The third season of HBO’s gritty teen drama Euphoria is one of the hottest TV shows on air right now. Starring Zendaya, Sydney Sweeney, Alexa Demie, Jacob Elordi, Maude Apatow and more, it is the most-watched series on HBO Max at the time of writing, according to streaming data collection website FlixPatrol.

For the latest instalment, creator Sam Levinson is exploring the lives of the central characters, Rue (Zendaya), Cassie (Sweeney), Maddy (Demie), Nate (Elordi) and Lexi (Apatow), as adults.

Rue finds herself indebted to drug lord Laurie (Martha Kelly) and gets involved with Alamo Brown (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje), an adult entertainment kingpin, arms dealer and human trafficker, while secretly working with the Drug Enforcement Administration as an informant.

In the latest episode of the show, Alamo is seconds away from executing Rue for her ties to the DEA. In an interview with Variety, Akinnuoye-Agbaje described his character’s relationship with Rue as “a mentor-disciple relationship, albeit twisted and dark”.

So, who is Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje?

What’s his background?

Akinnuoye-Agbaje was born on August 22, 1967, in Islington, London, to Nigerian immigrant parents. His father studied law and his mother accountancy, which left them unable to care for the infant. When he was six weeks old, they informally placed him with a white foster family in Tilbury, who also took in his two sisters, per The Guardian.

His birth parents returned to Nigeria with their children when he was eight, but Akinnuoye-Agbaje could not assimilate and came back to Tilbury. He grew up facing severe bullying, per his biography on the official King’s College London website, and at 16, he joined a local skinhead gang. His turbulent lifestyle even led to a suicide attempt, per People, but he turned things around after being sent to a boarding school in Surrey.

The Congo actor speaks Italian, Yoruba, Swahili and French alongside English.

How did he get into acting?