*From garnering millions of views on YouTube to partnering with heavy-hitters, RocNation and Paramount Pictures, Andrew Onwubolu (aka Rapman) continues to thrive with his directorial debut on his first feature film, “Blue Story,” which he also penned.
Rapman became internationally recognized when his series of short stories called “Shiro’s Story,” accumulated over twenty million views on YouTube. His unique style of storytelling that encompasses rap narration is part of what makes Blue Story such a great success.
The London-based film surrounds best friends, Timmy (Stephen Odubola) and Marco, who seemingly beat the odds of gang violence until unforeseen circumstances pit the duo against one another. The movie equally follows a love story in which Timmy’s first love, Leah (played by Karla-Simone Spence) gets caught in the middle.
EUR’s Robin Ayers sat down with two of the leading stars from the film, Stephen Odubola and Karla-Simone Spence to chat about the film and future plans.
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Odubola once reached out to the film’s writer, Rapman, in 2018 in hopes of being brought onto one of his projects and he says Rapman never responded.
“I sent him an email congratulating him and I said, ‘it would be a pleasure to work with you’ and I didn’t get a reply but look at the way God works. Now I’m the lead in his first feature film,” says Stephen.
When asked about their thoughts on showcasing violence in London, Stephen has this to say:
“We’ve always said we just want to show awareness to people who aren’t necessarily from the background and show how a young boy can get caught up in that lifestyle. The kid was innocent and just doing teenager things and a certain circumstance happens that leads him, and we never really get to see that side of the story, we just see the end result. That’s what we were able to do.”
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Karla Simone Spence: “Everyone is born innocent and it’s the events that happen to you in life that take you down whatever path you down.”
Karla also shares highlights of her process during filming.
“It was kind of like a blast from the past because I’m from South London so even filming outside of the cinema that I used to go to when I was in primary school was just wild. To just think that I used to go in here to watch a film and now I’m filming a film outside the film. Just playing Leah, I enjoyed every moment of it.”
Both Stephen and Karla are British actors with high hopes of coming over to the United States to film movies in the future. Robin asks, “What are your thoughts on British actors who master the American accent for roles in the United States?”
Karla: “It [American Actors] was our first sight of representation of us. So, when we were growing up the people that we saw that looked like us were in America.”
Stephen mentions that as black British actors “there’s so many more stories getting told over here in the States. There’s more opportunities.”
Likely, these two rising stars will be seen in more films to come as they were named UK’s best newcomers. Blue Story was released in the UK in November 2019 and debuts in the US theaters on March 20, 2020.
Follow @bluestorymovie for more information and cast information.
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