Gangs of London season two saw a new force in town – and he is one of the most formidable villains to the Wallaces’ operation yet.

Terrifying and brutal, gang boss Koba has been brought to London to enforce order among the gangs with his paramilitary approach.

Shrewd, quirky, and not afraid to stand out, Koba is taking advantage of the business opportunity this new position affords him to monopolize the London drug trade.

But as power-hungry Koba becomes consumed by his own business interests and dealing out sadistic punishments to anyone who threatens them, he takes his eye off the ball.

Soon he comes to realize that his terror tactics do not equal loyalty, with enemies stacking up quickly as his behavior gets even more volatile.

Speaking to Sky ahead of season two, here’s what Waleed Zuaiter had to say about this complex and reckless new character – and what happens to him.

There’s a new sheriff in town: that’s the way I like to describe how Koba comes into this series. He’s ruthless, and he’s been brought in to keep the gangs in order after the chaos of series one.

Koba has been brought in by the investors, and he basically reports directly to Asif. He’s been brought in to keep the gangs in order and to really dominate the city.

Yes, he’s Georgian. There’s not much that’s revealed about him, so a lot of this is backstory, but he’s had an upbringing in gangster culture. He’s a very ruthless villain. His code is ‘no family,’ and that’s a really nice juxtaposition to everything about the show, because so much of Gangs is about family.

From my research, the Georgian gang culture has evolved a little bit, but the old-school gangsters do still live by that ‘no family’ code because there are no attachments. If you have anything of worth, your enemies can hold that against you, so it’s a very freeing role. You get to explore a lot.

Yes, but there’s a need to unify people with a villain who’s common to everybody. It’s one of those things within the gangster club culture where ambition takes over, and people start to lose sight of their allegiances, so it’s a matter of survival of the fittest. His only allegiance is to power, really. So much of this show is about power and power shifts.

I’ve watched the first series twice now, and you learn new stuff every time you see it. What I’ve realized is that it’s such a rich show because there are so many powerful characters. Koba likes to manipulate. He actually enjoys it; it’s part of the fun of the game for him. It’s like a new playground for him, this new city. There’s an excitement too because everything is so new, and he is an optimist. He loves this new culture, this new surrounding, he loves the food, and he really connects with all the different ethnicities of the different gangs. So he’s one of those people that, in a weird kind of way, unifies the gangs.

He has a hold on the whole gang culture because anything that’s non-local is something that he embraces and hangs on to.

It’s a great question. Similar to everybody else in the show, it’s about survival, and with Koba’s code of ‘no family,’ it’s really clear that power is what Koba wants. It’s a God complex, in a sense. I think there’s something in the text that says, “We’re gods now,” and that kind of immortality is, I think, what Koba really wants. It’s not just about wealth, it’s about power, and he almost deceives himself by thinking he could be a god amongst gods.

That’s interesting because one of the first things I told Corin, when I was reading and putting myself on tape, was that I imagined him as a panther, as an animal. That kind of primal, instinctive survival of the fittest is what he’s lived by his whole life. He’s had to survive parentless. He’s spent a lot of time in prison. There’s so much of gang culture where the tattoos and the scars are like your résumé, but Corin was very insistent on it being more internal.

That resonated with me a lot because I am, I think, more of a visceral actor than an intellectual actor. So this primal animal-ness of Koba is something that I find interesting. It’s something I haven’t done before with another character. I explored a bit of stuff with physicality, and I did a lot of work on the Georgian accent, and that’s also been a very nice window for me into the character because it sounds completely different from myself and it somehow kind of gets in your body.

We have a great Georgian gentleman who’s recording all my dialogue, and it’s been a really nice starting point for me for the character. But this whole idea of a panther or a predator is really interesting to me in terms of his attack but also in terms of his defenses, and in terms of his ‘fight or flight’ nature.

Yeah, that’s one of the first things that I caught on to with the dialect. It’s amusing and there’s a part of me that thinks Koba knows he’s mispronouncing it, but it’s almost intentional. But yeah, it is really cool [laughs].

It is very fun to play, but at the same time it’s very scary. That’s the beauty of this kind of role for an actor. It’s very colorful, it’s very energetic and physical, and that’s where I think an actor has fun with it. Because he’s the polar opposite of me, the things that I stress about sometimes or spend a lot of time on are: what are the choices he makes? There are so many different ways of delivering the dialogue, so I’m really focusing a lot on that but also how he does things and what choices he makes that are different from the choices that I would make.

Koba’s heard of Elliot: Elliot’s like this rock star, as Koba describes him. Koba initially brings him on after his driver gets taken out, and he hires Elliot to find the killer. Shortly after that he starts to become very suspicious of Elliot. Elliot’s an enigma, this powerful presence, and I think Koba’s always looking for somebody to challenge him. Intentionally or not, it’s just that animal instinct. He senses something in Elliot pretty early on, and that’s part of that natural primal instinct he has.

