NATIVE Exclusive: How Editi Effiong’s beliefs and curiosity netted him a blockbuster
"I think storytelling is very important. If we do not tell our stories, we lose ourselves."
Editi Effiong would not object to you calling him a nerd. As an adolescent, rather than go play outside, he preferred to be locked up in a library, dedicatedly going through the contents of encyclopaedias. Growing up in a house filled with books, he craved knowledge with a rabid curiosity – knowledge that was abundant inside books. “On average I knew more than anyone else in my class,” he tells The NATIVE. “I knew so many things, I knew everything. I knew the past, I knew the future, I knew the present.”
With an ever-increasing bank of knowledge came an affinity for the arts. “When I read, I started writing,” he says. A self-proclaimed descriptive writer, Editi approached his stories from a vivid, visual angle. That meant making films was always on the cards, and he had some early practice from producing plays as a young boy in church and as a budding creative in University. Ditching his quest to get an Environmental science degree – “It was boring” – he found his way into tech, writing code for years, before switching to the marketing and sales side of things. For someone with a myriad of interests, it was only natural that he’d jump into diverse endeavours, but he would still eventually find his way back to his first love: storytelling.
Effiong founded Anakle, a digital agency that merged his passions for tech and marketing, working on creative advertising visuals for corporate companies and brands, amongst other things. In there is also Anakle Films, a production company that helped Editi wholesomely indulge in his lifelong passion for filmmaking. As part of his résumé as a writer and producer, there’s ‘Up North’, a coming of age story with a gorgeous rendering of Nigeria’s northern region as its backdrop. There’s the short film, ‘Fishbone’, a gripping portrait of karma that doesn’t always happen in Nigerian society.
In both films, Editi Effiong taps into the fabric of social issues from a humane perspective, which also informs his most ambitious filmmaking attempt till date. ‘The Black Book’, his debut directorial feature, follows a man who attempts to find justice for his son’s extrajudicial killings at the hands of a special police unit. In the process, he has to grapple with Nigeria’s deeply flawed system, dabbling into the political underground to make for an action thriller that motions towards Nigerian history.
Exciting, if a little unwieldy in scope, ‘The Black Book’ is a bonafide blockbuster, reaching global popularity in the few weeks since its late September premiere on Netflix. Executed by a star-studded cast headlined by the great Richard Mofe-Damijo, and a crew of over a hundred across seventy locations, it’s as big budget as it gets in Nollywood. “We didn’t set out trying to make the most expensive film,” Editi Effiong says, explaining that the rumoured million dollar budget was mainly a byproduct of trying to make a really good film.
‘The Black Book’ is a reflection of Editi’s beliefs and curiosity. Over the years, he’s been very outspoken about social issues, providing information during the EndSARS panel proceedings and generally being a voice of reason on social media. His directorial debut combines his passion for social justice with his readiness to create at the highest level possible.
Our following conversation with Editi Effiong has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity.
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NATIVE: So, your early introduction to film and the arts, how did it start?
Editi Effiong: I watched films, that’s my introduction. My dad made sure we watched films, and it wasn’t so we would make films. I remember one of my dad’s favourite films, ‘Windmills Of The Gods’. That wasn’t the beginning actually. ‘Gone With The Wind’ is a classic. I watched [the film] when I was ten, eleven, twelve years ago. I watched it again when I was 15, watched it again when I was 20, and I watched it again recently. I watched it a few times.
My dad has a masters degree in linguistics, so I grew up in a house full of books. I grew up reading books, a lot of books, and then when I was ten I started writing. Towards my fifteenth birthday, I wrote a 200-300 page book. It was the best thing I’d ever created then. All my siblings read it, my dad refused to read it because my dad wanted me to be a pure scientist, he wanted me to be an engineer. Anything that was art, I grew up in a community where we had a public library, well stocked. I read whole encyclopaedias, I learned to play chess from an encyclopaedia without seeing a chess board. I would lock myself in the library and read.
That’s very nerdy.
