By Tom Joyce —
Accomplished actor Nyasha Hatendi knew that Black narratives had a place in the mainstream. He also knew he could craft a tale specifically for Black audiences that would have universal appeal, because a good story is a good story. It was a matter of finding the right medium. The result is “Sacrilege: Curse of the Mbirwi,” an original audio horror/drama that Nyasha created for Audible. Caleb McLaughlin of “Stranger Things” stars in the Afrocentric deconstruction of a classic horror set-up, where family members return to their ancestral homeland and awaken something evil – a monster emerging from the blood-stained legacy of colonialism.
In this month’s edition of “Nuts & Bolts,” Nyasha discusses topics including the creative and professional opportunities that audio formats represent for writers, and horror’s potential for conveying the experience of African and African-American families.
Q: How did you end up doing a project for Audible?
A: Starting out as an actor, I worked for the BBC Radio Drama company. So, for a year or two, I worked on a wide array of productions, which included a brief stint on “The Archers,” the UK’s longest running radio drama. I was fortunate enough to work with some of the leading writers, actors and directors in the UK performing over 100 radio plays so I became very familiar with the production and performance of audio drama. When it came time to write my own work, the narrative podcast felt like a natural way in.
I had originally approached Qcode who are pretty much the leaders in the space of cinematic podcasting, and are one of the few collaborators open to truly original content and supporting new writers. They had already produced some stellar podcasts such as “Carrier” starring Cynthia Erivo, “Prophecy” starring Kerry Washington and more recently “The Big Fix” starring Jon Hamm and part of their remit was to produce audio dramas with an eye to converting the IP to different mediums, namely film and television.
I had originally conceived of “Sacrilege” as a limited series or film, but I had no credits as a writer, so partnering with Qcode seemed the most feasible way of getting the project off the ground working in a medium that I was already very familiar with. When I came to them with a family saga turned horror/action/monster adventure story, set in the Zimbabwean bush, they were really interested. With “Sacrilege,” I was determined to tell a story I hadn’t seen or heard before – one that I knew needed to exist. It was crucial for me to center the African and African American experience, exploring a world that was both unique and deeply resonant with me on a cultural and personal level. I wanted to actively center the African and African American experience, writing specifically for an African audience, knowing that the central themes would translate universally, proving the viability of Black narratives in the mainstream. Soon after we went into development and the story went from a detailed treatment into an outline and gradually over the course of three or four months, eight full episodes of around 60 pages each. It was a bit of a miracle in my mind, but by that point I had lived with the story for so long that it pretty much wrote itself.
At the scripts developed, the project started to catch the attention of some high-profile actors, which led to conversations with Audible.
Audible provided insightful feedback, encouraging us to make the scripts even more specific to the audio medium. Their wealth of data on listener habits helped us focus effectively telling the story through sound. We honed each draft to maintain momentum and ensure the narrative would resonate with the audience.
During the editing process, we had to make some tough decisions to optimize the story for audio. There are two sequences that I was very fond of that we eventually could not include due to copyright considerations. The first was the opening montage of speeches by Malcolm X, Martin Luther, Robert Mugabe and Patrice Lumumba that was designed to immerse us in the themes of the piece, specifically the complicated dynamic between Africans and African Americans. The other was a sequence in the local town where we are introduced to a more detailed experience of the local Zimbabwean characters. Both of these scenes were important to me and painful to let go but I hope they’ll re-surface in subsequent versions of the story. But after the somewhat painful editing process, it was only a matter of time before we received the tentative green light.
The casting conversation had been ongoing up until that point when Audible suggested reaching out to Caleb McLaughlin to play Dashon. Caleb was in the middle of filming the final season of “Stranger Things” and looking for his next move. When we eventually met it became clear that we both shared the same sense of purpose in what we do and the underlying themes resonated strongly for both of us. After Caleb signed on, it took around three weeks to finalize the supporting cast (the majority of whom were from the Zimbabwean diaspora in L.A.).
A month later we were in production.
Q: Does audio storytelling represent an opportunity for writers?
A: I think audio storytelling offers an incredibly valuable opportunity for writers both in its potential as a storytelling medium and the challenges that it poses to writers looking to strengthen their craft.
The distillation of a visual language to an aural language is a really exciting process. Ironically the imagery becomes so much more detailed and specific when limited to audio, sometimes becoming even more visceral than the imagery itself. It allows for a deeply intimate relationship with your audience, who effectively become co-authors, the story becomes relative to the individual imagination, which is a really exciting dynamic, because it requires the storyteller to provide a consistent momentum, with peaks and flows that are both emotionally and psychologically satisfying. The writer and the director are very much in control of what the audience experiences and you cannot afford to lose them for a fraction of a second.
It is also a very exciting opportunity for writers because suddenly anything is possible. There are practicality no limitations. You can build complex worlds and action-packed stories, without having to worry about “budget.” The only limitation is imagination. There is such a diverse range of original stories that can be told in audio, where writers of all creeds and colors can really indulge their imagination without constraint, exploring uniquely specific experiences that resonate universally, but on a deeply personal level.
