S10, Ep3: Samson Kayo, actor

0:00This is The Guardian.

0:07I'm Grace Dent and this is Comfort Eating from The Guardian A podcast where we pay homage to the lesser celebrated foods in life Because even as a restaurant critic I believe the food that matters most is often that snack you cobble together when you're curled upon the sofa Each week, I ask my guest to lift the lid on what comfort foods have seen them through their lives. Because you can tell a lot about a person from what they eat behind closed doors.

0:44Hello friends. Now you find me outside in my garden. It is blazing sunshine out here and I am deadheading my tiny little mini rosebush. I feel like I've neglected it it needs some serious tea Elsie I've got my tiny little very chic Japanese secateurs here they were a gift to me someone knows how to get to my heart now I am contemplating my next guest it's multiple BAFTA nominated actor, comedian and writer it's Samson Kao I cannot wait I think he's going to be an absolute hoot. God, it's lovely doing this. It's just the thought that I can nip off this head here and re-divert the plant's energy into creating more colour, more flowers.

1:41And if I'm lucky, I might get another flush of blooms before autumn comes. Gotta keep positive. It's another plane going over. I'm on a flight path, people. Now talking of blooming, Samson K.O. stumbled into acting through sheer serendipity and burst onto our screens over a decade ago. From teenage years that involved a spot of blagging and a side dish of hustle, he's exploded into the star of TV series such as The Much Loved Bloods, the cult hit Sliced, and HBO's swashbuckling Our Flag Means Death. Right now, he's promoting not one, but two blockbusters, the futuristic, fast-paced Voltron and the sleek, starry new F1 film with Brad Pitt.

2:30But under all that, Hollywood sheen, Samson is still a London boy. He's still cooking the Nigerian food of his childhood. And he's still writing the kind of roles he never saw growing up, drawn straight from the life he lived in Peckham. Okay, he'll be here in a minute. Just one more rose. perfection.

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3:40Shopify.com slash retail.

3:46samson ko hello welcome to comfort eating thank you for having me lovely copy this are you doing a northern accent because i'm northern i don't know are you slipping into it i like northerners i think they're the nicest people in the world i lived in um liverpool for a bit and it was the safest time i've ever felt around white people in liverpool seal street it It was fantastic. Liverpool people, they're absolutely amazing. They're enjoying it. Yeah, my family are Scousers. Oh, is it? Yeah. Oh, they're wicked. They're a specific breed apart. Yeah. And I love the fact that hardly anyone, you never really meet Scousers that often.

4:28No, no, no. Across Britain. No. It's like they're born and they go, this is as good as it gets. Yeah, they're magical. They're rare, Scousers. Magical creatures. Magical creatures. Look, you had a role playing Will.I.Am from the Black Eyed Peas in 2015's Murder in Successville. Which musician would you choose to play you in the inevitable Samsung Co. Biopic? Oh, oh, that's good. I will allow them to have prosthetics. You can have someone. You can have someone that would not look like you normally. I think Missy Elliott, I'd give it to Missy because I don't think there's any man that can step in to who I am.

5:18I feel like Missy has got the range to be able to fulfill this task. I love her. She's incredible. She's the best.

5:35look this is the moment of comfort eating when you reveal the snack that you turn to time again for solace comfort and joy i do not know what is under this tea towel it smells it smells incredible samson reveal your snack tell me all about it tell me when you eat it why you love it what it means to you am i revealing pull away the tea towel the nigerian chicken stew what is in nigerian chicken stew we just call it stew stew because i'm nigerian so there's no point in saying nigerian stew it's just well no exactly it's just stew it's just stew and i like the fact that no one's wasting any time in nigeria giving it a better name exactly it's It's a stew.

