Idris Elba

Idris Elba has revealed that he was once threatened at gunpoint when he tried to intervene in an argument between a couple outside a club.

The Luther star, 50, recalled the incident took place in the US and said it began when he tried to stop a man from shouting at his girlfriend.

In a recent appearance on the SmartLess podcast, Elba claimed: “I nearly lost my f***ing life after attempting to stop a man threatening his girlfriend outside a club.

“The guy [was] whaling on his missus, screaming in her face, ‘I’ll f***ing kill you,’ and so on. I come around and I go, ‘Look how beautiful she is. Why would you talk to this beautiful princess like that?’”

However, things took a turn for the worse when the man turned to Elba and pulled a gun on him.

“He pulled out a gun, stuck it right in my face and goes, ‘You talking about my girl?’ He thought I was trying to hit on her,” Elba continued.

“I remember thinking, ‘Don’t play negotiations like that… Consequences, man.’”

The actor did not give further details about how the rest of the incident played out.

Elba has previously spoken out about violence against women and voiced his concerns about women being targeted in his popular BBC series Luther.

In 2018, he told Digital Spy that the show was “rightly” criticised for portraying violence inflicted on female characters.

“We definitely got criticised as one of the biggest offenders of that earlier on in our seasons, and quite rightly so,” he said.

“It was very much of my voicing, but very much Neil [Cross]’s voicing as well, not to mention the BBC, wanting to even that out.”

Elba was the associate producer on the series, which spanned five seasons from 2010 to 2019, while Cross was the creator of the drama.

Friends with Harry

Elsewhere on the podcast, which is hosted by Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes and Will Arnett, Elba revealed that he and the Duke of Sussex became friends after greeting one another in nightclubs multiple times.

These moments led to Elba playing a DJ set at Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s wedding in May 2018.

He said: “I was DJ-ing in all these clubs where [Prince] Harry would show up and he was like, ‘Yo!’ and I’m like, ‘Yo!’. And then at one point he was like, ‘Listen man, I’m getting married’. I was like, ‘Yo! That’s amazing.’

“He goes, ‘I want you to DJ’… I was like, ‘I don’t do requests!’”

Elba attended the nuptials of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex with his wife Sabrina Dhowre. He later played his set at the reception in Frogmore Cottage and played Whitney Houston’s “I Want to Dance with Somebody” for Meghan’s first dance with Harry.

The Independent