"Not family friendly! But a family show." Sopẹ́ Dìrísù on Gangs of London

The third season of the Emmy-nominated and BAFTA-winning series Gangs of London is now available to binge on Showmax. 

Chaos erupts in London after a spiked shipment of cocaine kills hundreds. This was no accident - it was a calculated attack. But who’s pulling the strings?

Returning cast includes BAFTA Rising Star and Critics Choice Super nominee Sopẹ́ Dìrísù, BAFTA nominees Joe Cole and Lucian Msamati, and Michelle Fairley (Catelyn Stark in Game of Thrones). 

Irish Film and Television Award winner Richard Dormer (Blue Lights, Game of Thrones) joins the cast this season alongside Critics Choice Super nominees Andrew Koji (Warrior) and T’Nia Miller (Fall of the House of Usher). 

Co-created by Gareth Evans and Matt Flannery (The Raid), Gangs of London holds an 86% critics’ rating on Rotten Tomatoes and an 8/10 score on IMDb, with The Guardian calling S3 “nerve-shreddingly tense TV.”

To find out more, we caught up with star Sopẹ́ Dìrísù, who you’ll also recognise from his roles in His House and Slow Horses.

What can we expect from Season 3?

Every season of Gangs of London is ever so slightly different. There’s a different texture and atmosphere this year. It is a murder mystery, because a mass murder happens in the first episode, and all the characters are trying to get to the bottom of who’s done it, and they’re all doing it in their own different ways.

The cocaine the gangs are distributing throughout the city has been spiked with fentanyl. That poses a really big problem for the gangs. Not only is their supply chain messed up, but it’s affecting their customers. You don’t want your customers to die, otherwise they can’t buy more drugs.

Elliot has a vested interest in this because now he’s moved into being more on the criminal side. He takes personal responsibility not only towards the gangs, but ethically as well towards his customers and the city. He’s the middle point and needs to get to the bottom of it.

That leads him back to Sean [Joe Cole], because all roads lead back to Sean, apparently. But in that conversation, Sean leaves a little nugget in his mind that leads Elliot on some crazy journey throughout the series where he’s chasing both the spiking of the cocaine, but also the truth about his family.

Gangs of London, for me, it’s always been a family show. Not family friendly! But a family show. Not only in terms of the cast and crew feeling like a wonderful unit that we get to come back to every season, but a story about families: the Wallace family, the Dumani family, how gangs can be families. That’s a real focus of the storytelling in Season 3. 

What three words describe this season?

Bloody, intense and unimaginable.

Where did we leave Elliot in Season 2 and where do we find him in Season 3?

The journey of Elliot over the course of the series has been crazy; I wouldn’t have believed the creators when they told me. It’s so interesting that this guy, who had a wonderful moral compass at the beginning as a police officer trying to infiltrate the gangs in order to bring them to justice, seems now to have joined them, without a mind towards redemption.

At the end of Season 2, Elliot has Sean strung up and he tells him, ‘Watch, I’m going to become you. I’m going to do it better than you ever did.’

At the beginning of Season 3, he’s living up to his promise. Before, he had to live this duplicitous life, where he was Elliot Carter at home and Elliot Finch in the street. Now the two personas seem to have merged into one, and he’s very comfortable with it.

I’m really excited for you to all see where it ends up by the end of Season 3.

Introduce us to some of the new characters.

We introduce the mayor of London, played by the incredible T’Nia Miller, and we see how crime interacts with politics and the fallout of the actions of the gangs. 

I remember watching superhero films when I was younger and seeing the mass destruction that happens in those films. I was always wondering, like, ‘Okay, sweet, the good guys beat the bad guy, but how does the city heal from this?’ And for the first time in our series, we get to see how the city responds to the crime gangs that exist within it.

When we were casting the mayor of London, they threw their net wide and far. They really took their time with it and found a real gem. I’m so glad to have been working with T’Nia Miller this year. My scenes with her are some of my favourites of the series. They’re not explosive, they’re not violent, but there’s still so much that’s happening because of what she brings in her performance.

But Gangs of London is a show about explosions and violence and someone who really brought that this year was Andrew Koji, playing Zeek. His character is so important for the future of the series as well as Season 3, and we needed to find an actor who had the chops, had the physical background to be able to carry that character and the story. Andrew does that with ease. I was a bit worried - because he actually has a martial arts background and I just pretend to do it. So I was like, ‘I’m going to get my ass kicked here!’ But he was super professional, super athletic. I learned lots from him.

Korean action film maestro Kim Hong-Sun is the lead director this season. What did he bring to the project?

Having seen some of his work beforehand, I was so excited to work with him. His sensibilities are incredible. 

He is directing one of Sky’s greatest TV shows in a language he didn’t speak 18 months ago, with people he’d never met before, in a completely different environment, culture, and language. And he still created something that we’re all really proud of. 

I can’t wait to work with him again. 

Watch the trailer for Gangs of London

Binge all three seasons of Gangs of London on Showmax.