Well, on average I knew more than anyone else in my class. About the world, about shit, I knew so many things, I knew everything. I knew the past, I knew the future, I knew the present. I was just voracious in the consumption of knowledge. And so when I read, I started writing. I was very descriptive with my writing so people could describe the things I wrote, the emotions in the things I wrote, the pictures I painted. I write in pictures. The reason was that my memory is photographic in many ways. So, I never wrote for people to be able to read, I wrote for people to be able to see so I was always going to make films.
And of course I grew up in church, I used to lead the church drama group, and I produced plays. I remember when we produced ‘The Crucifix’, we made realistic Roman and Jewish costumes, we made props, we had a proper cross made and when we nailed my best friend to that cross, blood flowed as we nailed him. How did we do it? By just making blood and putting it in small bags so that when you hit the nail the blood just goes, and the women fainted in the church. When Jesus was stabbed with the spear, we just put a tiny little bag of blood at the bottom of a cardboard and stuck it to the tip of the spear so it looks like the spear, so when you hit the guy, the cardboard collapses and the bag breaks. And so the blood flows from the staff. We were 10 years old.
So it has been a long time coming?
Yeah. When I went to university, I was in a dance club and I produced drama on stage. It was in school that I met so many creative people. Where I was as a kid, it was just me and my siblings doing things, but in school everybody was creative, always just creating things. And so, I always wanted to make films but I didn’t know how. Fast forward, I work in tech, I was a programmer, product designer, and then I now created a marketing company, basically merged my tech and marketing passions in a digital agency, outside of making short videos for brands, shooting short films for brands, advertising and ads for brands you know. You build that experience, you write scripts, and the advertising scripts are pretty hard.
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NATIVE: So that prepared you for filmmaking.
Editi Effiong: Well, the funny thing I always say is that, the thing that prepared me the most for being a filmmaker and director is programming. Writing code because it’s the only thing that allowed me to think through. When I used to write code, you would have several folders with different codes, different support, constants, variables, and files that you can call as you needed them and the reality for me was you have to know where everything is, every line of code. It’s the same thing as directing, you have to carry the story whole in your hand. With every change you make on set, every adjustment to dialogue, it affects the rest of the story.
Were there skills that you took from advertising to filmmaking?
Organisational skills, raising money, being able to manage stakeholders across different channels. Being told that your work is shit and you go back to rework, like taking your ego out of the way. You’re gonna work for two weeks, go into a pitch and someone says it’s shit. And you go back and fix it, knowing that your client is right. Basically what I’m saying is that it helps you because artists—film artists—can be very emotional in the way they approach things and advertising helps you build a different approach.
Obviously, advertising is a form of storytelling but it’s different from film. What informed your decision to fully take that leap into filmmaking?
I think storytelling is very important. If we do not tell our stories, we lose ourselves. If we do not show who we are, tell who we are, then that part of us dies. Our children will not know, will not be able to see who we are, our children’s children will not know who we are. Stories are an important part of building our societies. Stories tell us what our societies should be like, the ideal. We build the ideal, a make-believe world then we can copy that ideal in the real world. Yeah, that’s why I went into film.
Talk me through your creative process.
So, most times, stories come to you whole. Like they come to you whole and you go through the process of taking that whole and detailing it. For instance, I wrote the initial draft for ‘Fishbone’ in thirty minutes. So, what you now do is, there’s the dialogue, strengthening it out, blah blah blah, but the initial idea just comes whole. With ‘The Black Book’, I had a lasting image I wanted to see. I had a clear idea of what the protagonist was supposed to do and then the beginning, the end. So I would put that down, write a synopsis, then build a story. I would take the character out of the story to find out, “who is this person?” and build the character. After you know your character, you go back and work out the actual actions in the story because I know how my character would react to this situation. That’s how you actually write the real story and then write a script. You finish the script, go into a script workshop with an editor who tells you that your story has potential but it’s nonsense. And then you’re like “okay, so what do you do?” So. yeah, that’s my process. I’ve only ever directed one feature so I only have reference to that one feature.
