Things are shaping up nicely, cast wise, for the ‘Americanah’ TV series adaptation based on Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s third novel and currently in development by award-winning Mexican-Kenyan actress, Lupita Nyong’ o.
Nyong’ o had optioned the novel in 2014 and planned to adapt it into a movie with actor Brad Pitt’s production company, Plan B.
The situation, however, changed with the actress’s announcement in September that it would now be a 10-episode TV series to be aired by HBO Max. The company is currently working with Nyong’ o’s Eba Productions, writer and actress Danai Gurira, Andrea Calderwood of Potboiler Television, Didi Rea and Danielle Del of D2 Productions and Nancy Won. Plan B also remains a producer.
The more recent news about the series is that the Emmy-winning Nigerian American actress, Uzo Aduba, and the British Nigerian actor, Zachary Momoh have joined the cast. Momoh is playing the role of Obinze attached to David Oyelowo initially.
Nyong’ o, meanwhile, retains her role as Ifemelu, the protagonist. She is a strong-willed, self-assured woman who, as a teenager growing up in Lagos, falls in love with the quiet, dreamy Obinze. However, their country, Nigeria, is under dictatorial military rule and, amongst other anomalies, university lecturers are perpetually on strike. Ifemelu departs for the US on scholarship. In the US, she experiences gains, disappointments, and race, a previously unfamiliar concept.
The recently added Aduba will play Aunty Uju. She is Ifemelu’s young, ambitious aunt and confidante. Aunty Uju is also a brilliant medical doctor who relocates to the United States in search of a better life for herself and her young son, Dike.
Momoh, who became the youngest actor to play Othello in a major production at the age of 23, now plays Obinze. He is an idealistic young man and a visionary, the only son of a literature professor with a deep admiration for America. Obinze encourages his girlfriend Ifemelu to accept her scholarship in the US, hoping to join her for postgraduate studies. But despite his qualifications, he is persistently denied entry into the US. Disillusioned, Obinze plunges into a dangerous, undocumented life in the UK. Three years later, Obinze is a wealthy man in newly democratic Nigeria with deep-seated disorientation and constant yearning for the unknown.
Published in 2013 by Alfred A.Knopf, Adichie won that year’s National Book Critics Circle Fiction award with ‘Americanah’.
Her 2006 novel, ‘Half of a Yellow Sun’, was adapted into a movie by Shareman Media/Slate Films in 2013. The renowned Biyi Bandele directed it.
