‘Seven Seconds’ Star Clare-Hope Ashitey Doesn’t Want Her Character To Be “Squeaky Clean”

Clare-Hope Ashitey is about to become Netflix’s latest star. She stars in the streaming service’s new crime thriller, Seven Seconds. The first season of the anthology series centers on the aftermath of a horrifying accident: a white cop, anxiously driving through the snow to meet his pregnant partner at a hospital, hits a black teen riding his bike. The cop’s police force buddies come to his aid and hatch a cover up. It’s awful and shameful, but the worst part is the teen wasn’t killed in the accident. So he’s left to bleed out for hours and hours, only found when he’s clinging to life.
Ashitey plays KJ Harper, the young assistant prosecutor assigned to the troubling case. As she goes through the motions of due diligence, she stumbles upon clues that suggest that there’s a greater conspiracy at play. Harper must not only take on police corruption and racism, but her own demons. You see, Harper is a messy alcoholic.
During a round table at a recent Netflix press event, Ashitey explained how a British actress who carries her very own thermos of tea everywhere — she recommends TeaPig’s jasmine blend, by the way — tackles playing an alcoholic prosecutor from New Jersey: “There were a lot of aspects of her character that were very alien to me. I’m lucky I’ve never had a substance abuse problem, so I watched a lot of films, talked to a lot of people. I went to some AA meetings, and tried to understand those particular demons that people struggle with.”
“Although, in terms of having something about yourself that you can’t control and that leads you to make poor decisions, I think on some level we can all recognize that,” she said. “Like we’ve all made really poor choices and in the moment have known that we’re making a poor choice and that it’s gonna have a negative effect and have done it anyway. I think sitting down and trying to remember times when I’ve done that was very helpful.”
Ashitey added that she also had to do a lot of “technical” research since the American and British justice systems are so different. “I spent a lot of time with Jersey City prosecutors and New York DAs, with the Jersey police, with the NYPD, and going to the courthouses and watching that process and just trying to take it all in,” she said.

Seven Seconds examines how race determines justice, and Ashitey is playing a black woman who may not always act in the best way. In just the first episode we see her botch a case at court because she’s too drunk to be prepared. When asked if she was worried how that would look in terms of “respectability politics,” she said that it wasn’t a concern at all. “Having a complex character is much more helpful to the conversation than having someone who is ‘squeaky clean’ because that doesn’t reflect reality. And I think when you have characters that don’t reflect reality, you lose audiences,” Ashitey said, explaining that when she sees projects where people are depicted as completely good or completely bad, it takes her out of the story. “We’re all somewhere in the middle. We all do good things and do bad things, and make poor choices and make good choices, and struggle with things. I think it humanizes her and grounds her in reality.”
If Ashitey looks familiar to you, it might be because she played an iconic role in one of the most important films of the last few decades. Ashitey was Kee, the pregnant refugee, in Alfonso Cuaron’s dystopian masterpiece, Children of Men. In many ways, Ashitey is the heart and soul of that film, and she told us that it had a profound impact on her life.

“It hit me very early on in my career, it was only the second film I’d ever done and at that point I wasn’t sure I wanted to be an actor,” she said. “But I think being involved in an experience like that…I think it meant there was a passion in me for this job that never quite left, even when I wasn’t sure I wanted to do that. Having the chance to be onboard a job like that, it never leaves you. A part of this huge machine you’re creating is a thing that you’re immensely proud of. I’ve worked in a bunch of other industries and done a bunch of other jobs that and none of them has ever felt like that.”
Seven Seconds did give Ashitey a chance to work with some truly incredible storytellers. The show was created by Veena Sud (the brilliant writer behind The Killing) and features the great Regina King as the grieving mother Latrice Butler. Ashitey told reporters that working with King wasn’t just “awesome,” but that “in a very basic way, it’s nice to work with people that you like.”

Ashitey said that King’s professional experience helped her lift her out of one challenging shoot, late at night, at a seedy motel. “It was beyond grim and it was a really miserable day. And there were also like actual police banging on one of the door upstairs, hauling someone out, and no one really knew what was going on. It was very chaotic, but it was a really important scene,” Ashitey explained. “It’s wonderful working with someone like Regina who is a consummate professional and who can bring you back to being in this moment, but also using all that stuff that’s going on to inform that moment as well.”
Seven Seconds premieres on Netflix tomorrow, February 23.