Jimmy Akingbola has had the kind of career that only looks straight in hindsight. A role that was his until it suddenly was not. Long stretches with no work at all, arriving between the sort of stages most actors would treat as a destination. And a part in Bel-Air that connects to his own life far more directly than most viewers would guess.
In the Season One finale he talks with Jazz Lintott about all of it, including the decision to stop waiting for permission. When the audition never came, he went around it and made the introduction himself.
He is just as forthcoming about the work he does away from set. The mental health advocacy, and the mentoring charity he founded for Black actors trying to get a foothold in an industry that does not often make room twice.
Up Next in Season 1
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William Standford Davis
Most people met William Stanford Davis as Mr. Johnson, which means most people met him decades into the job.
In episode five he sits down with Jazz Lintott and accounts for everything before that. The auditions that went nowhere. The ones he was almost right for. The rent that went unpaid and th...
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Adjani Salmon
Before Dreaming Whilst Black was a BAFTA winner, it was an idea Adjani Salmon had no reasonable basis for believing in. He decided to make it anyway, then spent years finding out what that decision would actually require of him.
In episode four, he talks with Jazz Lintott about the kind of ambit...
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Steve Carr
Steve Carr got his first feature by flying to Arizona, sitting down with Ice Cube, and telling him what was wrong with his script. He had never worked on one before and no real idea how the job was done. He got it anyway.
In episode three, he walks Jazz Lintott through a career assembled almost e...
