Jacob Greenway is in good spirits, Black Coffee on the speakers, all smiles and the energy carries into the conversation. In a few days, he’ll turn 27. For now, he’s thinking about football and Dear England.
More specifically, he’s thinking about what football means to people who don’t really care about football. That tension sits at the heart of Dear England, the BBC’s six-part adaptation of James Graham’s Olivier Award-winning National Theatre play, which charts Gareth Southgate’s tenure as England manager — from the cautious optimism of Russia 2018 through to the agony and occasional ecstasy of Euro 2024. The series, produced by Left Bank Pictures, airs on BBC One and BBC iPlayer, with Joseph Fiennes reprising his stage role as Southgate and Jodie Whittaker joining as psychologist Pippa Grange. Greenway plays Jude Bellingham.
“It’s not really about football,” Greenway says, unprompted. “It’s packaged in a football series, but it’s way deeper than that. You don’t have to be a fan to enjoy it.”
The original Dear England opened at the National Theatre in 2022 to significant acclaim, transferring to the West End the following year. It was a play about identity as much as sport — about what it means to carry a nation’s hope, and what happens when the psychological weight of that becomes unmanageable. Southgate’s decision to bring in Pippa Grange, a sports psychologist, as a quiet revolution in how England approached mental performance, forms the spine of the story.
The TV adaptation expands that story to include Euro 2024, meaning the drama catches up almost to the present. For Greenway, that compression of time gave the work a different kind of charge. “The scenes I filmed in 2025 only happened in 2024,” he says. “It’s an interesting one because the story is so present in people’s minds.”
He makes the case for the show the way someone does when they’ve been inside it and believe in it. “Art at its best reflects real life,” he says. “And I think what this show does really well is show what a good leader looks like. As a world, things are just crazy at the moment. Southgate, he’s vulnerable, he’s thoughtful, caring, kind. I think it’s a great example to have on screen.”
The show doesn’t shy from the lows. “While it celebrates the team’s achievements, it equally explores their downfalls,” Greenway says. “It’s a very emotional journey over the years.”
Greenway got the role through the standard route: auditions, preparation, the long wait. The preparation was serious. He watched Bellingham’s documentary, studied his interviews, and worked hard on the Birmingham accent. What he found, cutting through the noise of one of the most recognised players in the world of football, was a person whose public composure sat on top of a ferocious internal standard.
“He says in one of his interviews that he hates to lose more than he loves to win,” Greenway says. “That’s something I kind of relate to, something I’m working on.”
The similarities ran further than that. Both are ambitious. Both hold themselves to a standard that most people would find exhausting. But Greenway was careful about how he used that connection. His job, as he frames it, was narrow and precise. “My job is to find out who he is as a person and his contributions to the England team. That’s it. There’s so much noise around him, good noise, but noise. It’s not my job to focus on outside narratives.”
He messaged Bellingham on Instagram to introduce himself. No reply yet, “he’s got 41 million followers, so I don’t blame him”, but the offer stands. “I let him know that if he wants to reach out, please do. But if it’s not something he’s interested in, I’m going to get the job done regardless.”
On a set populated by strong actors playing figures the audience knows by face, the discipline to stay focused on your own work becomes essential. “You can’t get caught up in everything that’s going on around you,” he says. “Enjoy the journey, have fun, and do the work.”
The show’s version of Bellingham is built around a few key moments that viewers will recognise. “It only happened the year before, so it’s very present in people’s minds. It was a great feeling to pull that off.”
There’s also a halftime scene during that same Slovakia match, with England 1-0 down, that Greenway starts to describe before stopping himself. “I’ll stop,” he says, laughing. The restraint is deliberate. He wants people to watch it.
More broadly, what he hopes the show delivers is empathy. Not for the sport, but for the people playing it. “We see them play football on the pitch, but behind the scenes they go through a lot whilst trying to manage national expectation. I hope fans can empathise with players, and there can be better support going forward.”
That theme, pressure, expectation, what it costs to carry a nation’s hopes, is what makes the show legible to people who don’t follow the game. It’s a story about being scrutinised, about what leadership actually looks like under strain, about the gap between how people appear and how they function. The football is the setting, not the subject.
Asked what he’d want Bellingham himself to recognise in his portrayal, if he ever watched it, Greenway doesn’t hesitate.
“Truth and honesty.”
Dear England is available on BBC One and BBC iPlayer.
Photos by Una Burnand
