation whose taste is shaped by a feedback loop rather than real word experience.
Telekom Electronic Beat’s campaign “NOT A PASSENGER” tackles the phenomenon head on. It’s a reminder to touch grass and take the reins of your present rather than letting life pass you by one scroll at a time.
In the name of IRL, Telekom Electronic Beats held a live show at an unlikely location in Berlin. Fans gathered to see British indie rock band Wet Leg at a former taxi workshop.
The multi-story concrete venue featured a Pinterest photo booth and bumper cars before guests enjoyed seeing Lava La Rue followed by Wet Leg who charmed the crowd with their rhythmic riffs and catchy hooks. The band’s lead singer Rhian Teasdale is the face of the “NOT A PASSENGER” campaign, saying in a press statement that “we’re all constantly being told who to be by strangers online.
Life’s too short not to be at the helm.”
At the show, there was a notable lack of phones in the air, instead, fans sang along to their favourite songs and collectively plugged into the live music experience. Being online has become an inescapable part of everyday life.
It’s all too easy to forget the art of forging an identity, opinion, aesthetic and direction outside of it. “NOT A PASSENGER” is a much needed reminder to reclaim your time and embrace the analogue a little more.
photography. Cobra Snake words. Shama Nasinde
In a triumphant London return, JAŸ-Z reminded us exactly why he is widely regarded as the greatest of all time on his JAŸ-Z 30 tour. Carrying the pulse of New York with him, H.O.V. took us on an awe-inspiring drive down memory lane to celebrate three decades of his debut album.
“How many people in here have been down since day one? This album changed my life thirty years ago, and hopefully some of these words touch you,” he tells the crowd.
Thirty years on from Reasonable Doubt, you still can’t knock his hustle.
His first solo tour in nine years featured a mix of classics, fan favourites, and deep cuts. Hits like “Izzo,” “Empire State of Mind,” “Dirt Off Your Shoulder,” “Hard Knock Life,” and “Run This Town” ignited the crowd.
When “99 Problems” dropped, a helicopter swept low over the stadium. JAŸ-Z has a magnetic stage presence that few artists can pull off and spent most of the show alone on stage.
He possessed the command and aura of a legend thirty years deep in the game who still knows how to connect. “I see a lot of faces that were here yesterday, welcome back,” he says on stage.
Backed by his band and orchestra, he fed off the crowd before peeling back his armour with rare, vulnerable cuts of “Song Cry” and “Never Change. ” A glance across Tottenham Hotspur Stadium showed a sea of hands throwing up his iconic Roc-A-Fella diamond sign and fans dressed in throwback Yankees jerseys and Timberlands, mirroring the old-school New York visuals displayed on screen. JAŸ-Z honoured London too, recalling 1989 when he spent two months in a flat in Notting Hill with mentor Jaz-O: “I knew there was a bigger world for me out there… so this place has a special significance to me… And I really appreciate you from the bottom of my heart not only for the inspiration but for the love,” he says.
Surprise appearances came from Dave and Sampha, who battled a faulty mic on “No Church in the Wild” as the crowd carried him through it. Night two of his London shows may not have featured the legacy guests of the first evening, but it did prove that three decades in, JAŸ-Z is still the whole show.
photography. Courtesy of Roc Nation words. Sam Quashie-Idun music editor . Shama Nasinde