You worked behind the scenes on ‘Fishbone’, ‘Up North’ and ‘The Set Up’. What were the lessons that you took from these productions that aided you in making ‘The Black Book’?
Not Giving Up is the most important human trait. For success in any venture, not giving up is the most important. Not giving up.
You’ve said ‘The Black Book’ is the highest-budget Nollywood movie. Did you set out for that to happen?
We didn’t set out trying to make the most expensive films or one of the highest budgets or a million-dollar film. That’s not what we set out to do. What we wanted to do was tell a story that was strong, technically and everything.
What’s the rough breakdown of the film’s expenditures?
Well, that cast list does not come free, you know. Richard Mofe-Damijo, for example, worked on this project for thirteen months. You gotta pay him, you gotta pay his gym instructor, he had to lose weight and we had to hire a chef to prepare special meals for him for thirteen months, to make sure he would be the right size for the film. We had a specialist weapons trainer, a US marine that came in to train weapons and fight tactics. We also had equipment coming from the UK. We hired the most experienced Nigerian DOP, who lives in the UK, and came in with crew from across six, seven different countries. We had that very big cast, and the crew, about a hundred and fifty people sometimes. We shot in Lagos, in Kaduna and back in Lagos. We shot in Tarkwa Bay, where we had to use a barge to transport trucks and equipment too. We shot in Kaduna, we had to build a road, we had to build a set with the thing that was basically an airstrip. It was so big that the Airforce flying over saw it and sent an investigator to come and see what we were doing there. We had to build thirty eight sets. We had about over seventy locations. It was crazy.
Shooting across many locations and all these other stuff, how were you able to not lose the essence of the movie?
It comes back to my experience as a programmer. That experience really did help in keeping sight and being in touch with the story. You don’t just keep shooting, you’re reviewing your script everyday as you’re shooting.
NATIVE: ‘The Black Book’ explores injustice, older Nigerian clandestine dealings and other sociopolitically stuff, which seems right up your alley considering your outspokenness on EndSARS and other stuff happening in Nigeria.
Editi Effiong: Okay, here’s my philosophy in life, and I lifted this directly, almost word for word from an uncle. I don’t take the bus. I never use the bus, but I will fight to make sure that buses are on the roads for people who need them just in case one day I need to use the bus. Does that make sense?
Yeah.
Even if I don’t need them, people will need them. I drive a pretty nice car. When police stop me on the road, it’s “good evening, sir” and they let me go. We don’t have long conversations. But I’m gonna fight for people who don’t have that privilege, in case it’s my turn one day. I believe that we should fix the country because if we don’t, I’ll have to support all my cousins. Does that make sense? Right now, there’s no how you’ll stay, you’ll have a nice job and someone from the village or an old friend won’t call you asking for money, because everyone is going through it.
That’s why you’ll fight for a better economy. So your cousins can take care of themselves, they don’t have to depend on you. And also you too, when you get into trouble, when you get into a hard place, you want to have cousins that you can reach out to, you know. And 2Face said it, if you’re the only Superman in the area you’re gonna suffer. You want to be the only Superman in the area, you’re going to suffer. There’s more suffering rather than freedom associated with being the only Superman in the area. With ENDSARS, the chances of me getting shot by police is not as high as the average guy on the street. I’ve driven at night and seen police blocking the road and parking young men to the side and they wave me by, but I have to stand with them because it’s wrong. In the film, you see how my beliefs play into the things that I explore. Do you see how the things I believe in play a role in my art?
In addition to social justice, what would you say is the most important theme in ‘The Black Book’?
Family. Family is the most important thing.
What sort of impact do you hope the film has on the audience?
I hope the audience enjoys the film and expects better in the future.
What are some of your expectations for Nollywood’s evolution in the near future?
People are doing amazing work in Nollywood and I can’t wait to see what other producers are doing. We’ve seen really great films, and TV shows come through in the last couple of months and The Black Book is another title coming out of Nollywood.
