Special people deserve special treatment. It's like when you meet someone and they tell you about an interesting but insane thing that they're doing, and you believe that they'll succeed even though you don't know them. This is how we felt when we met Adeolu Adefarasin, the actor who plays Nathan in Skinny Girl in Transit. To be perfectly honest the blog's official stance is as follows.



Adeolu Adefarasin isn't a god dog alien man like many of you tragic male characters out there. Heck! We're not even sure that he is a man. He's a demi-god or an exalted hero in a man's body. His hair is made of unicorn fluff and his skin is made of celestial bronze. He eats sunlight for breakfast and he shits rainbows. Everytime you're lucky enough to see a rainbow know that it isn't because of light and moisture in the air, it's because Adeolu Adefarasin has just taken a dump somewhere.

This interview is a TroambyAfam first. Typically, when we interview people, we skype them, record the conversation, and spend hours constructing a narrative using some of their best quotes. As we usually only interview good people that we respect we've got a small tendency to sound like we're in love, or like we've developed a passion for arse kissing, but not so. It's difficult to keep your cool when you meet awesome people. In this interview, we didn't skype Adeolu, because Afam would have been as awkward as hell, we sent a list of questions to his PR representative and he sent answers. We felt very professional about it.

And now for the man himself! 

When did you know that you wanted to be an actor?

I first got into acting when I moved to boarding school in the UK at the age of 13, but would say I first really decided I wanted to do acting when I had my first lead role in a school production. We did a performance of Agamemnon in which I played the title role. There were some highs and some epic fails, like me falling flat on my face in my underwear during the final bow, but it was such an adrenaline rush and I loved every moment of it.

He clearly has no shame. Here he is in Snapped, Nigeria's first Snapchat movie (Are those really a thing?), serving clavicles, chest hair, and area boy. It's a Halloween lewk.

Once you knew what did you do about it?

When I decided I wanted to be an actor I fully committed, some would probably say overcommitted, because I did something that in hindsight I would change: I put all my eggs in one basket. For my A-Levels I studied Performing Arts, Photography and Media Studies. I went on to join the British National Youth theatre, get a degree in acting and study film. I steeped myself in classical work doing performances of both Othello and Hamlet.



Why did you move back to Lagos?

My decision to move back was surprising to even me, but after a while in the US, I came to the realisation that I was no longer doing acting that I enjoyed. I wanted to come home and be part of something bigger and set a path for myself that meant I could effect change. One of the reasons I love film is that I enjoy when a movie ends and I am changed. So, I moved back to create work on a stage where I believe I could have a great impact and create work with meaning.

What’s your dream role?

The example I’ll give here isn’t exactly my dream role, but I think it encapsulates what I am looking for in my dream role and that is The Joker in The Dark Knight. I hold Heath Ledger’s performance in such high regard. I want to play a role that is internally challenging; something dynamic, where there is real internal conflict; something where the character is at war with themselves. I believe it creates the opportunity for an actor to really get his hands dirty and find truth that all humans deal with but on a massive scale. For me, that is what film should always be: truth in the most intense and dramatic circumstances.

How did you get the Skinny Girl in Transit part?

Through unmerited favour. I got put in touch with Abimbola Craig through her mother actually, and really I procrastinated with reaching out but when I finally did it turned out they were looking. I sent in my acting reel and they liked my stuff, so they called me in for a meeting and we really hit it off. Since then Bimbo and NdaniTV have been an absolute blessing, and she is amazing to work alongside too.

What’s the most interesting thing about your character?

On the surface, Nathan is just the innocent gentleman, the good boy, but there is another side to him that comes out and gives him layers I enjoy and I think the audience will too. You can also see that he is methodical about that side, but only some people can see it; others just see the good boy.

Well he isn't looking very innocent or good in this picture. Here's the young man... I'm not quite sure what he's doing, but I suppose every actor needs a look like this in his repertoire. It's a bit intense so I asked a colleague who has a vagina about it and she said, "Lovely photo. Fine boy. How Old?" And I said, "Did your pastor tell you that 2017 is your year for marriage?" And she said, "maybe."

What was it like working with the cast?

I’m honestly quite a shy person so on the first day or two I was pretty quiet but the cast is amazing, and I mean every single member! It was just such a laugh from beginning to end and you could tell a real family was built there, but they welcome outsiders so well. I had a bit of a roasting session for the absolutely effervescent Bisola but that was the beginning of the love. I honestly had an amazing time on set and miss it a lot already.

What’s next for you?

