Tosin Cole
Tosin Cole is an actor, born 1992.
Cole came up through British television in the least glamorous way available: a teen drama, an EastEnders spin-off, then a regular stretch on Hollyoaks as Neil Cooper. Soap is a brutal apprenticeship, pages a day and no rehearsal, and it shows in what he does now, which is arrive on set already knowing where the camera is.
Doctor Who was the step up. As Ryan Sinclair he was one of three companions sharing the screen, and the writing handed him the most ordinary of the three: a young man with dyspraxia and no special destiny. He played it plainly, and the plainness is a large part of why the science fiction around him landed.
The film work since has been more interesting than his television usually allows. He was Medgar Evers in Till, a real man inside a historical drama, played with the restraint the part demands; Phil across both Souvenir films; and Tyrone Downie in Bob Marley: One Love, a musician's role in a musician's film. Supacell, in 2024, finally gave him a lead, in a South London superhero series that is mostly about the neighbourhood.
What is coming is bigger again. He is Tzain in Children of Blood and Bone. On the evidence so far he is a better actor than the parts he has been handed, which is a good position to be in and a frustrating one.
Movies (9)
TV (3)
Where to start with Tosin Cole
Supacell is the right first watch: six episodes, a lead role, and the clearest demonstration of what he can carry. The superhero premise is grounded in rent, family and work, and Cole plays the everyman without letting him go dull.
For drama, Till is the serious one; his Medgar Evers is a supporting part played with real weight, in a film that is hard going but never exploitative. The Souvenir and The Souvenir: Part II are the arthouse pair, slow and precise, and worth it if you like films that trust you.
Doctor Who is a different commitment. Start at the beginning of the Thirteenth Doctor's run rather than anywhere else, and expect an inconsistent era with a very likeable trio at the centre. 61st Street and Burning Sands fill in the American work, and Children of Blood and Bone is the one he is waiting on.