What’s next for you?
And for me, what next, we are already in pre-production, for the next picture.
Interview conducted and transcribed by Alex Omenye.
AV CLUB: EXPLORING THE HUMANE, CINEMATIC EXCELLENCE OF CJ OBASI’S ‘MAMI WATA
Louddaaa Wants The World To Listen
Louddaaa sees Nigeria’s distinctive sonic identity as a responsibility, something to preserve and carry...
The world first discovered Louddaaa’s artistry on Ayra Starr’s eponymous debut EP, where he produced three of the five tracks. “Away,” his first collaboration with Mavins Records, became Starr’s breakthrough, gaining over one million Spotify streams by April 2021 and establishing him as a force behind the boards.
His signature lies in the spaces between sounds: synths that drift like the morning mist of Lagos, percussion that falls with the gentle persistence of rain, and arrangements so delicate they seemed to float. On Starr’s debut album, ‘19 & Dangerous,’ Louddaaa’s evolution unfurled across five tracks: “Cast,” “Beggie Beggie,” “Lonely”, “Amin,” and “In Between.” By then, his work had blossomed, the beats becoming muscular without losing their supple grace, and the melodies flowing like liquid silk across each composition. Now, in 2025, the quiet kid from Lagos has found his voice.
Like many great artists, Louddaaa’s calling found him. Walking home from a church rehearsal at just eleven years old, he experienced what he describes as divine revelation. “God showed me that I was going to be a producer,” he says during our Google Meet conversation on a chilly Sunday afternoon in mid-July.
Born Kehinde Alabi, he grew up in Oshodi, Lagos, where he had his basic education. At age nine, his family moved to Ejigbo, the part of the city he would come to call home. A true Lagosian, he traces his ancestral roots back to Ekiti through his father and Osun through his mother. He’s one of three children—and a twin. Music wasn’t a profession in his household. As a child, he’d sneak out to church rehearsals to play, fearful of the punishment that might follow if his father found out.
At age 11, didn’t know what the term “music producer” meant. He simply knew that his destiny lay in creating music. The calling required preparation, and unknowingly, he had been getting ready for it since the age of seven. While his siblings attended children’s church, he would linger behind the drummer during services, soaking in the rhythms. Eventually, at nine, he took up the role himself, becoming one of the church drummers.
As he grew older, he added the keyboard to his repertoire, driven by instinct. “I’m the kind of person who likes to learn new things,” he explains, excitement audible in his voice. “Everything was just God preparing me for production.” It would take some time for the prophecy to come to pass because prophecies, even divine ones, require patience.
Louddaaa’s earliest musical influences came from home: his father played a lot of gospel, Apala, and Baba Ara, while his mother was a huge fan of Tope Alabi. Growing up, he gravitated toward artists like 2Face and Styl-Plus, D’Banj and Don Jazzy, who left a lasting impression on him. As a professional drummer throughout much of his young adulthood, he was exposed to a wide range of genres, learning to adapt his playing style for different artists and audiences.
In his first year at the Federal University of Technology, Akure, Louddaaa began telling anyone who would listen that he was a producer despite having never actually produced a single track. The universe, it seemed, was listening too. In his second year, tired of Louddaaa’s endless talk about production without action, a friend put a laptop in his hands. The gift came loaded with FL Studio, a software that would become his gateway to actualization.
That night marked the first of countless all-nighters spent hunched over glowing screens, crafting beats while his classmates slept. His hunger was insatiable. His makeshift production journey began when he salvaged a pair of old speakers from his dad and set them up in his school dorm. With nothing but earphones and those aging speakers, he started calling up friends who could sing, drafting them into his self-declared label. In 2016, he officially founded his record label, Tal Entertainment. Throughout his years in university, he visited local studios, absorbing knowledge through internships and observation.
