S.O.U.L. Cast

Iyare Igiehon

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TV & Film

S.O.U.L. Cast is a podcast of long conversations with Black British creatives — actors, writers, directors, producers, musicians. How they got in, what the work actually takes, and what nobody tells you until you're already doing it. Hosted by Iyare Igiehon. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Aug 11

Kiell Smith-Bynoe

Kiell Smith-Bynoe has one of the most recognisable faces in British comedy — Mike in Ghosts, Dean in Stath Lets Flats, Man Like Mobeen, Taskmaster, The Great British Sewing Bee. What's less visible is the fifteen years of unpaid sketches, wrong agents and self-funded shorts that got him there. In this episode he takes Iyare through all of it: leaving drama school in 2010 with no footage to show anyone, signing with the biggest agency in the room and disappearing inside it, and the working relationship with his current agent that finally made the difference. He talks about Red Flag — the sketch show everyone loves and nobody would commission — building his improv show Kool Story Bro into a national tour, and why he's still turning up to make short films for free. A S.O.U.L. Impact Award winner, back on the SOUL Cast. Hosted by Iyare Igiehon Edited by Nuru Mkali Music by Christian Jermane Recorded at Run VT, London Listen and subscribe: https://shows.acast.com/thesoulcast Watch: https://www.youtube.com/@soulcastshow More from S.O.U.L.: https://soulfilm.co.uk/soulcast S.O.U.L. Cast is produced by S.O.U.L. Productions and Films Ltd. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Jul 30

Terri Walker

Terri Walker doesn't do mediocre — and she'll tell you so to your face. Two decades on from her critically acclaimed 2003 debut Untitled, released via Def Soul/Mercury, the singer-songwriter joins Iyare Igiehon on SOUL Cast for a conversation about what it actually takes to sustain a voice in this industry — not the highlight reel, the mechanics. She talks about growing up in Germany from the age of four with a Jamaican mother who wrote "RUBBISH" in capital letters on CDs she didn't rate. About discovering Phyllis Nelson, then Whitney, then Lauryn Hill, and watching Sister Act 2 three times back to back in a German cinema. About singing "I Will Always Love You" a cappella at her father's funeral at 18, in a room of thousands, and being spotted there by the manager who'd start her career. She's candid about the major label years: the deal she never chased, the second-album pressure to chase Jamelia and Beyoncé, the Cutfather & Joe session, and the video that derailed her momentum. And she sets the record straight on the story everyone thinks they know — she was never dropped. She asked to be let go. Then there's now: My Love Story, produced by Children of Zeus, released on her own label Wings of a Hummingbird, straight to number one on iTunes, remixed end-to-end by Zed Bias. She's signing artists, planning a festival, and refusing to play a show until the money's right. Her advice to anyone coming up in the age of AI? Retreat into who you are. The machine can't imitate what you haven't done yet. SOUL Cast is edited by Nuru Mkali Recorded at Run VT Music By Christian Jermane With thanks to Mariam Adamson Hosted by Iyare Igiehon Edited by Nuru Mkali Music by Christian Jermane Recorded at Run VT, London Listen and subscribe: https://shows.acast.com/thesoulcast Watch: https://www.youtube.com/@soulcastshow More from S.O.U.L.: https://soulfilm.co.uk/soulcast S.O.U.L. Cast is produced by S.O.U.L. Productions and Films Ltd. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Jul 14

