British actor Amaka Okafor has spoken about how her heritage has often resulted in her becoming a diversity hire in the various films and TV shows she has starred in.
Okafor, 43, who was born in Birmingham to a Nigerian father and an Indian mother, is best known for her roles in the 2023 Take That film Greatest Days and TV shows The Responder and Bodies.
Speaking to The Independent’s new Like This, Love This podcast, Okafor shared some of her frustrations when it came to be cast in certain roles due to her background.
Discussing her admiration for the Issa Rae TV show Insecure, the awkward experiences of an African-American woman in Los Angeles, Okafor said: ““I just recognise it all the time – that scenario – because usually I’m in the real minority in work spaces.”
She added “I never get to be in the all Black this or the all Asian that. I’m always in these things where they’re like ‘f*** this is probably too white, we need, one of these characters needs to be Black’. I tend to be in those ones.
Okafor admitted that as a result of this form of typecasting she’s often on the “receiving end of a lot of people’s issues about race”.
“A lot of the time, they’re trying to say I’m not racist, you are in the company of somebody safe here,” the actor explained. “But actually, in the process of doing that they’re stumbling over a load of stuff in quite a clumsy way that’s quite hurtful.“
Okafor said that witnessing something like that is “really painful” because she has to reassure her colleague so they can later shoot a scene together. “So you have to just be like ‘it’s cool’”.
Insecure ran from 2016 until 2021 and received numerous Golden Globe and Emmy nominations.
The show, based on Rae’s Awkward Black Girl web series, also stars Yvonne Orji, Jay Ellis, Amanda Seales and Natasha Rothwell.
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The show ended in after five seasons. Rae confirmed the news in a statement to Deadline, telling the publication that she and executive producer Prentice Penny “are so grateful that HBO believed in our show from the beginning and kept faith in us to see our vision through the end”.
“We always planned to tell this story through five seasons, but we couldn’t have made it this far without the tremendous support of our audience,” Rae added. “I feel blessed beyond measure to bring our characters’ stories to an end, on-screen at least.”