When Koba is introduced in season two, it’s like a new chapter and the Wallaces are no longer in power. Koba is brought in to bring order to the city, and then we find out later that Sean is alive, and Koba is thrown off his feet. There’s a sense of imbalance because he’s no longer in control in the way that he thought he was. It really heightens the stakes; his power is really threatened, and so he has to rethink his allegiances. But that’s the part of the show that I think is really quite interesting: you’re always looking for who your friends are and who your enemies are. It’s a really nice shift to the character where we see him unravel when Sean enters the picture.

Yes. Sean says at one point that the key is to find out who’s the most powerful person, befriend them, and then squeeze them dry. I think that’s similar to Koba’s personality and key to their motivation in coming together. Like, who’s the most powerful person here? Let’s meet up. Let’s become friends, and let’s see what happens next. That kind of tension is really interesting, where you have two very powerful characters with tormented pasts. When Sean and Koba join forces, it’s a really interesting dynamic where they’re really evaluating each other, trying to see where their weaknesses are, and trying to see how long this partnership can last before somebody has got to go.

He’s not apologetic about anything that he does, and he really does have free rein, and that’s why the investors brought him in. They know that he’s ruthless, and Asif says really early on that things have to change, and this is the change that we need to keep the machine going. His only loyalty is really to himself, his own ambitions, and to power.

Yeah. Very early in the series, it’s discovered that there are weapons being sold in the city that he has nothing to do with. That really angers him, and so his plan is to infiltrate and to dominate wherever there’s activity that doesn’t include him. If anybody gets in his way, it’s over.

He tests him, and it’s almost like he’s trying to recruit him into this world that’s a beautiful composition of all these different ethnicities and different cultures in London. There’s this sense that the old ways are no longer going to work, so Koba tests Elliot about his allegiances, and he’s basically testing his relationship with his mother as well. It’s this test of family versus power. You know: “If you think you’re going to have a nice peaceful life with a wife and kids, you can just forget about it.” That kind of testing his resolve, testing what he really wants, and he’s really digging deep into his father’s issues and his mother’s issues in a very smart way.

It’s a great discovery that Koba has when he’s talking to Ed Dumani. That was a great scene that we shot where Lucian did not have to say much at all, just that one thing at the end of the scene where he basically answers “his father” to all three questions. An idea pops in Koba’s head where he realizes, “That’s how I can get to this kid. I can really manipulate him and I can really get in his head, and get him to do what I need him to do.”

In a sense, he decides to be like his abusive father, because what that does is bring somebody emotionally to their childhood. In a weird way, there’s comfort in a feeling that’s familiar, and I think we all go through that where you’re reminded of these demons that you have. That was Koba’s goal with Sean, after that conversation: to reawaken those demons.

I really enjoyed the opening scene where we first meet Koba. It was a really stressful day for me because there was a lot of handling of weapons and feeding Fady bullets, but there’s such an iciness to Koba in that. It’s this frightening presence that he has. So as frightening as it was or as uncomfortable as it was to do that scene, there were real strong moments I felt. And we have such a rapport, myself and Fady – we’ve worked before together where I also tortured him! This was delicate yet violent. It was a really interesting way of doing violence, almost like a father-son relationship in a way where he’s feeding him bullets, and I just realized how intense it was when I got home that night after all the chaos and stress of the day. It really hit me hard how psychotic and how gruesome that whole experience was.

Well, Koba really likes to eat, and we’ve established that quite a few times in the show, so he meets his end after a really heartfelt conversation with Sean Wallace in that kind of father-son way.

In the course of that scene, they stop to get a location on where they have to be next, Sean buys a burger and offers it to Koba, and Koba eats it, and dies. Sean poisons him. What’s really cool about that is it’s like he’s killing his father again. It’s a really nice way to go [laughs] because thematically for the show, it’s very, very powerful.

Koba’s probably the most stylish gangster in this show. I’ve got to say, the costume designers and the hair and makeup teams have all done an incredible job.

By the way, the whole blond thing was an idea I had when the first lockdown happened. I shaved my wife bald and she dyed me blond just because we weren’t going anywhere for a while, and I was like, “I never get to be blond as an actor.” At first, I looked like a poodle because my hair was a lot longer then, and then I cut it really short, and I was just like, “Wow, this would be a really cool character to play!” It’s stylish, but it’s also very different from any look that I’ve had.

Corin liked the idea. Then Helen, one of the heads of hair and makeup, said, “I want you to go clean-shaven,” so the look was born. Then we tried to stay away from stereotypes of tracksuits all the time. He likes to peacock. We showed off as many colors as possible, like, “Hey guys, I’m here.” It’s an incredible look, and there’s a nice texture to everything. The velour pants, the shiny texture-y coat is very much the panther in Koba. I’m always showing chest hair and cleavage in every scene. It’s just – it’s perfect.