On the day I speak to Gbemisola Ikumelo, it’s in the midst of the biggest fortnight of her career so far. She has just won a TV Bafta for her short Brain in Gear, had a comedy series based on said short commissioned by the BBC, and has been cast in a big US series, too. It’s also one of the hottest days of the year, so as her Zoom window pops up, she’s cheerfully licking a rocket lolly.
The actor and comedian, best known for the BBC sketch show Famalam, says none of it has really sunk in. “On the day of the Bafta, I was sitting in my PJs eating Domino’s Pizza watching it, and then I saw my face come up on screen as the winner, and I mean, yeah, I screamed,” she says. “It’s weird … you spend so long hustling, then, in the course of a week, you’re handed a bunch of your dreams.”
Ikumelo didn’t always want to be in comedy: “I wanted to be a very serious actor, treading the boards, doing RSC.” She had tried her hand at school plays and found she had a knack for it, joining the National Youth Theatre at 15. After studying acting at Edinburgh’s Queen Margaret University, her list of television and theatre credits began to grow, and she made her comedy debut as the troublesome Kadean in comedian Dane Baptiste’s show Sunny D in 2015. That shoot was a revelation – Ikumelo hadn’t necessarily realised she was funny: “I know people laugh at me sometimes, but a comedian? But it turns out I’m all right at it.”
Ikumelo’s newfound funny side made enough of an impression on the BBC that they asked her to come on board for Famalam – a new sketch show headed up by black creatives – not just as an actor, but as a writer, too. Famalam is an anomaly in the television industry, which more frequently puts black people in front of the camera than behind it. The show subverts the traditions of the tired, often racially insensitive sketch shows British millennials grew up on, poking fun at baseless TV tropes about black people.
One sketch from the show’s upcoming third season is a case in point. It features Ikumelo as one of long-running characters the “warring aunties” – this time the Nigerian duo are having a nephew round for dinner when he makes an announcement: he is coming out as gay. “Gay?” the aunties ominously respond. But just as it looks as if things are about to kick off, they rejoice: “Love wins!” Later in the conversation, though, the nephew makes another disclosure: he has gone vegan. He’s quickly chased out of the house.
Ikumelo says the crucial difference for sketches like these is that black communities are the ones making the joke, and black people aren’t treated as monolithic for the sake of a punchline. “When a joke is actually authored by the people who are coming from that experience, the authenticity and the nuance brought by that is so important.”
“When people want to make a joke about people from a certain background, but have never really spent any time with those people, they often tell this copy of a copy of a copy of a joke about people they think they know.”
Instead, Ikumelo thinks you get a far better joke when you can go authentic, and go specific. “I can look at things in my life as a black person, as an African person, and make fun of that,” she says, referencing her love for jollof rice, and the fact that she took eight tubs of it home after the staple food appeared in a sketch. “But there’s a real danger when the joke isn’t yours to tell.”
Although many of Famalam’s writers are black, culturally sensitive issues do still crop up – and there are sketches in which black audiences have felt writers missed the mark. Just over a week after we speak, a clip from the new series of Famalam, titled “Jamaican Countdown”, attracted widespread criticism on Twitter for its stereotypical portrayal of Jamaican people. The sketch included jokes about weed-smoking, dialect and penis size.
Tom Moutchi, one of Ikumelo’s castmates, responded to criticisms, tweeting: “if you actually did watch the show you’d know there’s a healthy balance of sketches that banter every part of society … I love my Africans. But they can get bantered either way. I love my Caribbeans but they can get bantered too. No one is safe. It’s comedy mate. Get a grip.”
While all the actors involved in the sketch were black, most weren’t Caribbean, which many saw as intrinsic to its problems. As Ikumelo points out, when making jokes about specific communities, authenticity (and self-deprecation rather than external ridicule) is key. So perhaps a lesson from the recent backlash is that creators must acknowledge nuances across the diaspora; after all, black communities are not a homogeneous block. (Ikumelo was not available for comment.)
Beyond Famalam, Ikumelo has been focusing on her own writing projects, and her most recent, Brain in Gear, is based round the experience of being trapped with your own thoughts. Ikumelo is an introvert – a fact that most people are surprised by, in part because of the comic persona she’s cultivated. “I can be in a social setting and thrive in it, and then get home and not need to talk to anyone for days.”
Aptly, Brain in Gear’s protagonist Remi lives alone, and is haunted by two alter egos, Boss Bitch Remi and Dark Remi. The two act like an angel and a devil on Remi’s shoulder, weighing in on everything from how to confront her neighbour to whether to go for a poo before leaving the house in the morning. “The show is totally me – I live alone and talk to myself incessantly. I also have snatches of those boss bitch moments where I’m like: ‘Yeah, I’m fabulous!’ And then, random Dark Remi moments – weird thoughts, where I’m like: ‘Where did that come from?’”
Ikumelo says this makes the writing process therapeutic. “There’s definitely a part of me just writing it going: ‘Other people must think like this. I hope other people do, and if they don’t – OK … this is awkward!’”
Luckily, it seems that other people do relate to Brain in Gear, which scooped the Bafta for best short form programme and has been commissioned for a full series on BBC Two. “There is a kind of validation in seeing that we’re all similar in this thing, right? We all battle with our thoughts and the different versions of ourselves that we put out there.”
Yet, imposter syndrome still lurks in the background. “I think it’s part and parcel of when you’re marginalised or have had to hustle in any industry; when you do finally get a break, you’re sort of like – what’s the catch? You wonder if you really deserved it. I had a lot of that during the nomination, and caught myself thinking: ‘It was all so white before, so maybe now they’re overcompensating.’”
But Ikumelo may have to get more comfortable with being recognised. Already familiar to international audiences after an appearance in Netflix’s Sex Education, she’s also working on Amazon’s reimagining of A League of Their Own, alongside Broad City’s Abbi Jacobson. The 1992 film, a fictionalised account of a second world war all-female baseball team, provides a commentary on gender that Ikumelo thinks has more mileage for a series in 2020. “There is always a nervousness about taking source material that is beloved, and making it into something else, but in the realm of women’s rights and identity, there’s going to be a lot of things that pack a punch in this show.”
For Ikumelo, the near-future is set – but she resists complacency at all costs. “I’m always thinking, overthinking often, about the future. Yes, there’s a lot happening now – but I’m still going: ‘OK, but what about after that?’ Because this moment, well, I don’t want it to just be a moment.”
In the spirit of Boss Bitch Remi, her plans are ambitious: “I will have my own kingdom!” By this, she means she wants to change the existing structures of the industry, or create new ones, to nurture talent from underrepresented backgrounds. It’s something she’s already put time into as leader of east London non-profit organisation Faith Drama Productions. “You have to make the soil fertile for others to do things, because everyone benefits.”
She admits that her next steps are as daunting as they are exciting. “You’ve taken away all my flippin’ barriers – now I just have to fly. What the hell are you gonna do, Gbemi?”
Series three of Famalam is out now on BBC Three
