EMMA- Do you adapt the guitar in any way or do you put anything on your arm or anything like that to help you? I want more casting directors and producers to give us TV and film roles. And I hate being labelled as a victim.” It is why he wants to conquer Hollywood with his teddy bear. Besides, he looks really rather snazzy in a tux. NIKKI- That’s where I tapped you out, wasn’t it? That little weird stalker in the scooter, ‘Come on the podcast!’ Jessop’s immediate personal challenge is to get bigger roles, to advance his career beyond being cast as disabled, hence Roger the Superhero.

WILL- And obviously also we’d love to include other actors with Down’s Syndrome and other disabilities. Jessop is one of a number of people with Down’s syndrome who have worked with the NDSPG, and other organisations, giving talks to universities and conferences, and being interviewed on podcasts and in the media. “It involves speaking up, and recording video messages to MPs, speeches, press interviews,” he says. “What [people with Down’s syndrome] need is to have a voice, so they can say what they really want in life.”VICTORIA- Oh yeah, absolutely. Music has been my saving grace for sure. It still is. It’s such a relief. For me the music that’s hit me most has always been the emotional, quite ambient, folky immersive stuff, as well as film scores and the amount of times that I’ve just bawled to a film score, like Johnny Greenwood or… On 6 July 2023, Headline Publishing Group published Jessop's memoir, titled A Life Worth Living: Acting, Activism and Everything Else. [25] Radio [ edit ] But we're also still trying to break out of the typecasting – victims, hello? It's time we had some heroes. So yeah, things are better but my take is that there's more to be done.”

Having Tommy on board as an Ambassador is a great way to de-stigmatise and challenge misconceptions about people who have Down’s syndrome and/or who have a learning disability. He will also help us increase the visibility of people with a learning disability across the media and society to help transform attitudes. Our vision is for the UK to be the best place in the world to live a happy and healthy life if you have a learning disability and I look forward to working alongside Tommy to make this vision a reality." WILL- Which was pretty cool. And so I think mum’s way of…because I’m sure she must have been a bit worried about what we were going into, and obviously excited for us, but we’re going the other side of the world to try and pitch a superhero movie in Hollywood, the land of the sharks. And yeah, some of them we did follow and were super helpful, but also I think it’s fair to say we also found our own way.

Podcast

Two years on Tommy is set to air his new documentary that inspires the idea that people with Down's syndrome can play heroes and leading roles after struggling to find one in real life. The documentary is a heart-warming and influential show inspired from real life. Family life Wildfire has unveiled an accessible edition of Tommy Jessop’s memoir A Life Worth Living: Acting, Activism and Everything Else, inspired by the Easy Read format. NIKKI- No, not at all. I was wondering, I played music a bit when I was younger, I was a bit rubbish, but I took music up because I was a little bit different from my friends at school, and I used to love listening to Kate Bush and The Beatles and playing the piano a bit and writing rubbish songs. It kind of saved me to a degree. And I wondered was that a thing for you music? Believe in yourself and be kind," says Jessop. "Find your own gifts and talents and use them in the world, and live your life to the full." (Wildfire/PA)

Jessop starred in BBC's Line of Duty, appearing as Terry Boyle in the fifth series in 2019, the second actor to play the role. [12] He reprised his role as a returning character in three dramatic episodes in the sixth series of Line of Duty in 2021. [13] [14] Theatre [ edit ] NIKKI- I love that. So, that’s how that all came about then. And has he kind of influenced me, has he, Chris Martin? He has starred in high-profile TV programmes and short films, and now he wants to be a leading man. But the right roles are not being offered to him. My main reason for writing my memoir is for other people to understand us a bit better," Jessop, 38, says over Zoom from the home he shares with his parents near Winchester in Hampshire. "To see how we think and feel, and to see we are no different from other people."In the documentary, we see Tommy and Will employ various tactics to get Hollywood to notice Roger, including sending video messages to A-listers to ask them to play Tommy's baddie – prompting Game of Thrones star Kit Harington, whose cousin has Down syndrome, to read with Tommy for the role – and charming their way into a stunt training day to shoot an action trailer before hopping on a flight across the Atlantic to LA. EMMA- But honestly, when I was your age, when we were in our early 20s, it’s taken us a lot of years to be hard-arsed about it. We got a bit distracted by the documentary, but now we're writing it. We've got people that are excited to receive our draft. It's really exciting.” He has since been nominated for a Breakthrough Young Journalist award. The documentary revealed that those with a learning disability are more than twice as likely to die from an illness that, if experienced by a non-disabled person, would be treatable. A report by researchers at King’s College London and other academics found that nearly half of the deaths of people with learning disabilities before the age 75 could have been prevented.