Straight Talking Guy

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Jasmine Wing got on well with a young actor who does not suffer fools gladly.

‘We didn’t start off as slaves, that’s not where our black history starts’.

Actor Samuel Jimah is not one for stating the obvious.

Acknowledging the Oscars and other accolades for Steve McQueen’s 12 Years A Slave (2013), he notes: ‘We already know they got captured. I would like to see someone produce a film about black people before slavery.’

On Black History Month, imported from the USA in 1987 and now something of a British tradition, he says: ‘I don’t have to wait till this month to appreciate being black or what my ancestors did,’ adding, ‘as a black man, every day is my history.’

Jimah moved to East London from Nigeria in 2000. A recent UEL graduate (Theatre Studies, 2012), he is already making a name for himself as a professional actor. But as well as competing to win parts, he is also battling against the typecasting which often goes with the particular kind of part he is often offered – what he calls ‘same old, same old bad guy’.

‘I have a naturally stern face anyways,’ Jimah explained, ‘and I can come across as intimidating even if I am not trying to.’

But that does not mean he is only entitled to play thugs, drug dealers and villains:

‘Your stereotypical gangster types, are the roles I often get. I know I could do more but from first impression that is what is given.’

Jimah could not help sounding a little disheartened when he said this, but brightened up noticeably when asked about his recent lead role as Oberon in William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream – a romantic comic fantasy about as far away from Top Boy as anyone can be.

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Half-joking, half-serious, Jimah went on to talk about prejudice against beards! ‘Abraham Lincoln had a great beard’, he pointed out, and no one thought anything of it. Whereas the sight of ‘a black or Asian man that has a beard immediately creates a psychological barrier’ in the minds of many viewers. This might explain why Jimah is often called to come on set clean shaven.

Samuel Jimah is a young man with drive and ambition. He doesn’t do trite and truism. But he does concede this much in relation to the struggle against racism: ‘we have come a long way and we are still heading in the right direction.’

 

jasminenatashawing@gmail.com

 

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