Armed with an Industrial Design degree and an unfulfilled musical prophecy, Louddaaa graduated from school in 2017 into a world that had no immediate use for either. He found himself in Port Harcourt, interning as a sound engineer, still chasing the dream, just from a different angle. Then fate intervened. In 2019, he moved back to Lagos, and not long after, a friend forwarded him a job listing: Mavin Records was looking for a recording engineer. It wasn’t his dream of music production, but it was a door, and Louddaaa walked through it.
If you had told him then that he would one day craft hits for Ayra Starr, he would have laughed at the possibility. In 2020, he was simply the sound engineer who stayed late, making beats when no one was watching. He expected nothing in return. But the universe rewards persistence in mysterious ways. One evening, as Louddaaa lost himself in a rhythm that had been haunting him all day, footsteps echoed in the hallway. Don Jazzy paused at the door, drawn by the loop spilling from the speakers.
“Who owns this beat?” he asked.
“I’m just playing around with it,” Louddaaa replied, perhaps too casually for a moment that would reshape his entire trajectory.
Don Jazzy wanted Mavin Records’ newest signee, Ayra Starr, to try something over it. By the next day, she had, and history was quietly being written in that Mavin studio. His first collaboration with Ayra Starr never saw the light of day, but it did something else: everyone who heard it believed. “She started sending me ideas to help her make beats,” he recalls. At the time, he couldn’t fathom why.
This period of his life was Louddaaa at his most vulnerable: a producer who didn’t yet trust the title. No one had ever paid for his beats. His credentials consisted of a childhood prophecy and an ambitious university label. When the melody that would become “Away” first whispered through his headphones, he had no idea he was architecting his breakthrough. “I didn’t even know why Ayra wanted me to produce for her,” he admits, the bewilderment still fresh in his voice years later.
“Away” soared. It became number one on the charts, earning millions of streams locally and internationally, morphing into a cultural moment that transformed two careers simultaneously. For Ayra, it was stardom. For Louddaaa, it was validation on the grandest scale possible. The prophecy had flesh now, and the producer who once questioned his abilities finally understood what everyone else had already seen. “Away” was his creative genesis, not just the song that introduced him to the world, but the voice that said: You can do so much more. That voice has since become a roar, leading to collaborations with Afropop royalty including Davido, CKay, Simi, Ladipoe, and Lojay.
The origin of his name dates back to when he worked as a sound engineer at Mavin Records. Kenny (as he was called) preferred to keep his speakers at a modest volume, but the artists and managers around him wanted high volumes. “Kenny, turn it louder!” they’d urge, again and again. Louddaaa stuck, first as a joke, then as a brand. Now, a Louddaaa instrumental is instantly recognizable by his vocal tag and the emotional core running through the music. He calls his sound “soulful,” and it’s a quality that is traceable across his work.
But perhaps the producer’s most intriguing dimension is his growing intersection between music and film. “Film is my retirement plan,” he used to tell himself until a conversation with director Kemi Adetiba reframed that thinking. “She asked me, ‘Why make it your retirement plan when you can start now?’” The question stayed with him, especially since scoring films had been a long-held dream. So when director Afolabi Olalekan approached him to work on the score for ‘Freedom Way,’ it felt like destiny.
The score came naturally to Louddaaa, as Freedom Way draws from his own lived experience with police brutality. That personal resonance shaped the project’s emotional core. Since its completion, the film has premiered on prestigious international stages, including the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), the Red Sea International Film Festival in Saudi Arabia, and a screening in New York. On July 18, 2025, it finally made its debut in Nigerian cinemas and is now available for public viewing. For his work on ‘Freedom Way,’ Louddaaa earned a nomination for Best Score/Music at the 2025 AMVCAs.
Louddaaa is part of a compelling wave of Nigerian producers and artists expanding their creative reach beyond the charts, venturing into film scoring and sound design. This cross-pollination of talent has been brewing for years. Take Falz, for instance. Known for his genre-blending sound, he’s also made a name for himself onscreen. His breakout role in Jenifa’s Diary earned him an AMVCA in 2016, followed by appearances in hit films like Chief Daddy, Merry Men, and 10 Days in Sun City. Tiwa Savage joined this cross-medium movement in 2024 with her film debut, Water & Garri, named after her 2021 EP. The project served as a visual interpretation of the emotions and themes embedded in the music.
