BAFTA Breakthrough Brit Susan Wokoma is a brilliant and unique actor and writer. Having already established a diverse and award-winning body of work, Wokoma continues to make her mark as one to watch with each film, television and theatre role she takes on.
Wokoma will soon begin production on Legendary's Enola Holmes feature adaptation of Nancy Springer's novels "The Enola Holmes Mysteries." Directed by Harry Bradbeer and written by Jack Thorne, the film will follow Sherlock and Mycroft Holmes's younger sister Enola's adventures. Wokoma will be starring alongside Millie Bobby Brown, Henry Cavill, Helena Bonham Carter, Sam Claflin and Fiona Shaw, and the film is due to be released in 2020.
Wokoma was most recently on television screens playing Sabrina in the new BBC series Dark Mon£y alongside Babou Ceesay and Jill Halfpenny. Written by Levi David Addai and directed by Lewis Arnold, the four-part mini-series
BAFTA Breakthrough Brit Susan Wokoma is a brilliant and unique actor and writer. Having already established a diverse and award-winning body of work, Wokoma continues to make her mark as one to watch with each film, television and theatre role she takes on.
Wokoma will soon begin production on Legendary's Enola Holmes feature adaptation of Nancy Springer's novels "The Enola Holmes Mysteries." Directed by Harry Bradbeer and written by Jack Thorne, the film will follow Sherlock and Mycroft Holmes's younger sister Enola's adventures. Wokoma will be starring alongside Millie Bobby Brown, Henry Cavill, Helena Bonham Carter, Sam Claflin and Fiona Shaw, and the film is due to be released in 2020.
Wokoma was most recently on television screens playing Sabrina in the new BBC series Dark Mon£y alongside Babou Ceesay and Jill Halfpenny. Written by Levi David Addai and directed by Lewis Arnold, the four-part mini-series tells the fictional story of The Mensah's, an ordinary working-class family from North London whose world is shattered when their son reveals that he was abused by a renowned filmmaker while out in America. The series was broadcast on BBC One in July and will be followed by a US premiere, details TBC. Before this, Wokoma starred in brand new Channel 4 comedy series Year of the Rabbit opposite Freddie Fox and Matt Berry. Set against the backdrop of Victorian London at the end of the 1880s, the six-part mini-series, directed by Ben Taylor and produced by Hannah Mackay, sees Wokoma as Mabel Wisbech, the adoptive daughter of the chief of police, who wants to become the country's first female officer. The series debuted on Channel 4 in June with The Mirror calling her performance "show stealing" and Radio Times citing Wokoma as "excellent." IFC will release the series in the US in February 2020.
Wokoma has just finished a run on stage, playing Bottom, in the Regent's Park Open Air Theatre's production of William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, directed by Dominic Hill, Artistic Director of Citizens Theatre in Glasgow. Susan's performance has been singled out by critics with The Telegraph calling her "sheer bliss… one of the most endearing and effortlessly funny Bottoms I've ever seen," Time Out noting she is "pure sunshine," What's Onstage observed, "(she) is memorable," The Times stated she is "a brilliant Bottom" and Time Out raved "her performance feels fresh, funny and contemporary." She also recently shot the hybrid comedy pilot for CBS TV's Super Simple Love Story with Ronny Chieng, Elizabeth Alderfer and David Walton in LA.
Last September, Wokoma wrote and starred in SKY Comedy short Love the Sinner, directed by Jennifer Sheridan. Based on 11-year-old Joanna trying to comprehend grief for the first time when she witnesses her mother's manic reaction to the death of Princess Diana, she also tried to use the incident to get out of Sunday School. Wokoma starred as Ann/Adult Joannah and the short was released on SKY in October 2018, recently won an award for Best Short Form Comedy by the Broadcast Digital Awards and will screen at the 2019 London Film Festival. The same year, Wokoma filmed feature The Ghost and The House of Truth, playing protagonist Bola Ogun, a counselor whose eight-year-old daughter goes missing. Directed by Akin Omotoso, Kate Henshaw and Fabian Adeoye also star, and the film is currently in post-production.
