Saffron Burrows

Burrows: I wish there was a story. My mum's just - she gave me an interesting middle name as well, Domini.

Tavis: Yeah, Domini.

Burrows: Domini.

Tavis: Saffron Domini.

Burrows: Yeah. And she just liked it. And then she was very annoyed I think because the song "I'm Just Mad about Saffron" came out just after I was born. She was furious. (Laughter) She felt that he'd stolen the name, and every time people sing it to me she says, "Saff, I came up with it first." So.

Tavis: It's a cool name. It stands out. It's unique in how it stands out.

Burrows: Thank you.

Tavis: So "The Bank Job." Fascinating - I was checking it out. Lot of twists in this thing, you've got to really pay attention to this.

Burrows: Yeah. It's entirely truthful to the story of the time. It was the largest bank robbery that Europe had ever encountered. They took four million pounds or eight million dollars' worth of jewels and money, and really on the surface of things it was a regular bank robbery with pure greed involved. And actually, the truth of the thing is that there were, perhaps, other layers to the story.

But as you've seen, were not revealed at the time, the story of Michael X who was a British follower of Malcolm X. Clearly far more corrupt than the man he was following, but there were these layers to the story that involved the English aristocracy and the Black Power movement in Britain. And the very fact that after this robbery took place the files were sealed until 2054, I find that fascinating.

Tavis: What do you make of that?

Burrows: I guess I make of that that they were trying to conceal something very, very - much more potent than a normal robbery. Now there are offshoots to this story which perhaps the audience will catch up with when they see it, but one of the strands was there was this - I suppose it was the first time in British history that there had been a merging of the classes.

The societies within London began in some way to overlap, and that had not happened before in my country. We'd really lived in a terribly suffocated place. For the first time ever you had (unintelligible) from the east end moving west, and you had Vanessa Redgrave and John Lennon and all of these people who were interested in the civil rights movement. So it was for me a very exciting time in England. It was sort of waking up.

Tavis: I want to come back to the movement in just a second. Tell me more, though, quickly, about the character that you play in the film.

Burrows: Mm-hmm. When the robbery took place they used walkie-talkies. Obviously it was pre- the cell phone era. So they tunneled. They took a lease on a store, tunneled beneath two stores over a period of weeks, and came up with a bang into the bank vault with very basic tools, I imagine, that they had at the time.

And they had a lookout on a rooftop, and they used walkie-talkies and would say, "Okay, five minutes more." And the lookout above says, "Money may be your god, but it ain't mine. I just want a hot bath and a nice cup of tea." And one of the voices on this walkie-talkie was a woman. So the writers, Clement and La Frenais, who came up with this notion, wanted to form a character that was that woman. Going with very little facts they created the woman I play, Martine Love.

Tavis: Thank you for sharing that. Now I want to come back to the part you mentioned about the movement, it's very fascinating. I think a lot of us, when we think - certainly stateside - we think about the civil rights movement. The first thing that comes to mind, of course, is Dr. King, Rosa Parks, those in the movement here.

We don't tend to think of a civil rights movement in England, and yet there is one, there has been one, and you've been very much involved in it. Tell me about your work around civil rights and how you got involved in that specifically.

Burrows: I was raised in a family that was a very political family of activists who were involved in the anti-racist movement at the time. There was an organization called the Anti-Nazi League that was formed because we had a far right in England that was as powerful in some ways and as frightening as the KKK here. So the Anti-Nazi League was quite a prominent force in the late seventies in England when Margaret Thatcher came to power.

And following on from that there were several miscarriages of justice that occurred when I was a teenager that I remember very strongly. A friend and colleague of my parents' was killed by the police on a very peaceful anti-racist demonstration and no one was brought to justice. There were things that happened in my childhood that certainly formed my view of the status quo.