6:15But that's the thing. It's like a, it's a staple. So growing up when you had nothing to eat now and again, or you wanted to make a quick meal, some people would just make stew and you can have it with so many different settings. So you could make like 10 to 15 different meals. Okay. With just stew. So the stew is tomato. Yes. Tomato, tomato puree, onions, peppers, garlic, scotch bonnet. And then it's usually served with either rice or pounded yam, or you could have plantain and stew. You could have bread and stew. You can have spaghetti and stew. You could have indomie noodles and stew. You can have, there's so much, it's like a vast range of different carbs.

7:02It's carbonate, right? Do you know what I mean? Carbs and sauce. Carbs and sauce. And because you, you, you, you know, it's a comfort food, so you can have it morning, afternoon and night. When you eat that type of thing, does it, you know, your life's so busy, does it kind of change almost like the frequency of the room? Does it make you feel happy and calm? It settles you. It's like, you know, we grew up on it. In my house, any time you get home and there's no food, you know there's at least a pot of stew with like meat or chicken. And what we usually do is we go and steal meat from the pot.

7:35So that's why there's this whole thing. Who is stealing meat from the pot? I used to get beat for stealing meat from the pot because one time I went to steal the meat from the pot. I lied. I said, oh, it wasn't me. It wasn't me. And I sucked my fingers just to get it off. And then my sister came and she went, come here, give me your fingers. And she smelt my fingers. You could smell the stew. I was finished. I was done. Was it your big sister? Yeah, snitch. Yeah. Look, I'm a big sister too. I'm a grass. What are you going to do? i'm like just writing it all down it's just evidence because if it weren't me it was her so she snitched it's all good you have been on our screens for over a decade wow you're bafta nominated yeah you're a leading man you're a show creator but i'm going to rewind us to what I'm going to call a sliding doors moment when you were 21.

8:34So your mother sends you out on a quick errand. Sent you off to get an iron. Sent you off to get an iron. And then across the road, there was like a long queue outside the American church. And there was a girl, a young lady at the front of the queue. I was like, ooh, who's that? And then I left the boys and I went across the street and was talking to girls. Hey, how you doing? She was like, oh, hi. I was like, what are you guys doing here? There's too many black people on Tottenham Court Road. What's going on? Right. And she was like, oh, we're auditioning for this TV show. I was like, what is it?

9:06We don't know. Can anyone join the queue? Yeah. So I just jumped in the front of the line. I remember going downstairs to meet Shaheen Baig, casting director. And she was like, oh, where are you from? And I was like, Peckham, South London. She was like, oh, we're filming in Peckham. I was like, oh, would you look at that? And then she took my name down. And then took my email and a couple of weeks later, I got these sides for the show and I had to go in to have a proper audition. Youngers? Youngers, yeah. And I got the job and it was a series regular in Youngers. And I actually only auditioned for one scene in one episode.

9:44And then I remember getting a call saying, oh, yeah, you didn't get the one scene. And I was like, oh. And then he went, but you got four episodes. I was like, I was getting nuts. And at the time I was working at an adventure playground for like kids. and I was running around the adventure screaming, I've got a job, I'm out of here. Bye kids. Get out of my face, man. Yeah, and then my TV career essentially started. I love the idea that first of all, it sounds like this girl that was running the audition was quite good looking. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right, so first of all, it was your libido that took you.

10:19Yeah, it was like, ooh. And then the second, this nosiness that you're saying that like, you know, as a black person, you saw a lot of black people in a queue and you had something. Something's going on. Something's up. What's this? There was like 150. It was so long. It was like so many people. And I was like, yeah, some going on over here and I need to be a part of it. Those two things, yeah. Nosiness and libido took you to that point. Only Missy Elliott can match that. That's exactly it. Only she can play that role. Only she can play it.

10:57can i talk to you about growing up in dullage yes three bedroom flat yes who's there at this point there's a lot of aunties that weren't my auntie but i still had to call them auntie how many aunties is in this revolving cast of aunties who aren't aunties how many were in the revolving doors all right so there was two aunties in one room me my brother and a cousin who wasn't my cousin but i had to call cousin there was two women and another young girl in another room and then my mom and my sister in one room so there was like nine ten people always like coming in and coming out mainly women all women yeah i mean like your eyes have seen a lot oh i've seen everything seen a lot i've seen i know too much there is no i mean i've got an all female team You're amazing.