Well I recently just finished on Season 3 of Gidi Up, so there’s that. I cannot wait to see audience’s reception to it. I am also currently in the long but thrilling process of producing my first film: a film I believe really captivates so much of Nigeria and has such a strong story that if told well, could be loved globally and that is what we are hoping to do.

Troamteam Take Aways...

You really mean the chap decided to become an actor after he fell down in his underwear as a child in public? How extraordinary! Anyway you look at it, this is not the expected reaction. I'd have run to my mummy, cried for days and if anyone ever asked me to go on stage again, I'd ask if their middle name was a dirty word like bastard.

Once he knew what he wanted he fully committed. This is good advice! Once you know what you want, commit like it's a Nigerian wedding and you're about to be sprayed with dollars!

Adeolu left the Overseas when he realised he wanted to create work on a stage where he believed he could have a great impact and create work with meaning. Aka money isn't the best motivator, meaning and fulfilment are.

He says he got his part in Skinny Girl in Transit through unmerited favour. Thank you Baba God for blessing your boy with some favour, because if not for that favour, I don't think we'd have blogged about him this year.

We'll be blogging and recapping Gidi Up season 3 too because where Adeolu goes, we shall follow.

To follow the young chairman on twitter, please click this hyper link because they're actually anal to make. 

If you're looking to start a fan club then you should probably start by following him on instagram. 

And if we haven't scared him away, we'll have him back to talk about how he's dealing with the receding hairline disease that's tying the destinies of many unfortunate young men in Nigeria right now. For that interview, it's a good idea to follow Afam on twitter, and then follow troamteam on twitter, because if you don't, you'll probably miss it.

Happy Days,
Troamteam

One of the best and worst things about Lagos, is that it's so small that it's almost impossible to go a year without seeing anyone be they friends, enemies, or the  the unfortunate people that lurk somewhere in the middle. The last time I saw Adeolu Adefarasin, the new guy on the hugely successful Skinny Girl in Transit (60,000 youtube views per episode on average) was at Starmix' 25th. He was largely the same way, he was when I met him. The only difference was that he'd added.

When Nigerians say you've added it almost always means that you've gained weight, and while it's true that the dear chap has now got something that's closer to dad bod than lad bod, he's added much more than that. For one, he's not a student anymore, and for two, he's done a good job of racking up some professional experience.

Back in the day and by back in the day I mean a little over a year ago, I watched this show called Skinny Girl in Transit. At first I thought I liked it. It was hilarious. It seemed like one of the most realistic depictions of adulting in the Nigerian media space. Our parents are almost uniformly insane and bipolar, and it's surprising that more people aren't turning it to comedic gold. Skinny Girl in Transit does this very well, but after five episodes of the same old stuff, I was tired. When you see the gag coming from a kilometre away you can't laugh when it arrives. The show I liked slowly but surely became the show that wasn't worth watching.

All of that changed the moment Adeolu said, "Oh! I'm in the new season of Skinny Girl in Transit." I don't know about you, but I like to support my acquaintances and friends. If you're in something, I'll give it a blog. If not that you'll get a retweet, and failing that I'll give you a shout out. Creative people in Lagos work too hard to go unacknowledged. The moment he said it my intestines re-arranged themselves. They said, "We the suffer-head intestines of Afam who only knows how to eat rubbish declare that from this day till Adeolu Adefarasin is not in Skinny Girl in Transit, this body will watch the show." I attempted to rebel, but they stopped me dead. I didn't shit for three days. To understand what this means to me I'll have to tell you a little bit about my family.

My father, the dearest, the most troublesome, Papa Afam lives his life guided by a solitary principle. He believes that a man who does not shit once a day is unwell, and a man who does not shit for three days is on his death bed. He doesn't care about vomit or fevers or diarrhea but the moment you inform him that you're experiencing system back log prepare for a week in the hospital.

Lesson learned, I watched it the first episode of season 3 and the stuff flowed from me like a fountain.

When Adeolu told me that he'd be in the third season of Skinny Girl in Transit, he asked me what he thought, and I told him. I said, "The plot is a disaster. It moves as slowly as a Range Rover sport pushed by a singular area boy. The jokes are overwrought. The acting is painful. Quite frankly there's nothing about the show that isn't stressful." During my moment of brutal honesty, I didn't realise that he had his co-star with him, and she wasn't pleased with my criticism. The co-star was Sharon Oja and she was defensive. If you're a fan of the show, you'll know that she plays the sister of the main character on Skinny Girl in Transit.