And particularly very salient (unintelligible) Stephen Lawrence, who was a young British Black boy killed at a bus stop by some White boys, and the motive behind the murder was very clear. And it was not until really this moment, this terrible crime, that England had to begin to wake up to the fact that we were a country full of institutionalized racism and that our police force had racism woven into its core. And often, they were the perpetrators of crimes as great as any one instance in the streets.

So when finally an inquiry took place, a group of lawyers, largely civil rights lawyers, got together and decided that they needed to form an organization that in some way was inspired by the NAACP here, that was not just about race crimes but that was largely about a section of our society who felt they had no voice.

And often largely British Indians, too, who were facing a lot of racial abuse and violence, but they had no legal aid, no means of accessing a support system when a crime did occur. And so that was the basis behind the thing, and it was set up by - there's a QC called Michael Mansfield who did the Stephen Lawrence case.

And so largely a group of civil rights lawyers, and then the important thing for me was that local families were involved, so the families of victims were very much at the center of the thing.

Tavis: And so now, fast-forward from your childhood and how you got turned on to this because of your parents and what you witnessed as a child, now you're one of the vice presidents of this organization. What role do you play in the work now as a vice president?

Burrows: For me now? Sadly at the moment, because I'm in Los Angeles shooting, (laughter) and I signed on to "Boston Legal," and of course I always dreamt of being a civil rights lawyer. So I'm hoping I'm going to get a few more (laughter) cases like that as the story progresses. But for me now, sadly -

Tavis: See, that's a note to the writers. We call that a note to the writers.

Burrows: It's a little note. A little, subtle one. So sadly for now I'm largely in email and telephonic contact. But on a very basic level, there's, say, a telephone support system. And there's a close friend of mine who's a caseworker, and I often will go with him to a meeting somewhere in the north of England, perhaps, where there's quite a divided society, a little like the American South.

And they compile casework so that when a thing does come to court, when a miscarriage of justice does make it into that arena, they have enough evidence and enough proof to really make something good occur.

Tavis: That must stun people, though, when they walk into a room or a hearing or something and Saffron Burrows walks in. You probably change the conversation really fast.

Burrows: (Laughs) Well, I found a really lovely thing that's come to me recently, is I decided that I was witnessing Britain going through this huge tumult and this change and perhaps I should try and document it. So recently, of course, I got myself a camera, and when you're behind a camera it's lovely because you relax.

And just the people I was encountering who gave me access to their stories, I thought I might try and compile some sort of document of those personal tales.

Tavis: Let me ask you right quick, before I lose you - lose time, actually - how do you think your native country is doing with the notion of multiculturalism, multiracism, multiethnicity? Because here, of course, in the States, it's not just Black and White, you referenced the NAACP. In England it's the same way, it's a microcosm of the world. So if they were having problems when you were a kid, with a couple different factions, how do you think your country's doing now?

Burrows: For me, my country now is facing a tragedy. And the tragedy is that I grew up in a secular society where race was clearly an issue for some. But I was raised in northeast London in a neighborhood that was incredibly multiethnic. A large Afro-Caribbean and Indian community there, and very successfully multiethnic.

Religion was not encountered in any way as kids growing up, in any contentious way. I feel now, sadly, with what's happened after 9/11 and with us going into Iraq, sadly for me the country has shifted and there's less understanding, there's more polarization, and it's not so much the city I was raised in, London, or the country.

But we were a very successful country at mixing, and incredibly well - I suppose well-versed in celebrating that. And to be honest, it was the best of Britain. The best of Britain was our mix of population. But now the drawing in, I feel sadly one of Tony Blair's legacies, who I campaigned for when he was coming to power, has been to bring religiosity into our climate in a way it never had before.

Tavis: Who says you can't have it all - beauty, talent, and smarts. Hopefully we can see that again soon on "Boston Legal," now that the writer's strike is over, but in the meantime, March 7th, "The Bank Job," starring Saffron Burrows, you can catch at a theater near you. Thanks for your work and nice to have you on the program.

Burrows: Thank you so much.

Tavis: It's good to see you.