Wokoma was chosen as a prestigious Breakthrough Brit in October 2017 alongside 20 other artists recognized as the next generation of British creative talent in film, television and games. She also appeared on stage in political comedy Labour of Love, starring opposite Martin Freeman and Tamsin Greig. The production marked the World premiere of the razor-sharp political comedy from The Michael Grandage Company and Headlong, that reunited James Graham and director Jeremy Herrin and staged at the Noël Coward Theatre from the 3rd October -2nd December. Set in the party's traditional northern heartlands, this is a clash of philosophy, culture, and class against the backdrop of the Labour Party over the last twenty-five years.
Wokoma reprised the role of eccentric Cynthia in the second series of BAFTA Award Winning Chewing Gum for Channel 4 in 2016. The first series of Chewing Gum, a British television sitcom series set in London, debuted on E4 in October 2015. Written by and starring Michaela Coel, the show centers on Beyoncé obsessed Tracey Gordon, a religious, 24-year-old shop assistant, who wants to and learn more about the world. The same year, in October, Wokoma starred in six-part comedic horror series Crazyhead, from Misfits creator Howard Overman. The dark comedy developed by Urban Myth Films for Channel 4, in association with Netflix, follows an unlikely duo of demon hunters. Wokoma plays Raquel, opposite Cara Theobold, a self-made demon hunter with a whole lot of baggage and an impressive lack of social skills. Crazyhead was broadcast on E4 in the UK and was launched on Netflix globally in December. 2016 was another award-winning year for Susan; she also won Best Supporting Actor at the BBC Audio Drama Awards for her performance in the radio adaptation of Marie NDiaye's Three Strong Women.
In October 2014, Wokoma shot melancholic comedy Burn Burn Burn, playing Megan alongside a fantastic young British cast, including Laura Carmichael, Chloe Pirrie, Jack Farthing and Joe Dempsie. The independent feature, the debut from director Chanya Button, follows two best friends as they traveled across the UK to scatter their recently deceased friend's ashes. The feature was nominated for the Raindance Award at The British Independent Film Awards and in the category of Best Film at the London Film Festival, both in 2015 and was released in cinemas the following October and released globally by Netflix in November.
Wokoma appeared on screens as Amala in April 2014, alongside Chiwetel Ejiofor, Thandie Newton, Anika Noni Rose and John Boyega, in Biyi Bandele's adaptation of Half of a Yellow Sun. Based on the novel by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichi, the feature tells the tale of two sisters after they return to Nigeria right before the outbreak of the 1960 Nigerian Civil War. In August 2014, Wokoma took on the role of Della in The Inbetweeners 2, the box office-friendly sequel of the 2011 hit film, The Inbetweeners Movie. Set in Australia, the British comedy revisits the four main characters from the original as they travel to Australia for the ultimate lads' holiday. The film became the highest-grossing British film in the UK in 2014.
In 2006, Wokoma made her feature film debut as Marie in the BAFTA Award-winning fictionalized documentary, That Summer Day. The special follows six school children's lives on the day of the 7/7 London bombings in 2005. Using archived news footage, the program was created in response to concerns about how London's children were coping with the events of that day. The program aired on BBC Two a year later.
Wokoma's other on-screen credits include Jess Manning in the 2015 BAFTA Craft nominated BBC film The Last Hours of Laura K, Lance Corporal Jasmine Jaspers in the third season of the BBC Three's TV series Bluestone 42 in 2015, and a role in the TV series Uncle, also on BBC Three in the same year. She also played Jessica in Crashing, Channel 4's six-part British comedy, Doctor Sensible in ITV's Horrible Science, Daisy in Hotel Trubble, and Roz in Howard Overman's cult hit series Misfits.
Her theatre work includes productions at the Royal Court, Bush Theatre, Almeida, and The Royal National Theatre. Wokoma also joined the New York transfers of Phyllida Lloyd's all-female Donmar Warehouse productions of Henry IV and Julius Caesar at St. Ann's Warehouse in 2014.
Wokoma has also co-written an episode of series two of Romesh Ranganathan's SKY comedy The Reluctant Landlord and has writing commissions at Tiger Aspect and Objective Media.
She was a member of The National Youth Theatre as a teenager before training at RADA.