For Louddaaa, the pull toward film is rooted in a desire for deeper expression. “Music and film go hand in hand,” he explains. “That’s why we shoot music videos, we’re trying to tell a story, to express ourselves.”It’s this understanding that positions him not as a producer dabbling in film but as a storyteller expanding his canvas, recognizing that some emotions require more than three minutes and a hook to fully unfold.
Today, Louddaaa’s father speaks of his son with pride, often referring to him as “the big producer.” “My dad carries it on his head now, literally,” he says, half in awe, half amused.
A typical day in Louddaaa’s life includes hitting the gym, working on music, and reading self-help books. “My favorite book depends on the problem I’m trying to solve at the time,” he says. It was while trying to navigate one of those problems that he decided—on a whim—to create a few ideas for Davido. At the time, he didn’t even know the global superstar was working on a new album that would become ‘Five.’ He sent the ideas to Davido’s manager without overthinking it. To his surprise, Davido liked them. “Next thing I knew, David started following me on Instagram.”
Louddaaa went on to produce “Anything” and “10 Kilo” on the album, both tracks carrying the signature elements of a Louddaaa production: emotive, featherlight, and breezy. There comes a moment in an artist’s journey when the work begins to speak louder than the name, and Louddaaa was honing in on that moment.
Louddaaa sees Nigeria’s distinctive sonic identity as a responsibility, something to preserve, evolve, and carry forward through both music and cinema. “It’s a blessing that I’m able to contribute to the evolving nature of African music and film,” he says. The future he imagines reaches far beyond mere music scores. “I don’t plan to wait a long time before directing films,” he says with the same certainty that once made him claim the title producer long before the world agreed. It doesn’t sound like ambition; it sounds like purpose, stepping into his next chapter. That sense of purpose has become his anchor, transforming what might otherwise be an anxiety-laced career into a stress-free one.
“I don’t enter a session to make a number-one song,” he says. “I enter to tell a story.” That distinction defines everything he does. The charts might applaud his work, but his heart is tuned to something deeper. “I don’t know how long this moment will last, but I do know I want to contribute something. I want my work to touch someone’s life.”
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Ayo Edebiri Makes Emmy History With Nominations For Acting and Directing
Ayo Edebiri becomes the first woman ever to be nominated for both lead acting and directing in a comedy...
American-Nigerian actress, Ayo Edebiri, has made Emmy history by becoming the first woman ever to be nominated for both lead acting and directing in a comedy series in the same year. She earned the nominations for her work on the hit comedy-drama TV series, The Bear.
Edebiri earned a nomination in the Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series category for her role as Sydney Adamu in season three of The Bear. She also picked up her first-ever directing nomination for the evocative episode “Napkins,” which also marked her directorial debut. Impressively, it is the second successive nomination in the Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series category for Edebiri.
In total, The Bear received 13 nominations for its third season, down from last year’s record-setting tally of 23. It brings the FX series’ total to 49 Emmy noms across three seasons. For the first two seasons, The Bear has won 21 Emmys. The show focuses on a chef and his staff attempting to turn a family-owned sandwich restaurant into a fine-dining establishment.
Impressively, another American-Nigerian actress, Uzo Aduba, picked up a best comedy actress Emmy nomination for her work as eccentric detective Cordelia Cupp in the Netflix murder mystery, The Residence.
In 2014, Aduba won an Emmy for outstanding guest actress in a comedy for her role as Suzanne “Crazy Eyes” Warren on Orange Is the New Black, and a year later won the Emmy for outstanding actress in a drama for the same role.