Q: What are the advantages of storytelling via an audio format? And how do you get around story elements such as setting and action sequences?
A: The advantages of the audio format are that you can say a lot with very little.
For “Sacrilege” specifically, the use of music, sound design and a very naturalistic style of acting were key to fully experiencing not only the imagery, but also to getting a palpable sense of the characters’ emotional and psychological state, as well as their physical circumstances. The advantage is that when you have all of these detailed elements working in harmony, you have incredible freedom in shaping the audience’s experience. Things like setting can be most effectively evoked with specificity, ie the sounds of the bush are so specific that it cannot be mistaken for anywhere else. Each breed of insect or animal, the different quality to their sounds at dusk or dawn, in the wide-open Savannah or buried in the bush, these are all tools at your disposal which were baked into the writing so, ironically, it becomes incredibly visual.
Similarly with action sequences. You are really more focused on how you want the audience to feel rather than the action itself, but in action moments, choosing the elements that you know an audience can easily understand is helpful, ie the sound of a revving engine, or a roaring lion and then playing with their aural orientation as you journey through the scene is very effective. You want it to be immersive, at times overwhelming, but not so much that the audience pulls away.
This is where the beauty of Dolby Atmos comes into play. The audio format allows you to be more explicit in a way, because you are not dealing with literal violence or nudity, you can go to further extremes, which is not only very cathartic but evokes a real sense of danger in the audience. It gives the writer the license to go further than might feel comfortable, which can be very powerful and something I realized only in hindsight.
However, one thing that really struck me was the power of silence. How often the essence of what is being said is not in the words themselves but in the silences surrounding them. One of the most exciting moments for me as a writer/director was playing with that tension. Audiobooks can have the tendency to feel very literal in my opinion and as a result somewhat sentimental. I really wanted to avoid sentimentality, ie telling an audience what to feel — except for one or two genre related indulgences.
What was really exciting for me, as a writer, coming at it with a more cinematic inclination, was that it gave me license to be a little bit more “poetic” while also allowing me to “do” more to the audience while “showing” less.
The audio format allows writers the freedom of the novelist in creating the world of the story and the specificity of a filmmaker in creating images in the mind of the listener.
It’s a really exciting opportunity for writers and audiences alike. A enhanced form of storytelling that really does deserve its own genre.
“The Narrative Podcast” suddenly seems a little reductive.
Q: Do you have any advice on managing creative projects that involve a team of people, such as an Audible presentation?
A: My only advice is to stay humble and know that everyone who is working on it wants the show to be as good as it can be (unless you are incredibly unlucky) and for the most part they know what they’re doing better than you.
Personally, I love collaborating. What was so moving for me was to realize that it was the writing which inspired our team’s individual creativity in the most amazing ways.
I once sat down for a session with some of the musicians and before they heard the scenes, we discussed what the characters were feeling, their wants and needs and how I wanted the audience to feel, and then the session players would go into the booth and improvise. It was one of the most creatively satisfying experiences I have ever had.
Your collaborators are your greatest allies, and throughout the process it was sometimes their confidence in the value of the piece that inspired and rekindled my own. I don’t think that could have happened if they weren’t fully invested in the success of the show, either that or they are the most consummate professionals. Either way not to be underestimated.
Give your team the permission to connect personally with the material, confident in the knowledge that they will only make it better (and that you always have the final say) and you can create something truly elevated.
The fact is, people always remember the experience of making the thing. Not the thing itself. If you make it a good experience for your team and you may well find life-long friends and collaborators. (I hope.) There’s nothing more satisfying than telling an incredible story with other artists you respect and admire.
Q: How did you make the transition from acting to writing? Is there any correlation between the skills?
A: I am not sure I’ll ever make that “transition.” Actors live in the fictional moment and so are writing all the time. There really is not that much difference between the two, in my opinion. Actors communicate with the lived expression of a writer’s words and writers with the words themselves — fueled by the alchemy of their lived experience and their wildest fantasies, exposing (whether we like to admit it or not).
But actors (good actors) do something not too dissimilar.
I did find my ear for the music of dialogue was perhaps more attuned, and my understanding for how to foster an authentic connection with an audience may have been honed on stage or on set sometimes, anxiously fueled by the need to maintain a truthful connection at all costs — the ability to literally feel the audience’s engagement. It becomes very palpable and is what many actors refer when describing a sense of being “alive” on stage, it is always in connection with the audience. In that respect, acting has prepared me to be a writer, I wouldn’t say better writer quite yet, but I hope writing (and directing) will also make me a better actor and vice versa.
Q: Why did you choose horror?
A: Ironically, I did not choose horror. Horror chose me … No, really, I wrote this wanting to explore family dynamics and the consequences of denial, in particular surrounding grief. The reality is when you dig into those feelings, emotions and the consequences of them, by focusing on the individual struggles of deeply wounded characters in their attempt to overcome their deepest fears, it feels horrific.
Particularly when coupled with the fear of being invisible.
Especially for African and African American families.
