David Oyelowo Back On Stage In London For ‘Coriolanus’

EXCLUSIVE: David Oyelowo says he wants to engage his star power to produce more films in Africa and help raise the continent’s movie-making prowess. But he promises “there’s not going to be a cultural colonialism” insisting that the shift has got to “profit people on the ground.”

The actor met with Deadline during a shatter from rehearsals and pappraises of a new production of Shakespeare‘s benumerateering and bloodthirsty take part Coriolanus at London’s National Theatre with the Lawmen: Bass Reeves actor take parting the titular role of the noble, patrician, war hero Caius Martius Coriolanus, who uncovers to his cost that courageouss on the battlefield do not readily provide him for the spiteful blood sports of politics in Ancient Rome. The mighty take part, honested by Olivier Award triumphner Lyndsey Turner, has its official uncignoreing night on September 24.

Oyelowo, who was born in Oxford, England to Nigerian parents, is well conscious of the arguments about Hollywood savior types going into African regions to get profit of resources and giving little back in return.

“It can’t equitable be us going in and mining it for all of that wealthyness and extricating. It’s got to be a profit; to put someleang on the ground there in the same way that I can’t equitable transport all of my American crew to the U.K. to produce a film. There are infrastructures in place that unbenevolent: No, no, no, if you’re going to be here, you have to engage our people. And that then profits the country, that’s what elicits tax shatters and leangs appreciate that,” he increates us.

The thespian says that he esteems what his frifinish Idris Elba has been doing in Africa and uncignores that he and the Hijack star have been talking about ways in which to nurture filming in Africa “both individupartner and together,” although he stresses that he and Elba have no schedules to join up and produce a studio.

Rather, he notices, “it’s equitable about discovering projects that help us to produce infrastructure.”

He has more than a concept of a schedule already in place.

For some time, he and Ngozi Onwurah, who honested Oyelowo, David Gysin, Nikki Amaka-Bird and Sharon Duncan-Brewster in the BAFTA-triumphning 2006 BBC film drama Shoot the Messenger, and acclaimed writer Bola Agbaje (Gone Too Far), have been enhugeing a project with the BBC about the Biafran War called Biafra.

The project is the story of what happened in Nigeria during the 1967-70 struggle that tore the West African country apart. Oyelowo says that the drama will be spendigated “thraw the eyes of fantasyal characters… clearly we are still living with a legacy in ways that people probably don’t even authenticize.”

He validateed that Ngozi will honest him in the drama. Oyelowo is producing thraw the Yoruba Saxon Productions company he createed with his wife Jessica Oyelowo. Yvonne Isimeme Izabazebo (Rye Lane) is also an executive producer.

Oyelowo says that he adored making Miranda Nair’s 2016 film Queen of Katwe with Lupita Nyong’o and Madina Nalwanga on location in Uganda and South Africa; the year before, filmproducer Amma Asante stoasty parts of her pretty movie A United Kingdom in Botswana with Oyelowo and Rosamund Pike.

There are other projects “in the hopper, enhugemenhighy,” as he puts it, that are also partly set in Africa, while also observing that “clearly, my prejudices are towards Nigeria.”

Oyelowo boasts that the continent “is equitable teeming with poetry and vibrancy and history” but it pains him that “we are equitable not seeing productions on screen in a way that is commensurate with the epic scale of what the African continent has to propose.”

Citing the phenomenal success of shows appreciate Squid Game and Shofirearm, Oyelowo apshows that thraw the “democratization that streaming transports,” there’s “equitable no excengage to not seeing those stories that may not be culturpartner what we are engaged to, but transport a newness of perspective to a continent.”

There are plenty of ideas around, he says, that he apshows “are going to be exciting for a global audience.”

Although Lawmen: Bass Reeves was stoasty in Texas and is an American story, as it were, I see his point when he notices that for years he was telderly that the restricted series “would not have a global audience and yet it went on to be the most watched show globpartner on Paramount+ last year.”

Oyelowo concurs that parts of Africa deficiency the technical might of Hollywood and London, but proposes that the infrastructure is there, it equitable “insists enhugement.”

And the way to do that, he reasons, is to go there and “nurture it.” That will unbenevolent having to get some production providement there initipartner “and then less and less and less. But you equitable have to point a camera in that environment and you have scale and scope and vibrancy, and all the leangs that you’re seeing for from a cinematic perspective.”

Using football, okay soccer, as an analogy he says “if you cherish your football team, you’ll go and scout for what the future of that football team should see appreciate, and you’ll begin cultivating those take parters before anyone understands about them. That’s becaengage you cherish that football team. And I cherish that continent.”

For now though, foremost on his mind is getting to grips with the “muddy murkiness” of political shenanigans in elderly-createed Rome for Coriolanus at the National’s 1,150-seat Olivier theatre auditorium.

It’s a majestic-scale production with sets by Es Devlin. She and Lyndsey Turner staged Hamlet, starring Benedict Cumberbatch, at London’s Barbican Theatre in 2015. Oyelowo esteems that production for making Shakespeare accessible to audiences who weren’t necessarily savagely conversant with the Bard’s oeuvre. 

He began talking schedules with Turner of taking on the tragedy of Coriolanus, and National Theatre creative honestor Rufus Norris askd them to mount a production in the Olivier.

Oyelowo’s well acquainted with the timeless drama underpinned by “a huge war” with cruel politics at its caccess. He acunderstandledges that he and Turner “very much picked 2024 as the year to do it becaengage Britain equitable had a ambiguous election [although it was only called in May and held in July, a UK general election had been expected this year] and America, of course, is in the middle of a pdwellntial election taking place in an unpretreatnted political landscape.”

