Returning to Netflix this Friday (18th March), Top Boy has now been on our screens for over a decade, with its ensemble cast shifting and changing in the years since the series first launched on Channel 4.
Though series leads Dushane (Ashley Walters) and Sully (Kane Robinson) have remained at the forefront, one character who has been missing from the show since it was revived on Netflix in 2019 is Ra’Nell Smith (Malcolm Kamulete).
Ra’Nell – a student who got mixed up with Dushane – and his young friend Gem (Giacomo Mancini) were major featured players in the first two seasons of Top Boy aired on Channel 4. Gem returned in a supporting role in the latest batch of episodes released in 2019, but Ra’Nell was nowhere to be seen and the character’s fate was left unresolved.
Nine years on from his last on-screen appearance, fans are still curious as to what happened to Ra’Nell – but it sounds as though his whereabouts will remain a mystery, with Ashley Walters, also an executive producer on the series, confirming to RadioTimes.com that there are no plans for Kamulete to return to the cast.
“No, no… Malcolm was a brilliant addition to our cast and was one of the founding members of the show, obviously, but he had different things that he wanted to do with his life,” Walters said.
He added that there had initially been a desire to revisit Ra’Nell when Top Boy was revived – following Channel 4’s cancellation of the series in 2013 – but it didn’t come off. “We all wanted him to come back, but he [Kamulete] found football, he had other things that were going on and wanted to pursue those…
“I haven’t spoken to him in a while actually, but as far as we know, that’s what it was. So unfortunately I can spoil this for the fans – Ra’Nell will not be coming back.”
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The latest season of Top Boy – the second produced by Netflix – was originally planned to start filming in spring 2020, but the COVID-19 pandemic meant that production had to be pushed till later in the year, leading to a gap of 2-and-a-half years between seasons.
“COVID 100 per cent threw a spanner in the works,” Jasmine Jobson – returning as Jaq having earned a BAFTA nomination for her performance in the 2019 episodes – told press including RadioTimes.com.
“But our team handled it pretty well, to be fair – everybody was split into different bubbles, so cast wasn’t necessarily mixing with certain people from the crew. Everything was very well restricted.
“I’m very grateful for the way that they handled everything, because it meant that we were able to get back to work quite soon and get things in motion, whereas we were seeing some other jobs were being held off for quite a bit of time. So we’re very, very lucky.”
Top Boy returns to Netflix with new episodes on Friday (18th March) – visit our guide to the best series on Netflix, read more of our Drama coverage or find something to watch now with our TV Guide.
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