'It's a lesser story': Daniel Kaluuya refused to act in The Kitchen

Daniel Kaluuya felt 'The Kitchen' would be a "lesser story" if he had been starring in it.

The Oscar-winning actor has co-directed and co-written the new sci-fi drama and explained how he had to remove his "ego" by not taking an acting part in the flick – which closed the BFI London Film Festival on Sunday (15.10.23).

Daniel told Deadline's Breaking Baz column: "(I realised) oh, s***. I need to get my ego out of this and get out of the way.

"This film wants to be made, and this film wants to be told in the way that it wants to be told. And if I put myself into it, it's a lesser story. That's what I told myself."

Daniel has spent long nights working on the project with his fellow director Kibwe Tavares and editor Christian Sandino-Taylor to make sure it was ready for the big premiere.

The 34-year-old star said: "Oh, mate, it's been nonstop.

"We've just been making sure everything's tight, making sure... there's just no stone's been unturned. I did all that I could to make it what it wants to be."

'The Kitchen' – which features 'Top Boy' star Kano in the lead role - is set in a dystopian London as an impoverished community is forced to fend for themselves. The project has been in development for almost a decade and Tavares said that the creative process drove them to despair at times.

He said: "Starting something from scratch is always kind of hard, because you almost have to write a novel before you sort of write the film, so we wrote so many different versions of this.

"Some that were more futuristic, that felt less grounded; some that were more grounded, but didn't quite have balance. It took a long time to find what the final thing was."