Toheeb Jimoh says it's 'definitely a calculated thing' that he ended up playing 2 of television's most high-profile Nigerian characters on 'Ted Lasso' and 'The Power'
- Toheeb Jimoh plays two Nigerian characters in currently airing shows: "Ted Lasso" and "The Power."
- The actor told Insider that he's playing Nigerian characters "on purpose."
Toheeb Jimoh currently plays two Nigerian characters on television — and according to the British-Nigerian actor, it's no coincidence.
"It's definitely a calculated thing," Jimoh told Insider. "I'm doing it on purpose. And I love having the opportunity to tell Nigerian stories and show us in a different light."
The 25-year-old Emmy-nominated actor, who was born in London and spent much of his childhood in Nigeria, stars in the Apple TV+ series "Ted Lasso" as footballer Sam Obisanya, and in "The Power" as independent journalist Tunde Ojo.
The two shows are now releasing concurrently — "I didn't plan that bit," Jimoh told Insider — and the actor said that it's "dope" to play two Nigerian characters at the same time.
While Tunde was written as a Nigerian character, both in the show and in Naomi Alderman's source novel of the same name, Sam wasn't: after Jimoh was cast, the character's nationality was rewritten from Ghanaian to Nigerian. Jimoh was the first to make the change in his audition, telling The Los Angeles Times that he deliberately changed the dialogue to speak a "bit of Yoruba" during his audition.
In American and British popular culture, Nigeria has been frequently been reduced to scam depictions that contribute to racist stereotypes, media studies professor Noah Tsika wrote in the online journal Africa Is a Country. Some characters, like "Ted Lasso's" Sam, "Sex Education's" Eric Effiong, or Abishola of "Bob Hearts Abishola," have helped to move the needle on portrayals of Nigerians and the Nigerian diaspora.
"I'd watch TV, and the way Nigerians were represented in the media had nothing to do with Nigerians. It was a very much outside eye on what my culture and my parents' culture was and looked like," Jimoh told Insider. "And so being able to be a part of the narrative, being able to author it in a little way, add my own sauce to it, bring all the joy and the good stuff that I've seen being on the inside of it to the screen is awesome."