In 2020, as long-overdue conversations about race rippled out across the world, Gbemisola Ikumelo, now 39, made a decision. “I had this soul-destroying experience on a job,” she says, hersunny demeanour at odds with the grim tale. She decided to post online about the microaggressions she had endured while appearing in a play some years before, making peace with the fact that it could affect her chances at future roles, and shaking as she typed out the thread. A day passed, “and I just heard my phone going ding, ding, ding. I was convinced it was going to be backlash – but it was people sending their congratulations.” Ikumelo had been nominated for a Bafta for her short, Brain in Gear. “I felt like God was going: ‘Don’t worry.’ It was a beautiful moment.” She won that Bafta and has since scooped another. “When I won the first one, I was living in a small flat, and I felt like the [statuette] was judging me,” she laughs. “I was like, I might have to refurb or move. Now I have an office, so they’re in a very reasonable place.”
You get the feeling she should keep a few shelves free. After flirting with TV roles in the US, in 2025 Ikumelo joined the writing and acting cast of NBC’s Office spinoff The Paper. Closer to home, she also shot another series of the show that scooped her the second of those aforementioned awards, for best female comedy performance – the riotous buddy cop comedy Black Ops (she is still hopeful her brilliantly anxiety-inducing Brain in Gear will make it to a series).
