Gbemisola Ikumelo on new comedy-thriller Black Ops

Famalam’s Gbemisola Ikumelo stars in the new BBC One comedy thriller, Black Ops, which she co-created with Akemnji Ndifornyen. The six-part series is set in East London and tells the story of two Police Community Support Officers who wind up in the murky world of deep cover infiltration, Here she talks about the show...

How did you come up with the idea?

AK [Akemnji Ndifornyen] got it into his head that off the back of doing the BBC sketch-show Famalam that it'd be really great to do a show with me as a vehicle.

So, he called me and said, ‘Look, we're going to get into a room with the Beeb and pitch some ideas.’ I went away and thought about the kinds of things I'd like to do, and one of the things I was really excited about was putting myself in a show or scenario that I wouldn't get cast for ordinarily.

You can hide a multitude of sins behind comedy, so I just went, ‘I'd love to be in a cop show. I'd love to be in a show where it's running, guns, car chases and it's fun and funny as well’

Also, grounding it in a world and a language we understand. So, the idea of PCSOs became a really interesting way in – and that's how the show was born.

It feels grounded in reality and really authentic.

Absolutely. Hammed [Animashaun who co-stars] is such a beautiful scene partner to work with and, I guess, us really connecting and having great chemistry was the crux of all that.

Also, just realising that a lot of the stuff that's going on in the show is very real-world stuff. Some of the stuff is inspired by things in the news that we've heard and seen, we've done our research.

So, I do think it should feel grounded and real, as well as being incredibly silly and fun. And we kept going, ‘We don't want it to stay in the estate.’ That was a big key thing and it was figuring out where it goes to. I think Joe [Tucker] and Lloyd [Woolf, the executive producers] really expanded on that kind of world and that was really great.

What was it like writing the show?

We wrote episode two together, and all four of us [Gbemisola, AK, Joe and Lloyd] effectively developed the show together.

We wrote it in a room together, coming up with what the show is going to be, and then AK and I also collaborated on scripts.

I'm not a great writing collaborator, I take my stuff and go into a hole and I emerge – it’s a thing. And, so, I didn't know how it would be working with AK, but the synergy was quite surreal. To the point where I'd be writing something and it was like, ‘Pass a laptop over’ and he’d finish off the sentence. A lot of it was just us having a chat for like two hours and then write for half an hour and get some lunch, and then something we joked about found its way into the script.

I think AK's opened my eyes to the world of writing collaboration. I would definitely work on a longer form thing with AK, for sure.

How would you describe your character, Dom?

I think she's very cynical. She's the kind of person who, if she was a teenager, doesn't want to make out that she cares too much because there's a vulnerability in that.

So, she's a bit like a surly teen…  bit spoilt, bit middle class. When we meet her, I think she had this image that she was going to go to cop school, become a great detective, and that would be her life.

But she just kept getting overlooked for promotion and that led to her being a bit cynical. Then through the show, I think she starts to learn to embrace the faith that he has and protect that a bit more. She grows up.

She’s also very funny, like when she calls DI Clinton a budget Idris Elba. That was an improvised line! I'm not sure Ariyon [Bakare who plays DI Clinton] actually really appreciated that. I blurted it out and instantly felt really guilty, but he's a great sport.

What is Animashaun’s character Kay like?

By contrast, he is all hope and faith. If she’s arrested development at 15 years, he’s 11 or 12 and is like this annoying little brother.

He's also a man of faith. He’s coming at it with a real earnest heart, "I want to be a voice in the community, I want to build bridges in the community…’ And I think through the course of this his faith is tested, and he has to do some things that really contradict who he is as a person.

So, I think he has this real inner struggle with that, but he also wants medals. But he’s a sweetheart, and I think in less intelligent hands he could have come across as just a bit dumb, but Hammed does a really beautiful job of nuancing him, and there's these really sharp moments of just a wit and savant-esqueness in him, which I think Hammed nails.

What about their relationship?

The thing I love about this show is there's no ‘will-they-won't-they’ built into the mix, as there tends to be when there's a man and woman working side by side. It's a brotherly sisterly thing, a real, genuine friendship.

I don't really see that much. So that's the first thing that I love – and also, they are both missing things that the other person needs.

So as much as sometimes they get on each other's nerves, they keep coming back to each other, because they need each other to get out of this mess. There's something lovely about having a real buddy cop show feel that we all recognise, but also subverting it and doing different things with it.

What’s it like working with Hammed?

Hammed is a goofball, and highly, highly annoying. No, genuinely, it was like a brother sister relationship. He likes to get on your nerves. He's that guy who sings, ‘I know a song that will get on your nerves, get on your nerves, get on your nerves….’ He’ll revel in it.

So, we had a little code afterwards like if it was too early in the morning for singing, you know, I'd say, ‘beep beep’ and he’d know. But genuinely, it was a joy, it really was.

What were the most fun and memorable moments from filming?

There were a lot of silly moments. One moment, it wasn't particularly funny, but it was just watching Hammed and how he worked. Towards the end he wasn’t very well and he was a little bit low. So, we put him in a little shaded area because it was very hot and fanned him, and I've not really seen him that quiet and subdued – he’s very bubbly. And then they’d be like, ‘Okay, we’re about to turn over’ and then he’s get up and slowly wobble over and they’d say ‘action!’ and he’d be [full of energy].

I was just in awe of how ‘on’ he could be, and then they’d go, ‘Cut!’ and he would be like [makes a groaning sound.] I can laugh about it now, at the time I was very serious, I was like, "Are you OK?" But now I think it's quite hilarious how he was really just squeezing that last bit of energy to do the show.

Where would you like to take these characters next?  What's the future for Team Day?

AK is basically like, ‘Let's just go abroad, do an Adam Sandler and just go to a really hot location – paid for – and hire some really great actors and just have some fun in Jamaica or something.’

But no, I don't know, right now. I mean, there are some ideas that we're tinkering with, but I won't ruin them. But I think there's no limit to where these characters can go, really. The way it's been written is that it could go and go because by the end of it, you really want to see where they end up.

• Black Ops comes to BBC One and BBC iPlayer from Friday May 5.

Published: 27 Apr 2023