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Filmmaker Momo Spaine is changing the way Nollywood tells women’s stories
“I know how to speak to women and I know what they care
For many viewers, Amazon Prime’s After 30 will register as the latest sexy Lagos-based romance to hit streaming services, and one that gives a fresh voice (and look) to that beloved four-girls-just-trying-to-survive-in-a-big-city motif. But for the film’s director, Momo Spaine, and the legions of fans who have been clamoring for a follow-up to the original series that the film is based on, this project has been a long time coming.
Spaine first cut her teeth in filmmaking on After 30’s predecessor, Before 30. Released in 2016, Before 30 was a series that followed the love lives of four young women navigating the well-known, uniquely Nigerian pressures to settle down and get married before they hit 30. Now, armed with nearly a decade’s worth of experience and a sweet Amazon production budget, Spaine has brought the four women’s stories to the big screen, picking up eight years after viewers last saw them. And while there’s no shortage of stories about women navigating love and career life in Nigeria — think hit series like Unmarried, Smart Money Woman and Skinny girl in transit — Spaine brings an attention to detail that radiates as you watch its four lead actresses, Dami Adegbite, Beverly Naya, Ane Ocha and Meg Otanwa, reprise their starring roles.
From carefully curated color palettes to meticulous costume design to hair and makeup, the pages of sketches and decks that Spaine shows me on our late-May Zoom call are nothing short of a creative shrine to a very personal story. “I had hours of conversations with my [director of photography] and with our makeup artist, Lillian,” she says. “Talking about [things like] light reflecting makeup, what kind of underpainting we’re doing under the foundation so that when the light hits their skin it just glows and pops.”
Spaine’s filmmaking journey began when she was attending university in South Africa in the early 2010s. Back then, she’d assist her close family friend and veteran rapper, Sasha P, whenever she came to South Africa to shoot music videos. “That was like my first proper exposure to filmmaking, and I just fell in love,” Spaine recalls.
It was toward the end of her time in South Africa that Spaine received a script for the pilot episode of what would become Before 30. Soon after, she started an internship with the show’s producers, Nemsia Productions, who produced After 30, as well as other projects like Soft Love and the AMVCA-award-winning Breath of Life. Spaine worked with Nemsia over the roughly four years it took to make Before 30, and helped build the story and the audience that helped make its follow-up, After 30, possible.
”People loved the characters, they loved that the story was relatable,” she said of the positive response to the show. “It felt different. It felt like something that was slightly more elevated in terms of the storytelling, [and] the character development.”
Spaine also attributes the show’s success to the fact that it took risks with the kinds of stories it told. “Back then, you were talking about a Muslim couple bringing women into their marriage for sex, about a sexually free character in Nkem. We’re also talking about a born-again virgin who wanted to use spirituality to reverse her past sexual relations. So it was a lot of edge for that time as well, that I think we got feedback on being very successful.”
Before 30 was re-released on Netflix in 2019, and then saw a resurgence during the COVID-19-necessitated lockdowns in 2020 that brought a broader audience. After two years on Netflix, Amazon commissioned After 30 to continue the women’s story with a look at where they are now. Spaine spoke to us about how her personal experiences helped shape the film, how she’s continuing to push the envelope in terms of what kinds of Nigerian stories are being told, and what she hopes
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
I’m assuming there are parts of you that are in this movie. Can you tell me about that?
I struggle to think of a part of the film that does not have a piece of me in it. But starting with the characters, I’ve always had my favorites. I fancy myself a [Temi] in some ways, which is the lead character. I love fashion, I have that legal background, and I have almost the same relationship with my mom. But Nkem (played by Beverly Naya) is who I would like to be: that level of confidence, sexiness, just being this powerful woman that does what she wants and is unapologetic about it, but is still soft and honest at heart. Ama, for me, is an expression of who I think we should all aspire to be. The kind of good, pure-hearted, well-intentioned person, — that youthful, naive energy. And then for Aisha, it’s just that strength; she already has the security, but you also kind of have to show that being married does not mean all your problems are solved.
All these years after making the original show, how do you think the ways that you have grown as a person show up in the way that these characters have changed?