11:49There is nothing we can throw at you at this minute. And you'll be like, what? Nah, I've been there. When all the aunties were there together, nurturing you, looking after you, causing you untold havoc probably in the house, crying about men a lot. I know what women are like in groups, being one. Sorry, auntie. You say bad man. You don't go back to that bad man, auntie.

12:12But then when you're in the house, do these women... do they kind of nurture you do they love you do they are they maternal do they look after you yeah yeah absolutely like I was always the baby of the house because I'm I'm the youngest um of my brother and sister and but what I realized was that everyone had their own different personalities so you might get one auntie that was really funny you might get one auntie that was really quiet but but when she has a glass of wine she's the littest one you might get do you know i'm saying you might get one auntie that's always giving us money you might get another auntie that was always like my mom would say stay inside and that auntie will go no let him go and play what do you want him to stay inside for and then she'll let us out and we love that auntie so we so we kind of started to use them to all their strengths like oh i know if if auntie Shola's here I'll be able to go out I know if Auntie Bola's here I'll get Snickers I know if I'm saying like there's so many and my mum can see it she can see our steak in the mitt and she's like no he's not getting anywhere so I feel like being raised by all those people was enough you know for me to be able to move forward as an adult to kind of be my own person if that makes sense How's everyone getting fed?

13:31Stew. I love the fact. Stew. So like if my mum, my mum would come back from night duty at like eight o 'clock in the morning, then she'll sleep till about 12.1 and then we'll be coming back home from school by three. Right. And then, so there'll be like stew on the pot while she's getting ready to go to work. So we'd have like a three hour window with my mum. Where's she working? King's College and Guy's Hospital. She was a staff nurse for years. When all the aunties were there together, did you learn to cook then? Yeah. Because I sense there's a cook here. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm a mini chef.

14:06Yeah. But it's just sitting on the fridge watching them chop up the onions. I'd help my mum cut up some okra. I'd help her with everything necessary. I was like a sous chef. I was like, you know, I was like always helping. And then as I grew older, I learned those skills and just adapted them. Yeah. So I'm really good at cooking Nigerian food. Did any English food manage to sneak in at this point? Oh yeah, yeah There was like little bits of What's the first thing that you're like Mum we need to Pie Pie and mash Pie and mash When we do Christmas dinner We'll have like, you know Yorkshire pudding, jollof rice You know what I'm saying?

14:45That's all you need Pounded yam, pigs in blankets That's the two basic food groups Yeah, Yorkshire pudding in jollof Like literally just a massive Afro-English mix-up. It was wicked. Christmas is wicked. Let's talk about your mum. She'd arrived from Nigeria before you were born. How easy was it for her to find her feet in London? So when she first came to the UK, she was homeless. So she came as an asylum seeker. She was pregnant with my brother and she was living in Canberra McDonald's for like four or five months while she was looking for work. And then so, so she'd leave us with like this white lady, can't even remember her name, but she used to look after us when we weren't in school and my mum was off at work.

15:32And I always looked in these pictures and I'd be looking and I'd be like, mum, who's this white woman that's carried me in 19 pages of these pictures? She was like, ah, that woman saved your life. Or if it wasn't for that woman, we would be homeless. We'd be living in Nigeria. I was like, oh, I like that lady. And I'd never seen her. I've never seen her since. You've never seen her. You've never met her. Yeah, never met her. It just sounds like your mother has just overcome so much doing 22 hour shifts, getting here and living in a McDonald's. And this idea of finding people to look after her babies.