She said something like you're unqualified to criticise the show since you haven't watched the show's second season. Adeolu agreed, and I did too. But there was another bit of me that thought, "This conversation is pointless because Skinny Girl in Transit isn't my jam. I'm never going to like it and I'm never going to follow it religiously. Deal with it." And that's when my bowels stepped in.

So in order to appease my bowels and keep Papa Afam from confining me to a hospital bed, I'll be recapping every episode of the third season of Skinny Girl in Transit, with my buddies, the troam team, who aren't me. I swear they aren't. For the most part, the troam team is Avenger 2 picking up my slack. This is what happens when your friends are literally God-sent.

Happy days,
Afam

One of the best things about the Game of Thrones is how large its world is. There is no way its plot cannot move, and there is no story that it cannot accommodate. This week showed us how little we know about the future of Westeros and all the other lands that exist in George R. Martin's fictional world.

If you are spoiler averse, this is where you should leave.


This episode begins with Sansa. She enjoys a less than pleasant reunion with Littlefinger. He's one of the more mobile characters in the Game of Thrones, teleporting from North to South with very little difficulty. Sansa's evolution from doormat to assertive woman has been one of the joys of the season. She suffered at the hands of the Lannisters with all the qualities of a lamb being led to the slaughter and then she endured the sexual proclivities of Ramsay Bolton. She says, "I can still feel it. I do not mean in my tender heart. It still pains me so I can still feel what he did in my body standing here right now." It is clear that she no longer trusts anyone with her future. When Littlefinger reveals his intentions to protect her, she says, "You can't protect me. You won't even be able to protect yourself if I ask Brienne to cut you down."

With those words she showed a determination to take control of her fate. She's gained a measure of power and it is unlikely that she'll release it soon. To be powerless in the Game of Thrones is to ready yourself for death.

There's a battle in Winterfell's future. At the minute it looks like it will be the Starks and the Tullys versus the Boltons. Once the armies are in motion it is not clear which families will side with whom. Loyalty is not a quality that is common in the Game of Thrones.

After her scene stealing turn last week you may have expected more time with Daenerys, but we didn't get it in this episode. All she did was order Ser Jorah Mormont to find a cure for his greyscale. He's one of the people I think the series could do without.

The meat of the episode was a surprise.The Game of Thrones delved into the far too complicated matter of time travel. At first Bran was merely an observer in the past, now he knows that he's something of a catalyst. He knows that his words and actions in his present could have some sort of impact on the events that we now consider to be part of the canon. If the present and the past that leads to it, are likely to be changed or corrected, then there really hasn't been any point to the series.

God knows that I didn't watch five seasons of The Game of Thrones to be told it was all a dream.


Happy Days,
Afam

A couple of my cousins, brother and I decided to see X-Men: apocalypse on opening night in Lagos.  Any Lagos cinema goer would tell you that Marvel movies are big business here and trying to get tickets on opening night at the Palms would be an exercise in futility seeing as we all work and are not that die hard.  We settled on the 11.15pm showing at the Film House cinema in Surulere. I am a die-hard Film House person because the bants are quite frankly unparalleled.

We were fortunate to sit next to probably one of the biggest fans of the franchise.  He was absolutely enraptured and proceeded to give is a blow by blow of every single plot twist, character development or possible future dialogue that was relevant.

 He reminded us that Erik lost his parents in Auschwitz, that the monster in the box had to be Wolverine with loud gasps of ‘OSHE, GET IT!!!!!’ 


He was by no means alone in his excitement.  We all know the cast of X-men very well and know what other franchises they have been in.  We all also have probably watched every previous movie. Why else would we risk our cars being stolen in Surulere by watching a movie that late? I digress.

There was a LOT of clapping when anything major blew up or occurred (so like the entire movie).  A crowd favorite had to be when Erik’s secret son took the biggest punch of the movie as well as single handedly rescued everyone from Dr. Xavier’s school.  The crowd LOST THEIR SHIT screaming!!!!

My personal highlights throughout the night include…. ‘ERIK DON’T YOU KNOW HE’S YOUR SON!!!!’ 

And ‘GO SANSA!! GO YOU PHOENIX!!’ by a lady in the back
And when Stan Lee showed as he is wont to and someone said ‘Baba we missed you!!!!’

And not to mention in the end when Mystique was rallying the newly re-formed x-men someone yelled ‘DON’T YOU KNOW THIS IS NOT THE HUNGER GAMES, RELAX!’ 

I cried with laughter.  I couldn’t even be annoyed at the interruptions. They were bloody imaginative!