Adjani Salmon

Adjani Salmon grew up in Jamaica making kung-fu films at lunchtime and studying architecture, with no route into the industry and no mentors. He ended up as the creator, writer and star of Dreaming Whilst Black — a BBC series picked up by A24 and Showtime, with RTS and BAFTA recognition off the back of a single pilot episode. In this episode he takes Iyare Igiehon through exactly how that happened, and he doesn't skip the unglamorous parts: the Smirnoff ad he took after his only camera-operator left the country; the reality TV edit suite where he actually learned story; the Malcolm Gladwell "big fish, small pond" theory that made him choose Britain over America; the web series that took two years, cost him his own money and pulled 10,000 views; the agent he got through a chain of three strangers at a 50-person screening; the seventh draft the BBC saw as "draft one," and the 22nd they saw as "draft two"; and the day he bet a production company £50,000 he didn't have that they needed one more shooting day. He's also candid about the parts of the story that were timing rather than talent, about why he refuses to rank how anyone earns a living making films, and about what he's building next now that he considers comedy-drama a solved problem. Adjani first screened Dreaming Whilst Black at S.O.U.L. Fest, before the industry was paying attention. This conversation closes that loop. Hosted by Iyare Igiehon Edited by Nuru Mkali Music by Christian Jermane Recorded at Run VT, London Listen and subscribe: https://shows.acast.com/thesoulcast Watch: https://www.youtube.com/@soulcastshow More from S.O.U.L.: https://soulfilm.co.uk/soulcast S.O.U.L. Cast is produced by S.O.U.L. Productions and Films Ltd. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Apr 10

Joy Gharoro-Akpojotor

Joy Gharoro-Akpojotor is a producer, writer and director whose work spans film and TV with a clear, unwavering focus on Black, queer and female-led stories. She founded Joi Productions in 2016 and hasn't looked back since — producing the breakout hit Blue Story (2019), Boxing Day (the UK's first all-Black Christmas film), Champion for BBC and Netflix, and most recently Animal, Ashley Walters' directorial debut which picked up the Best Debut Feature award at Berlinale 2025. Iyare sat down with Joy to talk about how she fell into producing from a betting shop in Hackney, why she was the perfect person to protect Rap Man's voice on Blue Story, the chaos and magic of that opening weekend, what it actually takes to build a sustainable production company in one of the hardest periods in British film history — and why, for Joy, a no is never a no until it's a no. They also get into Champion, the campaign for a second series, Animal, her directorial debut Dreamers, and what collective power in the British film industry could actually look like. Watch Dreamers Subscribe to the SOUL Cast wherever you get your podcasts. Find out more about S.O.U.L. Fest SOUL Cast is edited by Nuru Mkali Recorded at Run VT Music By Christian Jermane With thanks to Mariam Adamson #SOULCast #JoyGharoroAkpojotor #BlackBritishFilm #Dreamers #BlueStory #SOULFest #BritishCinema #FilmPodcast #BlackFilmmakers #WomenInFilm Hosted by Iyare Igiehon Edited by Nuru Mkali Music by Christian Jermane Recorded at Run VT, London Listen and subscribe: https://shows.acast.com/thesoulcast Watch: https://www.youtube.com/@soulcastshow More from S.O.U.L.: https://soulfilm.co.uk/soulcast S.O.U.L. Cast is produced by S.O.U.L. Productions and Films Ltd. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Mar 27

Nathan Bryon

Nathan Bryon was at the very first S.O.U.L. event. He was screening short films he'd funded himself, on credit cards, and sending them cold to the head of the BBC. Nobody was watching. He didn't care. That energy — what he calls being "audaciously insane and delusional" — runs through everything he's made since: the Casualty episode that made him feel like he'd arrived; the years writing on Rastamouse, Apple Tree House and Swashbuckle at odd hours after long filming days on Benidorm; the pitch for Bloods that arrived in a 49-page first draft that his commissioner read and then very kindly used as a teaching moment; the weekend he spent at Waterstones buying every picture book on the shelf because his agent told him Look Up! should be a picture book and he had no idea how to write one; and the film Rye Lane — co-written with Tom Melia, directed by Raine Allen-Miller, premiered at Sundance, distributed by Fox Searchlight, 16 BIFA nominations — made with zero pushback, by a team who were just encouraged to make it as Black and colourful and London as possible. Right now he's writing features, a young adult novel, and a horror-comedy TV project with Monkeypaw (Jordan Peele's production company) and producer David Heyman. He's also recently become a dad, and is somewhere between restocking everything he knows about craft and reminding himself that he's 34 and things are allowed to fail. It's a long conversation between two people who have known each other since the beginning, and it moves across twenty years of the industry without trying to be tidy about it. The advice at the end is worth waiting for. Check out Nathan on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nathanbryon/ Watch: Rye Lane Watch: Bloods Read: The Up Series SOUL Cast is edited by Nuru Mkali Recorded at Run VT Music By Christian Jermane With thanks to Mariam Adamson Hosted by Iyare Igiehon Edited by Nuru Mkali Music by Christian Jermane Recorded at Run VT, London Listen and subscribe: https://shows.acast.com/thesoulcast Watch: https://www.youtube.com/@soulcastshow More from S.O.U.L.: https://soulfilm.co.uk/soulcast S.O.U.L. Cast is produced by S.O.U.L. Productions and Films Ltd. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Feb 17