16:09Yeah. There was this term being farmed. Farming. Farming. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And like, I honestly, I thought I knew everything about London. Really? I've been here since the 90s and I've heard, I've heard little bits of people saying this, you know, I stayed with this, but I honestly explain farming. Yeah, it's a real thing. I think it's so farming is basically when you know, you come over as an immigrant or asylum seeker, and you can't afford to be present with the kids whilst working, you can't afford to raise them. So there was, I'm not quite sure if it was the government or if it was just a group of women who wanted to just help and it just grew into this thing.

16:50But you leave your kids with a family who would look after you until your parents finish work and come and collect you. So me and my brother, that was us for a couple of years until my mum could kind of get on her feet. How old were you then? Three, two, three. Yeah, it was from birth. It was when I was quite young. To us, it wasn't poverty. It was the norm. We didn't know anything else. And growing up where we grew up, like the estate was such a communal estate. like the community would look after the kids so parents would just send their kids outside and you could go to anyone's house and just scream from outside the window and you could hear your mum and you'd be like I gotta go guys do you know what I mean so it was what kind of kid were you what kind of young person I was very inquisitive I was very I was I was always daydreaming but I was a bit like troublesome I knew I was a creative I knew I wasn't an academic since from when I was a child.

17:46Like I could tell, I could feel it. I was always good at like sports or drama or things like that. But I used to get in trouble. I used to get in trouble a lot. And then in secondary school, I remember I got kicked out of school on sports day. I got first in shock port. And as my head of year was giving me my medal, he was like, congratulations, you're expelled. Off you go. You can take your medal with you and all. And then I went to - Hang on a minute. No, let's stop it. I swear that's what happened. Okay, right. I feel like we're glossing over. You were expelled. Yes. What were you expelled for?

18:20I think it was for throwing water balloons at a teacher or something. Hang on a minute. See, that's where we're getting to the bottom of it. It's not a water balloon. It's just randomly. It was a water onslaught from a bunch of kids. They were just throwing them out of a classroom, hitting teachers and stuff. But everybody else was involved. Why you? Why do you get expelled? Because I was always the one that was in the middle. It's always you. If you're there, something happens. You're the one, you're the one. Were you the person everybody remembered was at the thing that went wrong? So it was that you ended up being the main part player in any problem.

18:55It was almost like I was the ringleader, but I never was. I was just the funniest one. So I was the one that was always, you know, bantering and I was the loudest. So I'll be like someone to throw back and they know my laugh. So it's like, oh, Samson's there. Wonderful. We got one, you know. So I was always just getting caught up because of my personality. But look, we're laughing now, right? But we both know what getting kicked out of school early is like. And that's a very definite crossroads at this point. So right, you've now not got school to go to, right? You're living on the estate. What happens then?

19:37Too much idle time. too much time on my hands um and then I got sent to a center in Peckham which is when I started hanging around um are we talking about people referral unit yeah like a people referral unit oh god yeah it's a boyhood to manhood foundation but it was actually quite it's weird because that place was where I sort of discovered the freedom to be creative because in there they kind of see everyone and go how do we keep them occupied because academia is not working for these guys so they got like a laptop and we'd be producing we'd learn to produce music we'd learn to write they feed you here yeah there was there was a lady there was a chef like a real jamaican lady big pots all over the place one of her kids actually went to the center and she would cook like full jamaican dishes every day so school dinners at center was incredible i'd have like curry goat and white rice one day we'd have jerk chicken and cocoa bread the next day that's that lady it was just throwing down soul food amazing soul food wow it was incredible but um yeah it kind of shaped us in a weird way to be more creative up until now we've talked you know the backbone of your life is women who are the men that are shaping your life how does that all fit the men in my life were the oldest that i grew up with on the ends on the estate right these guys that were like maybe i'm 14 15 they're like 25 26 27 so we were kind of raised by those guys essentially and growing up where we grew up you really have to have your wits about you it was survival instinct as soon as you hit 13 like you're you see a kid and you go oh he's fine leave him alone and as soon as they hit 13 it's sort of like right you better become a man now you're gonna get you're gonna get eaten so we we kind of and that's why they always say what is in the water in South London why is it that so many successful people you know John Boyega, Damson Idris so many people come from Peckham in South London and I think it's because we've gone through so much trauma that when we are able to find something outside of that so like acting or music and when we're embraced within that it's easier for us to navigate because we've gone through so much that this doesn't faze us if that makes sense and a lot of the things that happen but I love that you know you've talked about happiness happiness happiness but then you know you get into it there trauma yeah yeah it's all it all stems from traumatic experiences like there's some stuff that i'm sure a lot of us have seen that would rock a normal person to their core so i feel like the reason why people from south london are doing well is just because of resilience you know and that sort of hunger to not want to go back

