Sir Idris Elba’s wife Sabrina Dhowre has taken to TikTok to call out a “racist” interaction with a “hostile” woman who backed into her parked car.
The Canadian – who married the superstar actor in 2019 – claimed in the post that the motorist “immediately” and “repeatedly” asked where she was from. Shaken Sabrina said intense questioning from the driver made her feel like she didn’t “belong” and said her experience underlined how “people feel increasingly comfortable treating black and brown people as conditional citizens”.
She uploaded a video to the platform recalling the moment she was abused. “Something happened a couple days ago that is just not sitting right with me,” Sabrina began. “I don’t usually come online when I’m still sort of like flustered or upset. But this woman backed up into my parked car and when I got out to speak to her about the interaction it immediately became hostile.
View 3 ImagesSabrina says the UK’s political climate is a big problem for millions
“She very quickly asked me ‘where are you from?’, keep in mind this woman backed up into my parked car, and I said ‘Canadian’ and then she asked again. I think a lot of people know what that question means when they’re asked in a tone.”
The 36-year-old model, who has been working alongside her husband on anti-knife crime campaigning in London, then suggested that the woman “wasn’t asking for my biography – she was trying to change the terms of the interaction.”
She went on: “Suddenly it wasn’t about the fact that she had hit my car. It was about whether or not I belonged enough to like hold her accountable.. This is the part that really bothered me, explaining that she needed to call it out ‘because racism isn’t always theatrical.
“Sometimes it works by redirecting conversations because you ask for accountability and suddenly my presence became the issue.”
Sabrina then spoke about the impact of the current political situation in Britain, and told her followers: “I think we need to be honest about the climate in the UK right now. When a country spends years publicly debating who belongs or who is really from here or who is too foreign, too demanding or like too ungrateful or too much of a burden… That language doesn’t ever stay abstract.
View 3 ImagesThe couple together at Harry and Meghan’s wedding in 2018, a year before their own nuptials (Image: AFP/Getty Images)
“It becomes social permission. Permission for people like her, and it tells people that their suspicions are legitimate. Their resentment to them becomes reasonable and their contempt is like some kind of screwed-up common sense.’
“Then it shows up in ordinary life like in a car park or in a queue when a stranger’s tone when they ask you “where are you from?” It’s completely wrong.
“They still feel the right to interrogate you. They still feel entitled to interrogate you and you know people are gonna say “maybe she was just having a bad day’.”
She concluded the video by saying: “For somebody to back up into my car, try to drive off and when I stop them question my right to be able to question them. I mean…. what are we even doing anymore?”
Sabrina married the Wire and Luther star in Morocco back in 2019 without telling anyone.
Two years earlier, Idris told the Mirror about his own experiences at the hands of bigots. Living in Hackney and Canning Town in the Seventies and Eighties, he was called “a black ****” on the streets and pelted with eggs.
He says: “My school, Trinity, was just off the Barking Road, which would take all the National Front supporters to the football at West Ham.
“They’d come past school and if we got on that bus on a game day… mate, if you were Indian or black you were getting it. Eggs thrown at you, the whole thing.”
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He went on: “I did experience racism on a smaller level. All black men do. In school, in shops, when I was out with my friends.”
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