For [Temi], I don’t know, [Temi] pisses me off. She’s very confused. I don’t agree with how she runs her dating life. Like, I could not stand Carrie Bradshaw, and I love Sex and the City, but all she does is make bad decisions. And that’s kind of what makes a complex and dynamic character. With [Ama], I wanted to do a storyline where a character had to contend with their sexual identity, but from a very respectful place, from a true place that was not going to make fun of or minimize that experience. And for Aisha, the biggest thing with her is the conflicts that she has with Nkem. In the last eight to 10 years of my life, I’ve fallen out with friends that I thought we would die together. That kind of devastating friendship fight where you don’t think you can come back from.
Talk to me about the music for the show, Before 30. How did you put that together, and what decisions went into that process?
The music on this show makes me so proud. I was not as involved in the music of season one. We had no budget for music, so all we could do was approach people. After begging and pleading, maybe two people collected money; the other people just gave us permission. Bez, I think, just gave us permission because he was close with someone on the team at the time.I begged TeeZee for “Toyin” – we were just going around asking family members who had made music. But then there are ones that were chosen because they were so perfect, like Temi Dollface and Blackmagic. So half of it was just using our community, music from our existing community. And the other half of it was just begging, and everybody was upcoming at that time. Everyone was so willing back then to do things as a favor or to do things because they liked the idea.
What was it like securing music this time around for the film?
I’m really happy that the industry has boomed now, but even with what we thought was a comfortable budget, we could not get all the artists [we wanted] for the film.
Kaline [our music supervisor and the composer on the film], did a good job of going back to the drawing board like we did in season one, and just using our community. So, Kaline was able to pull together a bunch of songs from artists [who were willing to work with our budgets]. Everybody got paid, but it wasn’t a massive life-changing amount. They just did it because they believed in the story, and they wanted their music to be attached to the film.
What was your favourite part of making Before 30?
My favorite part was just getting to direct. Honestly, I spent seven years of my life producing thinking, “Okay, this is what I’m good at,” and I feel like I have a natural flair for producing, but I wouldn’t say I ever enjoyed it. It’s just something I knew I could do. Directing makes me so happy. I’m just like, “Why have I been wasting my life producing?” Every time I’m directing, I’m at my best professionally. I get to be creative, I get to tell people what to do because that is my favorite thing in life. So, just getting to direct in itself was a blessing and a journey of self-discovery. I realized: this is what I’m supposed to be doing with my life, this is what makes me happy.
This film was produced by Nemsia, but you have your own production company called Blush and Slate. Can you tell us about that?
Now that Before 30 is out in the ether, I am just excited to continue building a company that centers stories about women, because I really think those are the stories that I am best placed to tell. I know how to speak to women, and I know what they care about. I care that they come off looking the way that they want to look. Whether it’s commercial, reality, documentary, or scripted [stuff], I gravitate towards content that either centers women or is targeting female audiences. So, just continuing to be able to build my own style, my own company, and my repertoire of films with Blush and State is what I am most excited about. Blush and Slate is a vehicle that allows me to express myself fully creatively,
For people who have a story and don’t know where to start, what is your advice?
First of all, call Blush and Slate. If you don’t know where to start, hire a production company or a producer who sees your vision and believes in it and is willing to help you move it to the end. If you are that person and you have the time and resources, and energy to produce it yourself, then just get started. If it’s a documentary, book your first interview.
You don’t have to film the interview. Just figure out who the first person you want to talk to in your documentary is. Call them and have a conversation with them. Ask them if they would even be interested in featuring in a documentary. You just have to start. If it’s a scripted thing, write the first page of the script. You don’t have to write the whole script. Just write the first thing. For people who want to produce things, it’s very overwhelming because there are 2000 things that you need to do at the same time to really kick off a production. But there’s only one way to eat an elephant, and that’s bite by bite. So you still have to do the first thing that you can do and then build the momentum from there. Ideas in your head don’t do anyone any good.
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