After effects
British theatre star Amara Okereke tells DQ about landing her first major TV role in The Morning After, an eight-part comedy set in Cape Town that focuses on a young woman finding her identity in a new city with new friends.
While Amara Okereke is an established star in the world of theatre, she has plans to build up her screen career in the wake of landing her first leading role in South African series The Morning After.
Already a veteran stage performer after more than a decade dazzling audiences, she has earned rave reviews and awards for her part in productions including Les Misérables, Oklahoma, West Side Story and My Fair Lady – casting that led her to become the first black actress to play Eliza Doolittle in a production of George Bernard Shaw’s play on London’s West End.
But the last two years have seen her shift to the screen, with appearances in a pair of short films before a part in BBC young-adult horror Red Rose, which aired in 2022. That then paved the way for her to take the lead in The Morning After.
“Theatre is always going to be my first love. It always has been. It’s where I found my grounding,” she tells DQ. “But the last two years have been pretty screen-heavy for me, so I’m trying to find a balance. But theatre is always going to have my heart regardless. Post Covid, it’s been quite hard for theatre trying to get back on its feet, so I’ve been quite lucky in that sense with screen work taking over. But the ideal [scenario] would be to do both all the time.”
Swapping one medium for the other, Okere has noticed a “huge difference” between theatre and television, not necessarily in terms of acting but certainly in the way a film or TV set functions.
“With theatre, obviously when you’re in the run of a play, it’s entirely up to you. Whatever happens that night is whatever happens. It’s not a case of the editors can fix it later or you can do some ADR afterwards. So you get what you’re given,” she notes. “But with screen, there’s a bit more space for moulding, and you also have to put your trust in other people a lot more. In some ways it’s a more collaborative process, but in other ways it feels more individualised and you have your thing you can focus on and hone in on. There are pros and cons of both of those.”
While connecting with an audience night after night on stage may not be something that can be replicated in a TV studio, “I feel like it’s just as real, to be honest,” she adds. “You can go onto set with an idea of what you think the scene is going to be and come off set having done a completely different scene. Especially in TV, that is quite a unique thing that’s quite thrilling and quite challenging for an actor.”
The opportunity to head to Cape Town to make The Morning After represented the furthest distance she had ever been from home and the chance to immerse herself in a different culture, much like the experience of her character Nina, a 25-year-old British party girl who inexplicably wakes up one morning naked on a beach without any of her belongings. When a bunch of young and eccentric local misfits who share a cottage by the beach quickly come to her rescue, they help her take revenge on the person who did this to her – but ultimately Nina is the only person who can save her from herself.
Produced by Paradoxal and Both Worlds for Prime Video South Africa and sub-Sahara, and Germany’s ARD, each episode starts ‘the morning after’ a shocking event, before retracing Nina’s steps to reveal how she and other characters got to that point. Okereke stars alongside Tarryn Wyngaard, Gaosie Raditholo, Colin Moss, Carmen Pretorius and Khaya Dladla in a series created by Thierry Cassuto and Karen Jeynes. Jeynes and Cindy Lee direct the eight-part show, which is distributed by Federation Studios.
“It did feel like jumping out of a plane and just being like, ‘Let’s see what happens,’” Okereke admits. “I was quite lucky in the sense that the production team we had and the cast and all the people behind the scenes were so kind and so caring, and I felt like they just took me in. I felt very safe and very supported, so it didn’t feel too new or too terrifying.”
The chance to play Nina came as an audition opportunity through her agent, and after preparing a self-tape and meeting with the production team and the director, she landed the role. The script immediately stood out as one of those that “popped out to me and made me laugh physically out loud when I was reading it,” she remembers. “I thought, ‘You can’t really ask for better than that.’”
Nina, Okereke explains, is the perfect example of someone trying to understand their identity and who they are as a person in their mid-20s. Nina was born and raised in the north of England, but her mother is from Ghana and has very specific ideas of how Nina should behave, while Nina is trying to find her own way through life.
“Having this incredibly flawed human being who has so many beautiful qualities, which they maybe don’t quite see or they see in a different light, is a perfect way to describe being in your mid-20s,” she says. “Whether it’s partying, dating, sleeping with people, drinking or travelling across the world to Cape Town and running away from whatever that might mean, you’re trying to grasp on to things that help you find yourself.
“What’s so beautiful about Nina’s journey is she is just walking around blindly and finds this circle of people who also understand this idea of identity. There’s something really beautiful about people trying to blindly find their way through young adulthood.”
Despite the early mystery of how she ended up on a beach thousands of miles from home, viewers come to see Nina as someone who balances recklessness and ignorance with resourcefulness and “a hunger to survive,” Okereke says.
“She never loses a sense of independence and that ability to survive, but at the same time, she learns how to ask for help as well. Sometimes it takes being in a truly detrimental situation to eventually be like, ‘OK, I can’t figure everything out myself. Sometimes I need guidance, sometimes I need someone to just tell me what to do.’”
Okereke’s own stay in Cape Town lasted around two months, flying to South Africa after preparing to play Nina by working with the directors and writers over video calls. In fact, she describes the series as a love letter to the city, “one of the most beautiful places in the world.”
“Genuinely, the landscape is unbelievable. They have sea, they’ve got beaches, they’ve got mountains, they’ve got city, and everywhere you look is stunning,” she says. “When you’re filming by the beach, everyone’s having a great time and all you can hear is laughter and the waves, you think, ‘I can’t believe this is an actual job and this is what I get paid to do.’”
Leading The Morning After, Okereke found herself on set every single day during production. She also felt a sense of responsibility to create a safe environment for the cast and crew and build a strong camaraderie behind the scenes. However, being number one on the call sheet meant it was harder to walk away when she’d finished her own scenes for the day, as she wanted to support others as well.
“Also being away from home, I felt like I was locked in for that whole period of time that I was there, which is exhausting and wonderful,” she says. “But at the same time, it almost feels like it was a dream. That period of time, it feels like a fever dream.”
Reflecting on her first major television role, Okereke acknowledges the fast pace of TV production and the daily challenge to complete a number of script pages in a limited amount of time. “You have to find your focus and just lock in on that and not try to absorb the energy in the room,” she says. “Whereas with theatre it’s the complete opposite. You benefit from absorbing the energy in the room. The more you absorb the energy, the more present you can be.
“On screen, you want to block out everybody else’s energy and focus on your moment and the scene. The energy you expel in the job, it takes a lot out of you and you want to be able to conserve it. Trying to conserve your energy into this narrow focus is quite beneficial, and learning how to do that on a set was definitely useful.”
tagged in: Amara Okereke, ARD, Both Worlds, Federation Studios, Paradoxal, Prime Video, The Morning After