Joan Iyiola

Joan Iyiola has spent her career refusing to stay in one lane — and it's working. She began at Cambridge, studying law under a supervisor who used to perform alongside Derek Jacobi, before making the slow, careful pivot to acting her Nigerian parents had long suspected was coming. After years of fringe theatre, tutoring, temp work and a brief, chaotic stint at cold calling (done alongside Josh O'Connor, mostly as an excuse to practice accents), Joan secured a place at Bristol Old Vic Theatre School — and never looked back. Her theatre career took her to the Royal Shakespeare Company, where she became the first Black woman to lead a show. But it was a different kind of milestone — three consecutive auditions in a single week, all of which told her she "wasn't fragile enough" — that would change her direction entirely. Rather than collapse, Joan channelled the rejection into creation. She had already spent a decade co-running The Mono Box with movement director Polly Bennett — a resource organisation that grew from a handful of donated plays to nearly five thousand, running workshops from Bermondsey to the Hampstead Theatre. That experience had quietly made her a producer. All she needed now was a film. Delapo Is Fine was first. Made on a shoestring, it won the HBO Short Film Award at ABFF, went to Netflix and then Disney+, and — after being submitted to SoulFest — became a catalyst. Joan walked away from that festival experience with a new resolve: she would direct the next one herself. That film was Mango — an 11-minute, visually intense short about fibroids, shot while her son had just turned one and the whole household had been through a nursery bug. It won Best Film, Best Actress (Olivia Nkuintu) and Best Craft (cinematographer Yinka Edward) at SoulFest 2025. It was the festival's UK premiere. Within months it was on Disney+, and is now also being used in hospital training programmes. Joan talks about all of it in S.O.U.L. Cast's very first episode — the Nigerian parent psychology, the dark nights of the soul, the difference between getting rejected and getting rejected in a way you can't do anything with, what motherhood actually taught her about directing, and why she believes "short is king" right now for Black British filmmakers with something to say. You can watch Joan’s directorial debut ‘Mango’ on Disney+ SOUL Cast is edited by Nuru Mkali Recorded at Run VT Music By Christian Jermane With thanks to Janine Kempadoo and Mariam Adamson Hosted by Iyare Igiehon Edited by Nuru Mkali Music by Christian Jermane Recorded at Run VT, London Listen and subscribe: https://shows.acast.com/thesoulcast Watch: https://www.youtube.com/@soulcastshow More from S.O.U.L.: https://soulfilm.co.uk/soulcast S.O.U.L. Cast is produced by S.O.U.L. Productions and Films Ltd. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

6 Episodes

S.O.U.L. Cast is a podcast of long conversations with Black British creatives — actors, writers, directors, producers, musicians. How they got in, what the work actually takes, and what nobody tells you until you're already doing it. Hosted by Iyare Igiehon. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Creator

Iyare Igiehon
Years Active

2026
Episodes

6
Rating

Clean
Copyright

© Iyare Igiehon
Show Website

S.O.U.L. Cast