She kept getting roles as the law. Now she’s fighting it as a villain
Actor best known for ‘Rookie Blue’ relishes being bad in new movie
“There seem to be a lot of cops in my past,” jokes actor Enuka Okuma in a Zoom video interview from Los Angeles. The most well known, of course, is Traci Nash, the hardworking officer Okuma played for six seasons on the Global TV drama “Rookie Blue.”
But there’s also Drug Enforcement Administration agent K.C. Williams in the CBC drugsmuggling series “Caught” and Sheriff Anna Hulce in the supernatural YouTube drama “Impulse.” And she was also, if not a cop, an office manager for an FBI unit in “Sue Thomas: F.B.Eye” and a captain of the guard in animated series “Shadow Raiders.”
In the new Netflix movie “The Sleepover,” Okuma has ditched law and order to play a villain.
“I don’t often play darker characters,” says the British Columbia-born actor. “This woman has no time for tomfoolery; she has no time for hijinks and silliness; she’s all business and she’s pretty cold. But it’s also all in good fun.”
Indeed, “The Sleepover” is a family comedy so the villains are bad, but not evil, and the fight scenes are bloodless.
Speaking of fights, Okuma’s big scene in the film as henchperson Elise comes in a brawl with another Canadian actor, Malin Akerman (“Billions”), who plays the suburban mom whose criminal past is the trigger of the mayhem in the movie.
Akerman’s Margot and her husband, Ron (Ken Marino), are kidnapped when her old gang wants her to pull one more jewel heist. It’s up to their kids (Sadie Stanley and Maxwell Simkins) to try to rescue them with the help of their two best friends (Cree Cicchino and Lucas Jaye).
Okuma says the fight was scaled back from the original concept, which had her character rappelling up walls and doing back flips.
“The original choreography was quite intense,” she says. “We ended up scaling back the choreography a little bit because our director (Trish Sie, “Pitch Perfect 3”), she really wanted us to look like we were the ones doing it.
“So I only had a few days (to prepare), but I practised my butt off and did what I could, and Malin … she had done months of training before the movie “Watchmen” and she was telling me how all of that stuff has still stuck with her. So I was like, ‘OK, I’m stepping into the ring with you, am I?’ But I think we faked it pretty well.”
Okuma has been faking it, in the acting sense, since she started doing plays in elementary school. She says she was “just kind of born” with her love of acting.
“I was running around doing shows for my parents and my sisters in my diaper, so it’s always been this need to express myself.”
She got her start professionally right out of high school, acting in several Canadian teen dramas, including the one she gets recognized for almost as much as for “Rookie Blue”: “Madison,” which she calls “the West Coast ‘Degrassi.’ ”
“To this day, because that was sold all over the world, people still stop me and recognize me from that, mostly in Canada, but it’s happened in England, it’s happened everywhere,” she says.
Okuma says most artists are driven to express themselves by “some form of marginalization.” For her, it was “growing up as one of maybe two Black families in the small town I grew up in, so feeling always a little different, being on the outside, and finding ways to fit in and ways to be accepted.”
Being a Black actress was in some ways a boost at the beginning of her career, she says, “because there weren’t that many to choose from. But at the same time, the roles were limited in the ’90s and 2000s and they still are. The conversation has opened up and the opportunities have opened up, but we’ve still got a long way to go. And hopefully I can partake in creating those opportunities for people like me.”
To that end, she’s adding writing and directing to her acting arsenal.
Okuma has already written a film, to be directed by Adam MacDonald, a cast mate from “Rookie Blue,” and to star another “Rookie” alumnus, Missy Peregrym. She hopes to shoot next year, funding and the COVID-19 pandemic permitting. In the meantime, she’s pleased people will finally get a chance to see “The Sleepover,” which she shot in Boston last September.
“I kind of put it in that pantheon of movies that all take place in one night and I say this one, it’s “Die Hard” meets “Adventures in Babysitting,” but more on the “Adventures in Babysitting” side … There’s stuff for parents, there’s stuff for kids; I think it truly is something the whole family can enjoy,” she says.
“The Sleepover” debuts on Netflix Friday.