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23:40when you're in the unit even though you're being nurtured i mean i'm going to be honest with you having read some of your interviews it does feel like you do still slightly go off the rails at this point in your life yeah what's going on now yeah 13 14 15 you're introduced to a different world like mom's struggling i'm growing up now and i'm looking at mom struggling and I'm like, nah, my mum don't struggle. I have to help, right? And because you're from the area, the people around there sort of know you. So you walk into a Marks and Spencer's and try and volunteer for work experience and get paid.

24:15And they're like, nah, we don't trust the look of you type thing. So the streets call you, you know, and the people who raised us, the 25, 26 year olds are like, look, this can help you pay some bills. This can help you do X, Y, Z. and so you fall into that were you any good at it i was incredible it's actually good for characters because you yeah because you got a little twinkle in your eyes so you're quite good at whatever buying selling what are you doing yeah selling adapting i used to sell dvds pirate dvds and mixtapes and stuff and that was where my love for film came because i was the dvd man the black dvd man hang on were you selling them in supermarket car parks yeah everywhere barbershops uh bakeries give us a spin right what are you selling me i've just come across you yeah outside hackney mare street tesco yeah you don't know me right i'm just putting my food in the car yeah i want you to give me the spiel yeah and tell me the film you're selling me hello darling do you need help with your bags yeah yeah give you a hand with your bags i give you oh do you like films i do you have a film there what's your favorite film um dirty dancing oh bush there's dirty dancing fresh copy there you go and guess what i've got much more i give you five dvds for 15 pound fresh the ones in the cinema no one walking across the screen here's a free one right if you like it take my number give me a call i've got a moped i'll come find you did you sell any of those videos though yeah with like the person's going for the pop so many all of them all of them were that was just the gap everyone every every one of them had someone walking through with a bag but it was so good i made so much money but you're also right you're bringing you're bringing crime into your mother's house yeah you know how does that feel it was weird i was really good at hiding it because they'd never suspect me my brother was the naughty one in everyone's eyes so i could kind of slip in and out and then when i realized that you know selling dvds was making more money than like selling other stuff and it was safer you're not going to go to prison for selling like five or six dvds you might get like a caution or something so i kind of fell into that and then the house ever get like untold times and that's why that's why mom moved us out you know right that's it we're moving to catford and that was it land of dreams land of dreams yeah does food play any part at this point you know you're making a bit more money how are you feeding yourself here more lees more lees man it's sustained so many children tell me tell us what though because it actually doesn't come out of south london i think i don't even think there's one over here in east oh really maybe there might be now but it's a very south london yeah oh no there is one now in shoreditch there's like a big one in shoreditch i bet you've got views on that oh yeah yeah yeah i don't know i don't know it's too clean yeah yeah you can't have a clean more of these it's got to be oil on the floor once you walk in you've got to literally go arse over tit when you walk in just a whole pool of oil can i get two pieces of chicken and chips and a marinda no but it was it's a chicken and chip shop that it was spread all over south london and it was the meal you would have that could fill you up with like two pounds so i'm getting six wings and chips for two pound with a drink and that would hold me what drink marinda strawberry marinda orange marinda did you ever eat a vegetable during these years nah nah nah nah I might have had a courgette, but I think what happened in that?

