Almost a year ago, we gushed about the talented Morenike Balogun, the Nigerian writer and actress, who writes for the Viola Davis-led, Emmy-winning ABC drama, How To Get Away With Murder.
Well, it turns out she is not the only Nigerian writer on the hit show’s crew. For the past two seasons, Balogun has been working alongside British-Nigerian filmmaker, Abby Ajayi, to help deliver one of our favourite shows on television.
Viola Davis on ‘How To Get Away With Murder’ (Photo: ABC)
Ajayi, who wrote the third season’s eleventh episode and the fourth season’s ninth episode, has served as a story editor for the show’s stellar fourth season. She works closely with Balogun, who is currently the executive story editor for the season.
While filmmaking was never Ajayi’s plan for her career, she’s been killing it. She started out as a Law student at Oxford, but as it turns out, her love for literature and the skills she picked up at Law school — strong writing and critical reading — made her into quite a solid screenwriter.
Prior to working on How To Get Away With Murder, Ajayi had already racked up writing credits on some of the UK’s longest-running dramas — EastEnders, Casualtyand Doctors — and created projects, from short films to TV movies, that portrayed blackness in a positive light.
Speaking with FilmDoo about the portrayal of black women she saw on TV, she said:
“Representation is narrow and limited and I don’t see many black women on screen and not much aspiration in the lives shown.”
Well, Ajayi can be proud that she is one of the writers delivering TV’s most dynamic and complex black woman: Annalise Keating. It’s not every day we get to see a black, queer and powerful antiheroine grace our screens. We honestly can’t wait to see what the talented Ajayi does next.
Credit: konbini.com
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