We didn’t wait for the end credits… cos it was 2am and it was Surulere.  I’m entirely game to watch it at another site though.

There was a better than good response to my last post about the Game of Thrones, so here's another. One of the things that bloggers must learn is that you are a slave your audience. They tell you what they want, not in words or emails but in views. If you want something, and I am capable of giving it to you, then I will. You wanted more about the Game of Thrones? Here it is as quickly as I could deliver.

If you would rather binge on Game of Thrones spoiler free, this is your cue. In a poll that I carried out on twitter I learned that most of you don't actually mind spoilers, so I have no regrets about revealing everything about the latest game of thrones episode: Book of Stranger.

The episode is named The Book of Stranger. If you follow the series closely you'll learn that The Stranger is one of the seven gods in the faith of the Seven, the predominant religion in Westeros. It's one of the more bombastic episodes in the series. I would say that it's even better than the red wedding. Having read the books, I saw the red wedding coming from years away. In this one I was blind. I hung on to every bit of the dialogue, and loved almost every scene. It was so good that I almost missed Arya and Bran, who did not appear.

So what were the big moments?

First off we've got the Stark re-union. Jon Snow and Sansa saw each other again. It was the first time that they'd been in the same room since season one and it was glorious. Sansa was rightly ashamed of the way she'd treated him because of his bastard beginnings and Jon was gracious. It was amusing to watch him realise how much she'd changed. The Sansa we've got now is a far cry from the Knight loving romantic that we first met. She's been tempered by the Song of Ice and Fire, and she's come out the better for it. They plan to march on Winterfell, save Rickon, and kill the Bolton infection that has taken root there. All in a day's work if you ask me. Mr Bolton could do with a stabbing or a flaying.


 Over the Vale Littlefinger appeared. He's still the boss there, and he's driving an army to Winterfell to help the Stark's resolve their homeless situation. "It's time to join the fray" he said. He's right about that. We've only waited five seasons for the privilege.

Osha got the X this week. It was a good ending as far as endings on the show go. She could have been flayed, crushed or battered to the afterlife, but she got a knife to the neck instead. She went down fighting too, but her feminine wiles and her knife reaching ways weren't enough to defeat Ramsay Bolton. After he killed her, he took out the knife and went back to slicing what I assume was an apple. It was a little bit of a disgusting moment. I cannot imagine that anyone could care for blood flavoured apple slices. They should have had a cameo from Hannibal to really drive the point home.

Daenary's got the last scene this week. She proved once again that fire cannot burn a dragon. There was a wicked glint in her eyes as she roasted her Dothraki Khal captors. She walked out of the fire naked and unscathed to all the Dothraki in attendance bowing in submission. It was a powerful scene. This commentator is definitely excited for next week's offering.


Happy Days,
Afam

The furore surrounding Emmy award winning director Cary Fukunaga’s film, Beasts Of No Nation, starring Idris Elba and the new comer, Abraham Attah, has died down a bit, but most who have seen it speak for its quality. The film has a 90% rating on criticism aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes and 7.9 stars on the internet movie database. Even  comedienne of the moment Amy Schumer, has testified to its amazingness on twitter. However it would be a travesty to let the buzz of the film overshadow the issue at its heart, and that is the continued use of underage combatants in conflict around the world.

“The existence of child soldiers is one that remains extremely relevant globally,” said Uzo Iweala author of the book, Beasts of no Nation.

Iweala’s book provided much of the source material for the film which is set in an undisclosed African Nation. It follows the story of Agu (Abraham Attah) as he is conscripted into the Commandant’s (Idris Elba) vigilante group. The film is a fictional but realistic telling of the possible story of a child comatant but the issue cannot be said to be an African one. Iweala said “A number of countries have this problem. One way or another there are about 300,000 child soldiers operating in the world today from the Central African Republic to the Resistance Army to the Islamic State and the Kurdish Forces.”

This year alone, the Violations Documentations centre in Syria has recorded the deaths of 135 male and female child non-civilians. This number looks to be rising as the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that France’s first air strike at the end of September killed 12 child soldiers.
The situation will not be an easy one to solve, according to Iweala. “There are many processes involved. We can’t tell how people will act in situations of extreme crisis, and we have to take into consideration the effects of command and control.”

Iweala is pleased that after ten years of his book being published, it made it to the silver screen. He said: “It is an honour to have your work made into film by a director like Cary Fukunaga, and with talent like Idris Elba, and the young Abraham Attah.”

The film, Beasts of no Nation was screened at the London Film festival this year, is currently available on Netflix, and it opened in Nigeria last night.