27:52One singular courgette. One singular courgette. But you've got this life, although we're laughing, does feel like it's going in one specific direction. But at 18, it feels like this huge curveball happens. What goes on then? I had my son. I was too young to have a child. Did you know the mother? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, well. Yeah, yeah. We hung out, we dated. We weren't like close, close, but you know, you know, one thing led to another. Yeah. And it happens. And it happens. And I remember at the time we weren't too keen on having him because we were just a bit like, I don't know. Yeah. And then I had a dream.

28:31I remember I had a mad dream. I'll never forget. It was so clear. And it was like, don't get rid of this child. He's going to change your life. And I didn't understand what that meant. And then the next day I called her and said, look, should we just not do this? and just, you know, and she was like, yeah, I don't really want to either. And I was like, oh sweet. Yeah, yeah, it was very close. It was booked, everything. And then had the dream. And I'm just so glad that we made that decision because it literally changed my life. I remember when he, I remember when he came out and I was in the hospital room and you know how everyone's like, oh my God, crying.

29:09And everyone's like, damn, I got to make some money. That was, that was my only thing. And I found acting completely left the old life alone immediately. Like it was so quick how I went to an audition and saw people that looked like me acting and playing these characters freely. And I didn't realize that this world even existed outside of my estate. And then that was it. I kind of went in and the first few years of his life were a bit rocky because there's no money. There's a maturity. I wasn't raised by a father, so I didn't know how to raise a child. so that we'd come across a lot of arguments but then after that third year where things started to get a bit stable ever since then we've just had the sweetest coolest relationship you know so yeah grateful and then this point you must have a vision in your head of making it but what does making it look like at this point making it for me at that time was being able to buy nappies and have a place for him to raise his head.

30:14And just, I always said, I would know that I'm doing well as long as I'm present and you're always able to eat, have a roof over your head and have clothes. So as far as that, I think I'm doing all right. Well, maybe the moment you felt like you had made it is 2018. You got a BAFTA nomination. I know. For your part in the sketch show Famalab. Yeah. Okay. tell me about the moment you hear that it was so mad a friend of mine called me at the time in the morning i woke up there was so many like missed calls i thought someone had died and then um my friend rang me on facetime and i remember she was like oh hey screaming i went what what happened and she went congratulations i was like what is it and then i looked and it went samson k and nominated i just started screaming and then my phone died because everyone kept ringing me the battery just died and then i went back to sleep i went back to sleep it was too much i was overwhelmed the most emotional moment of your life i just need to nap and then i called my mum i was like mum she was like what's wrong what's up i was like mum i just got nominated for a she's like oh my god praise god she's screaming praise god then she pauses she goes what is a bafta i was like oh god bye mom let me call someone that knows the industry

31:49i do also want to talk to you about sliced so this is a show about pizza delivery drivers which you were once too weren't you yeah slice is based on a true story essentially um i was doing pizza delivery back in the day um and i was selling some things in the pizza boxes no way yeah yeah so i'd go around and say like if i had to meet someone i'd give it in a pizza and i remember saying that to phil balker fellow scouser uh creator of phone shop yeah he taught me how to write and he always said to me the best pieces come from truth so he was like find a true story that you think is really funny and let's adapt that and that's what we did with Slice two pizza delivery boys who get into all sorts of hijinks on their deliveries and that was the first time that I ever felt like I was supposed to be in this business yeah as much as I've done so much acting it felt like i'd always ran away from writing and that sort of world of academy and reading and then realized that it was because of the way i was taught now it's changed we're in season 10 and i think i've heard we've talked about every job in this room first pizza delivery person oh is it first pizza oh wicked and so right you're delivering pizza every time you ring a doorbell or knock on the door it's a different life that you're kind of stepping into absolutely that's where the stories are created i went to deliver a pizza at this lovely house and a lady opens the door beautiful my age and she was really cool and she invited us to this fancy dress party right and i was like oh fancy dress this is nice i brought my boy and um we dressed as dogs and i I remember us walking in and everything was like quite seedy.