A Lawyer and the Stage
Leke Adebayo - Actor
Leke Adebayo - Lawyer
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Sound like a match made in heaven? For Mesh member Leke Adebayo it is. Throw in a screenplay, and there's never a dull moment for the Nigerian native and City lawyer.
Mesh is a trusted network spanning the arts and business worlds. Its members include full time successful creative professionals and business professionals with creative second lives.
Mesh is organising its next event at members' club, Eight (near Bank) on Friday the 16th of May, and offering 20 HITC readers complimentary tickets. If you'd like to experience original art, theatre and of course drinks and canapes, drop them an email at events@meshminds.com to claim your tickets.
Through Mesh you've met lawyers moonlighting as a hip-hop artist, a dance diva, and a singer-songwriter.
Now meet a Nigerian native who came to boarding school in the UK when he was nine, and has appeared in medical comedy "Green Wing and Channel 4 productions "The Window" and "Joe's Story".
What is your screen-play about?
The screen-play is about an African chap (with strained relationships with his father - the President of a fictional African country) who comes to Oxford University with his brother to carve out his own niche as an International Relations post-graduate.
He is at the centre of all that is fun and social but circumstances intervene to determine his future path: his father and brother are killed and he, reluctantly, has to go back home and take over the Presidency with comedic and dramatic consequences.
If I was pitching it to a film executive, the tag line would be: "It's "Notting Hill/Coming to America" (in my best New York accent).
And from where did the inspiration come?
Throwing down ideas with family and friends - they always say that your first script or book should be about things you directly know about..... so fingers crossed !
You must have to deal with very different people in your two pursuits. Do you have any tricks for switching hats?
Yes, three things but not really tricks as such.... just common sense rituals....
FIRST: Honesty
I let my law bosses and people know about my acting and writing. It may come as a surprise but it avoids any nasty shocks when you may have to rush to an audition at a busy period. If they know this in advance, they can plan for such an eventuality.
SECOND: Respect
Respect the particular hat you happen to be wearing at the particular moment. If you show your colleagues that you respect the jobs they do full-time and give 100% to the tasks allocated to you, then they'll show you equal respect back and and take curious pride that one of their colleagues has been 'on the telly'!
THIRD: Discipline
It's very difficult but after a 9.00 to 5.30 legal day, you simply have to show the discipline to get home, have some dinner and then start getting CREATIVE.
The creative juices may not flow enough to have masterpieces flooding immediately out on computer, but I write down ideas on cards, events and interesting characters that I, perhaps, came across on the tube, the bus or in a office meeting are noted.
Otherwise, you'll forget them and you'll despair!
And lastly, what's the coolest acting experience you've had?
I would love to say: "Acting with Samuel L. Jackson in the follow-up to Pulp Fiction", but that has not happened.....yet!!
It would probably be acting in a short film as a slightly deranged African preacher carrying a placard who shouts down a lady ("sinful in the eyes of the Lord") as she comes out of the Royal Courts of Justice in the Strand.
We actually filmed on location on a warm summer Sunday.
I was dressed in traditional African native attire and a lot of Japanese tourists couldn't quite figure out what was happening.
They saw our cameras but they were there to view the courts so they just starting taking their own photos in the middle of our scenes !!
My director, Oonagh Kearney, loves any kind of improvisation so all I could hear was her, at appropriate moments, shouting: "Go with it, Leke, go with it!" and excited tourists mumbling away in Japanese and clicking away with their own cameras in the not-so background.
It was a LOT OF FUN!
Mesh is organising its next event at members' club, Eight (near Bank) on Friday the 16th of May, and offering 20 HITC readers complimentary tickets. If you'd like to experience original art, theatre and of course drinks and canapes, drop them an email at events@meshminds.com to claim your tickets.
Through Mesh you've met lawyers moonlighting as a hip-hop artist, a dance diva, and a singer-songwriter.
Now meet a Nigerian native who came to boarding school in the UK when he was nine, and has appeared in medical comedy "Green Wing and Channel 4 productions "The Window" and "Joe's Story".
What is your screen-play about?
The screen-play is about an African chap (with strained relationships with his father - the President of a fictional African country) who comes to Oxford University with his brother to carve out his own niche as an International Relations post-graduate.
He is at the centre of all that is fun and social but circumstances intervene to determine his future path: his father and brother are killed and he, reluctantly, has to go back home and take over the Presidency with comedic and dramatic consequences.
If I was pitching it to a film executive, the tag line would be: "It's "Notting Hill/Coming to America" (in my best New York accent).
And from where did the inspiration come?
Throwing down ideas with family and friends - they always say that your first script or book should be about things you directly know about..... so fingers crossed !
You must have to deal with very different people in your two pursuits. Do you have any tricks for switching hats?
Yes, three things but not really tricks as such.... just common sense rituals....
FIRST: Honesty
I let my law bosses and people know about my acting and writing. It may come as a surprise but it avoids any nasty shocks when you may have to rush to an audition at a busy period. If they know this in advance, they can plan for such an eventuality.
SECOND: Respect
Respect the particular hat you happen to be wearing at the particular moment. If you show your colleagues that you respect the jobs they do full-time and give 100% to the tasks allocated to you, then they'll show you equal respect back and and take curious pride that one of their colleagues has been 'on the telly'!
THIRD: Discipline
It's very difficult but after a 9.00 to 5.30 legal day, you simply have to show the discipline to get home, have some dinner and then start getting CREATIVE.
The creative juices may not flow enough to have masterpieces flooding immediately out on computer, but I write down ideas on cards, events and interesting characters that I, perhaps, came across on the tube, the bus or in a office meeting are noted.
Otherwise, you'll forget them and you'll despair!
And lastly, what's the coolest acting experience you've had?
I would love to say: "Acting with Samuel L. Jackson in the follow-up to Pulp Fiction", but that has not happened.....yet!!
It would probably be acting in a short film as a slightly deranged African preacher carrying a placard who shouts down a lady ("sinful in the eyes of the Lord") as she comes out of the Royal Courts of Justice in the Strand.
We actually filmed on location on a warm summer Sunday.
I was dressed in traditional African native attire and a lot of Japanese tourists couldn't quite figure out what was happening.
They saw our cameras but they were there to view the courts so they just starting taking their own photos in the middle of our scenes !!
My director, Oonagh Kearney, loves any kind of improvisation so all I could hear was her, at appropriate moments, shouting: "Go with it, Leke, go with it!" and excited tourists mumbling away in Japanese and clicking away with their own cameras in the not-so background.
It was a LOT OF FUN!
