Christine Adams is 'fighting for survival' in new series of Apple TV's HIJACK

Before I ask my first question, Christine Adams debunks a “fact” circulating about herself on the internet. It happens right after she compliments my name, which is Ghanaian. The conversation pivots naturally, and she reveals her birth name actually isn’t the one the world knows. 

“When I was a kid, I had a Ugandan name,” she says. “In the ‘70s nobody could say it or even tried to say it. My mum was like, ‘you know what, let’s just go with Christine.’” This hangs in the air for a moment. During my research I read that she had Jamaican heritage, a detail that is untrue and doesn’t reflect her Egyptian and Ugandan roots.  

Christine is speaking to me from Portugal, although she insists that the weather on the afternoon we are chatting is similar to the UK’s, cold and rainy. “It’s not what I signed up for”, she jokes. A week prior to us speaking, Christine was in London, promoting series two of Hijack. 

London’s my city, it’s where I did my growing up. Not in a literal sense, but just in becoming an adult and figuring out my creative journey.

It’s been a busy period for the actor who also starred in the second series of the BBC/A24 comedy Dreaming Whilst Black, created by The Floor Mag’s 2025 digital cover star, Adjani Salmon. Still to come is Amazon Prime Video’s Kill Jackie, where Christine will be sharing the screen with Catherine Zeta-Jones.“There’s been a lot of back and forth, but it’s been great. London’s my city, it’s where I did my growing up. Not in a literal sense, but just in becoming an adult and figuring out my creative journey.” She tells me sporting a chic black beret and glasses. 

What becomes clear as we talk is how naturally the conversation flows both ways. The exchange felt less like an interview and more like a dialogue. Adams grew up in Northampton, and we bond briefly about being from outside of the Capital, but still considering it ‘home’ per se. 

“Tenacious, fearless, and optimistic,” is how she says those in her personal life would describe her. These qualities bleed into her portrayal of Marsha in Hijack, and the action/superhero roles she has embodied over the years. “I'm really drawn to strong women for obvious reasons. Women who might be a bit more complicated than they first appear,” she shares. It’s not hard to spot these traits in Marsha. 

In series two, following her son’s death, Marsha isolates herself in rural Scotland. Her peaceful stay is interrupted when her seemingly sweet neighbours aren’t who they appear to be. She is composed and somewhat calm when essentially in Adams’s own words “fighting for survival.” There’s a quiet strength that is hard to ignore, and the subtlety of Marsha’s emotions adds to this complexity. Meanwhile in Germany, her ex-husband, Sam (Idris Elba) once the victim of a hijack, now becomes the hijacker. 

Adams also brings a different kind of complex nuance to her portrayal of Bridgette in Dreaming Whilst Black. A seasoned TV producer who has mastered the art of surviving in a space where not many people look like her, she takes a chance on director Kwabena (Adjani Salmon). Whilst she encourages him, in the same breath she also reigns him in. Rightly or wrongly, she emphasises to Kwabena that he can’t fight everything, and he’s going to have to pick his battles if he wants to navigate working in TV. 

Bridgette is a glimpse of what a long career in the industry can look like, the wins but also the moral compromises as a black woman she has to make to get there. “Every actor wants to play multi-dimensional characters. I think I’ve been really lucky in my career because I’ve played those roles and traditionally, black actors haven’t always been in that position,” she shares.  

A big part of that creative journey unfolded in the United States, a path many black British actors have taken. Early on in her career, Adams worked with Eamon Walker. “He was really one of the first black actors on English television back in the day,” and was someone Adams looked up to. The pair worked together on the ABC drama, The Whole Truth. Adams portrayed an attorney and Walker, a partner. In the show he was Adams’s mentor, and that relationship carried over into real life. 

Don’t think this idea of success is a final place you reach, it’s an ongoing journey.

“He was very good at saying, you’ve come all this way and you’re here in America. You’ve already made it. Don’t think this idea of success is a final place you reach, it’s an ongoing journey.” Those words stayed with Adams and that mentorship she received is something she’s keen to pass on to younger creatives. “If you’re a creative person of colour who has broken through, that’s a massive achievement.” 

And yet, even with all this experience behind her and a stacked CV, Hijack is the show that has opened her up to a new wave of viewers who might only now be discovering her work. “You know, when you talk to people and you say, ‘I’m an actor,’ they sort of find it hard to believe because they don’t know who you are,” she says. “But I’m very much a working actor. There’s loads of us out there. And I consider that in my way success.”

She acknowledges the attention Hijack might have brought, but she’s clear‑eyed about the nature of the industry. “Your career peaks and troughs. This may be a moment, and then I might disappear from you for a while. But I do feel that I will always work. As long as my work is good, and people like working with me, that’s success… I’ll never get sick of walking onto a set.”

Success is something we return to in our conversation, and the positivity in which she speaks about it is genuinely enlightening. 

As we reflect on Hijack’s plaudits, it becomes clear that her sense of accomplishment was shaped long before Hollywood entered the picture. Before she made it to the big screen, there were teachers and family members who helped form her ambitions. She remembers the people who encouraged her to take the Arts seriously, including a man who ran a local theatre group back in Northampton and her mum who told her if she worked hard, she can get what she wants in life.

Adams feels we are in a somewhat golden moment for on‑screen representation, but wonders when the same energy will reach behind the camera. I playfully ask if she’s ever considered producing or directing “I’m more interested in the writing part. It’s been a really busy couple of years, so I haven’t been able to really sit down and focus, but I’ve got some ideas. Watch this space,” she says between a laugh. With so much under her belt already, it’s tempting to wonder if the strong, layered women she has embodied on screen might soon be the characters she writes herself.   

Image credits:

Photographer: David Reiss

Styling: Sarah-Rose Harrison

Make-up: Min Sandhu

Hair: Abigail Ignacio