David Ajala
David Ajala is an actor, born 1986.
Ajala's early work is British and hard: Kelvin in Offender, Tyrone in Starred Up, a detective in Brotherhood, plus a Reynaldo in a filmed Hamlet. That is the standard route out of London for a young actor with presence, and the parts are mostly prison, crime and estate drama, which is what British film keeps offering.
American genre television took him seriously faster. Roy Eris in Nightflyers, a run on Supergirl, and then Cleveland "Book" Booker in Star Trek: Discovery, which he joined in 2020 and stayed with to the end of the series. Book is the role that changed his standing, partly because science fiction television so rarely hands a lead position to an actor whose CV is British prison drama.
What he is actually good at is using size gently. He is a big man and gets cast accordingly, as muscle in Fast and Furious 6, as Ibis in Jupiter Ascending, as the Drifter in Kill Command, and those parts ask him for menace he can supply without effort. The interesting performances are the ones that go the other way, where he plays quietly and lets the physical presence do the arguing. Starred Up is the clearest example, a film with no room for posing. Since Discovery ended he has moved into British thrillers and mysteries, The Jetty, Nine Bodies in a Mexican Morgue, The Woman in Cabin 10, alongside American network work on Law and Order.
Movies (9)
TV (10)
Where to start with David Ajala
For volume, Star Trek: Discovery. It is the largest and most rewarding thing he has done, and the role deepens as the show goes on, from an outsider the crew tolerates to the person the series leans on when it wants a scene played quietly.
Before that, though, watch Starred Up. It is a brutal, unshowy prison drama and his scenes have none of the space television gives him, which forces a much more compressed performance. Nightflyers is the interesting failure, a gothic haunted-spaceship series with a strong central idea and a shaky execution, and he is the best reason to sit through it. Kill Command and Fast & Furious 6 are the action credits, fine on their own terms and not where the acting is. The Jetty is the most recent proof he can hold a British drama without a science fiction premise doing half the work.
Star Trek and the science fiction
Book in Discovery is the largest role and one of the few characters in that show written with real interiority, and Nightflyers and Jupiter Ascending are the earlier genre work.
The British films
Starred Up is the best thing he has done, a prison drama in which he is genuinely frightening, and Offender and Brotherhood come from the same stretch of London film-making.
The recent television
A steady run of British and American series since Discovery ended, mostly thrillers. The Jetty and The Woman in Cabin 10 are the newest. The run since Discovery ended has been steady and mostly in British thrillers rather than American genre work.