I am racing the rain in the back of a London cab with Mr. Delroy Lindo. I was advised by a well-traveled friend to trust only this as a means of conveyance—the pug-nosed solidity of the classic black taxi, the encyclopedic patter of drivers versed in every alleyway and heath. We jounce over cobblestones, heading out of St. Pancras station toward the Young Vic theater on the South Bank. Mr. Lindo has agreed to answer what questions he can in the little time we have.

Outside, umbrellas amble along Brompton, Harrods breaks like a great ship over gray horizon—an anglophile’s wet dream—yet I am transported by the actor’s unmistakable brow and regal jaw to the smoke and storm of Oakland: Delroy Lindo in a velour black-and-white tracksuit as Aaliyah’s overprotective kingpin daddy, Isaak O’Day, in the raucous Jet Li vehicle Romeo Must Die (2000); Lindo rolling through the Gowanus projects, dispensing wisdom and ass-whuppings, as Rodney Little in Spike Lee’s near-operatic crime drama Clockers (1995); Lindo in cowboy hat and black duster, cutting almost too foine a figure as legendary lawman Bass Reeves in Jeymes Samuel’s beautifully defiant Black Western, The Harder They Fall (2021).