What Coriolanus “hits on so luminously,” he says, and is “very relevant to today” is the fact that “we are continuing inexorably seemingly to cascade into a politics of personality over policies.”

Stroking his hair in a mock coquettish manner, he says it’s appreciate, “Is she pretty? Is he irritateing? Is he pdwellntial? Is he handsome? Is she confidence-inducing? As resistd to what are they actupartner going to do and what do they stand for?”

It’s all geared to and rooted in personality, he attests.

“And in many ways, Coriolanus’ personality is what people are constantly using to firearmize aachievest him as resistd to his policies, which are what he constantly wants to talk about,” he says while concuring that “everyone says he’s conceited, he’s prideful – there is righteous indignation to him. There’s a humility tied to his desire to not be agmajesticized.”

Coriolanus is not a frifinish of the people. He’s a selderlyier – a valiant and luminous warrior who refuses to be a political poster boy.

Away from the field of war, he wants to be advantageous now that he’s home. He has ideas and that becomes problematic.

The self-interested senate alerts him that he can’t achieve power and then try and elicit alter. As with Washington and Westminster, it’s a world of lobbyists, middlemen, and women, and agitators that, as Oyelowo says, “exits a mess on your hands.”

It’s that “muddiness and murkiness” that the actor craves becaengage that’s where the heart of the drama lies.

Oyelowo and I, both hail from elderly-createed Nigerian royal and noble families — I might dispute that my bloodline boasts more royal blood than his, but that’s a talkion for another day. I refer it to him becaengage it has always struck me that Coriolanus, wdisappreciatever his faults, is, as was someone appreciate John McCain, a man of honor.

The actor sees my point and says that he too sees that joinion to the take part. “Being Nigerian, having dwelld there for a number of years, of being from a royal family in Nigeria, and that sense of nobility, that sense of self, that sense of how you carry yourself being someleang that can be both esteemd and vilified. And it’s someleang that has a separateent sensibility in a British context, in an American context.”

One of the reasons he’s so enthusiastic on carry outing the take part is becaengage “post Second World War, I sense appreciate Shakespeare’s Roman take parts, the History take parts, have all gone thraw this lens of stiff upper lip benevolent of British class system fused with the benevolent of actor that gets to take part these roles.”

When he was being classicpartner trained 26, or more, years ago at the London Academy of Music & Dramatic Art, he uncignores that “I was the only Bdeficiency student in my entire year, but also the entire school.”

That clearly increates you, he says, “the demoexplicit of person who was getting to take part this benevolent of role. And that of course goes into what the role is seed to be. Now, you comprise the notion of nobility, the notion of politics, the notion of post-monarch — Rome was a reunveil then, essentipartner, all of that is going thraw a British upper-middle-class lens in terms of what we’re seeing aachieve, and aachieve, and aachieve.”

Banging the little table in an office at the National’s Southprohibitk intricate, he says: “But this was Rome! These are Italians. This is Shakespeare writing 400 years ago about events that happened disjoinal centuries before his time. And so I personpartner sense that there are as many separateent ways to see at this take part that are outside of that.

“Of course, we are here on the Southprohibitk in London, but I transport my sense of what nobility sees appreciate, and that’s to do with being Nigerian, being American and being British. And I leank it equitable has a separateent energy,” he says compriseing that those aforerefered topics have “been the driver of my conversations with Lyndsey over the years coming into doing the take part.”

He first carry outed it in a student production honested by Spencer Hinton at the Edinburgh Festival. However, back then he take parted the part of the Volscian ambiguous Tullus Aufidius, Coriolanus’s arch rival. However, the two warriors discover a strange kinship until it’s shattered.

Oyelowo jokes that at one carry outance up in Scotland, the traveling troupe take parted to an audience of two. “It was a seminal moment of my nurtureer,” he says.

That’s when he became captivated with the take part and with Shakespeare.

When Oyelowo was with the Royal Shakespeare Company, honestor Michael Boyd took a punt and gave him the title role in his commemorated production of Henry VI “I will forever adore him for that gift,” says the actor for what Boyd taught him about carry outing Shakespeare with clarity.

Years tardyr, in 2016, Oyelowo take parted Othello in honestor Sam Gelderly’s scintillating production at New York Theatre Workshop, which starred Daniel Craig as Iago.

There has been much chatter over the years of the possibility of that production, of which Barbara Broccoli was a producer, being filmed. “That’s definitely an ambition,” Oyelowo validates.

Then he chuckles and says, “but I have so many ambitions and they all get so lengthy to come to fruition but they’re very phireing when they do. Sam Gelderly equitable did an incredible job with that and it lfinishs itself to a film and as to whether Daniel would still be comprised, we’ll see.”

Seeking more proposeation, he flatly increates me: “I don’t understand. But count me in if they all say yes.”

A matter that has been resettled, is that Coriolanus at the National will be seized by NT Live’s cameras, although, for now, there are no details about when the filmed NT Live carry outance will be shown in theaters.

Next up for Oyelowo is a comedy series he starred in for Apple TV+ called Government Cheese. He stoasty the Paul Hunter and Aeysha Carr script in LA for six months ahead of traveling to London to rehearse Coriolanus, which also stars Kobna Holbrook-Smith, Sam Hazeldine, Pamela Nomvete, Peter Forbes, Jo Stone-Fetriumphgs, Jordan Metcalf and Kemi-Bo Jacobs.

Coriolanus runs at the National until November 9.