Samson Kayo flips his head around mid-way through our interview, distracted by a movement in his Zoom background. "There's a coyote in my back garden!" he says, enjoying novelty. Suffice to say, he's not in his usual home in the inner city of south London, but the wilds of Los Angeles instead.
It’s lovely to see the delight in his face, like he’s still the same wide-eyed Samson Kayo who, on one of his first visits to LA, was stopped for carrying a suitcase full of Jammie Dodgers (true story). In fact he’s since earned a leading role in the latest comedy series from Hollywood supremo Taika Waititi (Thor: Ragnarok/What We Do in the Shadows) and become a Bafta and Royal Television Society nominee, with a second RTS nomination announced last week for his performance in Bloods, the Sky series he co-created and stars in.
Like buses arriving at once, the Waititi series Our Flag Means Death launches in the US days before the second series of Bloods airs in the UK. Our Flag Means Death is a comedy set in the 18th century following “the gentleman pirate” Stede Bonnet (played by Rhys Darby) in which Kayo plays a member of the pirate crew that’s “the voice of reason in the show, the calm amongst all the crazy characters around him”.
I want the next generation of UK actors to feel you can earn a living and be successful in the city where you're raised
It's exciting stuff, this break in the US, though one suspects Bloods has more of an emotional pull for Kayo. Along with writer Nathan Bryon, he developed the series based on a pre-acting ambition of becoming a first responder. It follows odd couple Maleek (Kayo), happy-go-lucky Wendy, delightfully played by Jane Horrocks (Absolutely Fabulous, Little Voice) and the eccentric paramedics at South Hill Ambulance Station as they find themselves in tight spots, whether that's a result of the job or their own misadventures. The series opener, for example, finds Maleek and Wendy taken hostage at a fast food joint, just when Maleek needs to jet off on his holidays.
“But with the second series, we’re not just sitting with Wendy and Maleek,” says Kayo. “New characters that come in, like a counsellor [Katherine Kelly]. We touch on mental health, which I think is really important. There are so many different avenues we go down that makes it feel more full and big and grand than before.”
Along with Sliced (the first series he co-created, which follows the friendship of two pizza delivery drivers) and Truth Seekers (where Kayo and Nick Frost play broadband installers drawn into ghost hunting), there’s more that ties his projects together than endearing duos doing ordinary jobs: they all carry a distinct Britishness. Indeed, when I ask Kayo if his stay in the US is semi-permanent, he looks aghast that his loyalty is in doubt.
“No. I’m a London boy. I love my home. You can still see that people are going over [to the US] because there’s much more projects for people of colour, but for me, there’s so much work to do at home, I’m not leaving,” he says.
Comic and creator London Hughes has been particularly insightful on the subject, using her own experience of having to move to the US to fulfil her potential as a case study. “There are so many reasons I could give as to why that’s happening but I won’t,” Kayo says. “But I will say I want the next generation of UK actors to feel you can earn a living and be successful in the city where you’re raised.
“My own aim is to strike that balance of doing what I’ve always wanted, which is be part of an American production, but also doing what I love, which is create funny British television.”
Growing up Kayo had little interest in acting – instead, he wanted to be a footballer. “Every black boy in Peckham wanted to be a sick baller because that’s all we did, we only kicked ball, every day,” he says. But as he grew older, Kayo developed a creative side, encouraged by the comedians he admired: Jim Carrey, Robin Williams, Jocelyn Esien of 3 Non Blondes. “She’s the reason why I started comedy. She was someone who looks like me at a time when people weren’t getting opportunities,” he says.
It's a notable coincidence that he and John Boyega (of Star Wars and Small Axe fame) were childhood friends; their mothers were close, and they attended the same church in Peckham. Boyega pursued acting and made headway early on, but it was another few years before Kayo gave up his footballing dream and made tentative moves into the creative world. It was divine intervention, he says, that when in central London to pick up an iron for his mum, he spotted an open audition that earned him a role in Channel 4 comedy drama Youngers. That in turn got him noticed for Famalam, the pacy BBC sketch show that also launched the careers of Gbemisola Ikumelo and Akemnji Ndifornyen among others.
“It was funny when I finally saw John after all that time. He was like, ‘Yo! We’re both actors! Aiii!’ It was beautiful to see the trajectory of his career, and how much he inspires so many people that grew up in the same area we came from,” he says.
In a position to inspire the next generation himself, Kayo now aims to carve out opportunities for new talent. Mirroring his own break, he set up open auditions during Sliced, allowing those without training or connections to try out.
For Bloods, he planned an initiative where newcomers could shadow different members of the crew “but Covid was kicking us in the booty. Hopefully we can try again if we get another season,” he says.
He’s optimistic that now opportunities for people of colour have started to spring up, it will be easier for the momentum to continue.
“Now you’re seeing shows from people that I came in the game with, like myself, Nicôle Lecky, Nathan Bryon and the People Just Do Nothing boys. It feels like people have opportunity to create their own things, and their projects aren’t just being buried in people’s offices.”
As his own career progresses, he’s continuing the approach that has served him so far, and seeing where life takes him. “I’m definitely up for more producing, but in terms of where my career will go, I just go with the flow. As long as I’m having fun, I’ll jump on board – in the case of Our Flag Means Death, literally.”
Bloods Season 2 will launch Wednesday, March 16th on Sky Comedy and NOW.
