David Oyelowo sat down with the One54 Africa podcast for a candid conversation about one of Hollywood’s most persistent debates: the idea that Black British actors are taking roles that should belong to African American performers.
For the British-Nigerian actor, the conversation cuts deeper than casting. It gets at something he believes has held Black people back for generations.
“Everything, in my opinion, that has kept Black people back from the ascent that we are worthy of has been this,” Oyelowo said, listing historical and cultural divisions that span continents, from Hutus and Tutsis to Igbos and Yorubas, to the friction between Black British and African American communities. “Ultimately, for me, we all want the same thing.”
Oyelowo, who is himself a product of that diaspora, born to a Yoruba father and an Igbo mother, spoke from personal experience about the reality of intra-Black tension. He recalled being bullied in the UK not by white classmates, but by West Indian kids, pointing to the long history of fractures within the broader Black community.
“We’re not talking about the art of acting,” he said. “We’re talking about scarcity. We’re talking about the fact that there’s not much pie. So when someone gets it, it’s like you’re now taking a piece that makes me feel like I can’t access that piece.”
It’s a distinction worth sitting with. The frustration, Oyelowo argues, isn’t really about British actors; it’s about the limited number of leading roles available to Black talent in Hollywood at all. And that frustration doesn’t exist in white Hollywood circles, where British actors move freely through American productions without generating the same kind of backlash.
“You don’t have that with white British actors in the Hollywood constellation,” he shared. “Because the pie is a box.”
But rather than engaging in public debate, Oyelowo is doing is part and is currently building a streaming platform alongside African American filmmaker Nate Parker, a project designed to serve the entire Black diaspora, from African Americans to Afro-South Americans to people across the African continent. His latest film, Newborn, in which he starred and was directed by Parker, is streaming on the platform.
“My answer to it is to continue to collaborate,” he said. “To demonstrate that, and it sounds corny, but we are way, way, way better and way, way, way more powerful together than we are apart.”
He also pointed out what he sees as a telling pattern in how the criticism tends to surface. “You never see them coming after a Brit playing that kind of role when it’s a failure,” Oyelowo said. “It’s only when it’s a success. If there’s box office and if there’s awards, then is the time where you go, ‘I want a piece of that.’ Well, let’s collaborate.”