These wounds run deep, especially when you consider the ongoing violent attitudes of slavery and colonialism, there is a profound grief that we are forced to reckon with on a daily basis. Perhaps never more so than now. But it is self-inflicted isolation within a family that is most toxic, it breeds particularly hopeless kind of anxiety, shame and dysfunction which over time begins to manifests in behavior towards ourselves and our own which can become cruel and resentful.
These were some of the main themes I wanted to explore. The idea of being locked into a family system that outwardly must present as flawless, but at the same time knowing that an unresolved grief and anger is eating away at the very core of that family structure. That is where the horror lies and where the catharsis is needed. That’s why I wanted to tell the story of an African American family specifically within the context of Africa, because the pressures to present as perfect, on both sides are much more acute in African and African American culture. So much so, that it breeds a kind of fundamentalism, which younger generations especially can identify with — a fundamentalism that requires us to submit to a dysfunctional and external narrative that is not truthful, that is corrosive in its denialism and that effectively destroys the bonds that hold us together.
This thinking isolates us and in so doing forces us apart.
Living in that reality is horror. And so naturally the stories that we tell will gravitate towards that shared sense of reality. When we look at “Sinners,” “Black Panther,” “Get Out,” “Us,” “Dahomey,” “The Atlantics,” “Waves,” “Twelve Years a Slave,” or books like “Out of Darkness Shining Light,” “James,” “Their Eyes Were Watching God,” “Go Tell it On The Mountain,” “I AM NOT YOUR NEGRO,” and “The Invisible Man,” part of the reality is the Black experience of horror only a daily basis. It needs the catharsis of truth telling, because it allows us to be truthful and joyful in the moments of shared experience. Of family.
Our inability to confront the truth about ourselves and the source of our pain is our greatest weakness. The truth becomes terrifyingly powerful. Part of the reason why it was so exhilarating for me as a writer to tell this story was because it afforded me the opportunity to tell the truth, hopefully in ways that readers/listeners — particularly in the African and African American community, and my own family — would find cathartic.
The truth is terrifying, but it is also extremely liberating.
Q: Do you have any upcoming projects you’d like us to know about?
A: As an actor I have a few projects I am excited about. An upcoming adaptation of Agatha Christie’s “The Seven Dials Mystery,” which will be on Netflix later this year. It’s a very British affair with a wonderful cast of young stars and I get to play a really interesting character, Dr Cyril Matip, who gets at the heart of the “elephant in the room” during those times (akA: colonialism). I also have a fun role in a TNT series called “Debriefing The President,” which I just spent 3 months filming in Cairo, Egypt, about the first interviews between the CIA, the FBI and Saddam Hussein after his capture during the Iraq War. It’s a very topical and poignant story about the dysfunctionality of the geopolitics of the time.
On the writing front, I am excited to start going out with my first feature film script “Our Friends and Other Animals,” which is a semi-autobiographical road trip movie, about two young student couples from Oxford, one Zimbabwean and one British, who travel together one summer through Europe in a dingy Orange Beetle only to find that secrets of their past are deeper and more destructive than they had expected. It’s a personal story loosely based on my parents, which I hope to direct as my first feature.
And lastly, we are in talks about continuing to explore the world of “Sacrilege” … which is very exciting.
Q: Where can people follow you online?
A: My online presence is pathetic and I should really do something about it. But I like to engage fellow enthusiasts on Instagram: @nyashahatendi123 or on Linkedin
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Nyasha HatendiNyasha Hatendi is an internationally recognized actor, who is currently shooting “The Seven Dials Mystery” for Netflix alongside Martin Freeman, Mia McKenna-Bruce, and Helena Bonham Carter. Other recent TV credits include the final season of the Amazon series “Hunters,” as well as a series regular role on Amazon’s “Alex Rider” with Vicky McClure and Stephen Dillane. For four seasons, Nyasha starred as Leon in Hulu’s Golden Globe-nominated comedy “Casual,” produced by the Oscar nominee Jason Reitman. Additionally, he starred in the “Pooka!” episode of the Blumhouse/Hulu anthology series “Into the Dark” and recurred on the HBO Max series “Made for Love.” On the feature side, he can be seen in the Apple+ film “Swan Song” opposite Mahershala Ali, Naomie Harris, and Glenn Close. He made his feature film debut opposite Angelina Jolie, Matt Damon, and Eddie Redmayne in the critically acclaimed “The Good Shepherd,” directed by Robert De Niro. Other film credits include the sci-fi film “Replicas” opposite Keanu Reeves, the TV movie adaptation of “King Charles III” for the BBC/PBS Masterpiece directed by Rupert Goold, “The Comedian,” and “The Front Runner,” directed by Jason Reitman. A graduate of RADA, Nyasha was raised in the UK and Zimbabwe. He holds a US and UK passport. |
Tom Joyce writes a monthly series called Nuts & Bolts for the Horror Writers Association’s blog, featuring interviews about the craft and business of writing. Please contact Tom at TomJHWA@gmail.com if you have suggestions for future interviews.