The Heart and Soul of Africa
Writer-director Olufikayo Ziki Adeola’s new Disney+ show Iwájú is infused with the sights, sounds and feel of Nigeria.
The place where you spent your childhood and called home can keep a magical hold on you throughout your life. Nigeria is the foundation of the new animated Disney miniseries Iwájú, which premiered in February.
Set in Lagos, where Olufikayo Ziki Adeola, the co-founder of the U.K.-based Kugali Media, lived until his mid-teens, the original animated show takes place in a futuristic version of the city and follows Tola, a young girl from a wealthy background, and her closest friend, Kole, who is a self-educated tech expert, as they grow up and learn about the beauty and the dangers of their world. Iwájú weaves the culture and traditions of Nigeria with a sci-fi edge that gives the show a unique look.
Adeola directs the series. Walt Disney Animation’s Christina Chen is producing with Jennifer
Lee, Walt Disney Animation’s chief creative officer, serving as executive producer. The screenplay is written by Adeola and Halima Hudson. Toluwalakin Olowofoyeku is the cultural consultant.
A Love Letter to Home
“The primary source of inspiration was my time growing up in Lagos,” says Adeola. “I’m Nigerian and I grew up in Lagos, then I emigrated to the U.K. when I was about 15 years old. Throughout my life in the U.K., I’d always wanted to find a way to share my experience of living in Nigeria with my friends here in the [U.K.] I always knew I wanted to tell a story that was effectively some kind of representation of Lagos because it’s such a really interesting place with so many idiosyncrasies that, I think, are unlike many other places in the world. This is a love letter to Lagos.”
Adeola says he wanted the show itself to be a realistic representation of the Lagos experience. “Lagos is a beautiful city, but some of these realities are also a little bit harsher,” he admits. “I wanted people to be able to experience that, that medley of life in Lagos, but then also give them an opportunity for escapism, because we want to enjoy the shows we watch. So, that’s where the sci-fi elements come in.”
Award-winning VFX veteran Marlon West (whose long list of Disney credits including The Lion King, The Princess and the Frog, the Frozen movies, Moana and Encanto) adds, “We were we trying to make Lagos today recognizable to anyone who lives there and has visited there. There are flying cars because the show is set in the future, but there are still buses. There is facial recognition and there are robots, but there’s still cash because Nigerians prefer cash to using credit cards. There was an authenticity that we were trying to nail but still make something
'We want the audience to feel those emotions when they see the animation and hear the music. Our story is set in Lagos, but the theme of the innocence of our protagonist against harsher realities is universal.'
— Creator Olufikayo Ziki Adeola
that was fun. The audience is going to be connected to the real world of Lagos but also to these interesting sci-fi elements.”
Animation for the series was done at Cinesite’s Montreal and London locations, while storyboards and preproduction were done at Walt Disney Animation’s Burbank and Vancouver sites. Hamid Ibrahim served as production designer for the show and is also creative director at Kugali Media.
“Our production designer wanted to have kind of a painterly look on things as they receded into the distance,” says West. “We decided to dial in and out of that, because it looked great in some scenes, but we didn’t want to use that painterly look for depth of field. When you’re in a flying car looking over the mainland, you don’t want a bunch of brushstrokes down there because you want to really see the lights of this beautiful world. We also just have the character design a little pushed as far as angles and things, and we kind of let some of the lighting go from one side being lit up to one side being darker in a way. This may not be what we usually do, but [it] was also in support of the world we were trying to make and the visual storytelling our production designer wanted to use.”
In keeping with the realistic portrayal of Nigeria, Adeola wanted to cast actors who could represent the Nigerian accent accurately so that audiences who are from the country wouldn’t be taken out of the story by something that didn’t seem real. The series stars Simisola Gbadamosi as Tola, Dayo Okeniyi (a Nigerian American actor known for playing Thresh in The Hunger
Games and Danny Dyson in Terminator Genisys),
Nigerian actor Femi Branch, Siji Soetan as Kole and Weruche Opia (a British Nigerian actor known for her performance in I May Destroy You).
“Disney worked with a casting agent based in Lagos because authenticity is important,” says Adeola. “One of my pet peeves is hearing African accents butchered in various productions. Having a local casting agent based in Nigeria helped us connect with people who are either based there and can really pull off the accent in addition to their acting talent or [those] who are formerly from Africa or have family from Nigeria, because that’s a huge help. They sent me a lot of materials from auditions and, in truth, the ones who we ended up casting stood out the second I listened to them.”
Afro Beat
The show creator also wanted music for the series that supported the storytelling and was inspired by Lagos. Ré Olunuga, a Nigerian composer who is known for his work on Shuga and Girl, created the score for the series.
“Disney’s music department had presented some options in terms of who our composer would be and we ended up going with Ré, and I think it was a really solid match because we already had similar visions for the score in the sense that we wanted something that was emblematic of the spirit of Lagos,” says Adeola.
Sci-Fi Sounds
“In addition to the sounds of Nigeria, we needed sounds and music that people are familiar with in other parts of the world. This is also a futuristic show as well, so we need elements of sci-fi and high tech in the score. And lastly, although this is meant to be a love letter to Lagos, it’s important that this story is universal in its ability to be enjoyed. There are some things that you listen to in our series that might remind you of things like The Avengers or science-fiction movies.”
Adeola says the score is kind of a blend of these different elements. “To be honest, I loved the composition process,” he says. “Between the composition and the animation, I’m not sure which was my favorite part, because I think music carries so much emotion and gives such a sense of place. When you go to the studio and you see a full orchestra playing all of these different songs with all these different themes with the show in the backdrop, it really pulls on your heartstrings. We want the audience to feel those emotions when they see the animation and hear the music. Our story is set in Lagos, but the theme of the innocence of our protagonist against harsher realities is universal.” ◆
All six episodes of Iwájú premiered on Disney+ on Feb. 28.