Dᴇᴀᴛʜ in Paradise feels like ‘home’ for returning star Tobi Bakare

Dᴇᴀᴛʜ in Paradise has been a jumping off point for many actors careers, and while there are times when the main cast leave the show for something new there’s often the possibility of a return and for Tobi Bakare he’ll always be ready to come back because it feels like “home”.

The actor reprises his role as JP Hooper in the BBC drama’s fourteenth season, appearing in the opening episode when one of his new recruits becomes the centre of a crime his first day on the job at Saint Marie. JP makes a welcome return to the island to help Commissioner Selwyn Patterson (Don Warrington) and new detective Mervin Wilson (Don Gilet) with the case.

JP already made a comeback in series 13 so Bakare admits to Yahoo UK and other publications that he was worried it was too soon. But, in the end, he couldn’t say no: “Tim Key, an executive producer of Dᴇᴀᴛʜ in Paradise, gave me a call and he was saying, ‘we’ve got this great story’ and I was like, ‘OK’.

“He just has this infectious way of tapping into our hearts, I don’t know how he does it, I don’t know why,” Bakare says. “He has a key to my heart, I can’t tell my wife that, but he does.

Returning to Dᴇᴀᴛʜ in Paradise

“He told me about what they were planning on doing, and it made a lot of sense, I spoke to a couple of my people and I was like ‘yea, let’s do this.’”

When asked if he needed convincing to return, the actors adds: “You know what, it was. It was the fact that I was around the season before, I had a little episode in the season before that it almost felt a bit close, but I always say when a storyline makes sense an actor serves a story.

“And as much as the proximity between the two episodes, this one and the previous one, I thought was a bit much —as an actor, sometimes you can get insecure and kind of go, ‘oh, I don’t want people to think I’m just trying to eat off Dᴇᴀᴛʜ in Paradise’, so I should have been done.

“But to be honest with you the show is phenomenal, Tim is phenomenal, the storyline is great and Dᴇᴀᴛʜ in Paradise is home. It’s a second home for me, so it’s always going to be privilege to be asked to come back. It just had to make a bit of sense, and it made sense.“

Bakare keeps a tight lip over whether audiences will see him again in the series, adding that he feels “our jobs as actors, is to serve a story.”

“You need to serve a story and you can’t dictate what that story is,” he says. “So for me, the story made sense so I was there. Whether the story is going to make sense next year, the year after, whenever, we’ll see.”

Don Gilet is ‘great’ as new detective

Bakare has now appeared alongside four of the BBC show’s five lead detectives, with Don Gilet portraying new DI Mervin Wilson. The character hasn’t made the best first impression because of his rude nature and constant complaints about life in Saint Marie, but the actor himself has.

“He’s cool, man. I mean, I caught him when he was very fresh, so I know he was finding his feet,” Bakare reflects. “He’s cool. He does a phenomenal job. He just reminds me of an Arsenal fan in Finsbury Park in a pub, that’s what he gives me his character.

“He plays it with such detail, such warmth, such vulnerability. And I think that his acting choices creates reactions from everybody else and so it makes our work easier. It’s great.”

“They are all different,” the actor adds, reflecting on how Gilet compares to his predecessors. “I can place Melvin in a particular place straight away, Finsbury Park pub, Arsenal supporter. I would place him straight away, and the others as well.

“But I think coming from Hackney which is very close to Finsbury Park, there’s a degree of familiarity that happens almost immediately, and I think everyone’s done a phenomenal job — Ralf, Kris, Ardell and Ben. They just all bring something very beautiful to the table.

“So I can’t really compare. They’re all very different takes, but they just have different types of familiarity.”

What’s next for JP?

Bakare admits it’s “tough” to know exactly what he’d like to see next for his character, but he’d love it if JP’s moral compass —which always proves so sturdy and true— was tested to its limits.

“JP has this moral code and I think that’s the key, everything he does comes from that moral code. It would be interesting to see that code get challenged a little bit, challenged more.

“I mean we kind of touched it in one of the seasons where he had an old school bully end up doing a robbery, or suspected robbery, and he completely hates this guy and his moral code had gone out the window. We got to explore new sides of JP there.”

What he appreciates most of all is how much the Dᴇᴀᴛʜ in Paradise fan base still love his character after all these years, and get excited when he returns to the show.

“It’s remarkable,” Bakare says. “People [still] come to me and say when is your character coming back? Sometimes you don’t really know the effect of your work until you kind of step out of it. It’s nice because you feel like you’ve done your work. And JP is a nice guy, I learned lessons from him. He’s a nice guy because he’s a nice guy.

“It’s nice that he’s managed to really impact people in that way… You never know your impact, you just never know your impact, and I think JP’s just really stayed in people’s hearts, it’s great.”

Dᴇᴀᴛʜ in Paradise series 14 premieres on BBC One at 9pm on Friday, 31 January, and new episodes will be available on BBC iPlayer.