Bolu Babalola on her new comedy Big Age

Bolu Babalola, the author of Love In Colour, is turning to TV comedy with the pilot, Big Age, to be screened next Friday – part of Channel 4’s Black To Front day focussing on black talent. Here she tells us about the show.

Can you tell us what Big Age is about?

Big Age is a friendship based, hang out comedy, set in London following a group of friends and focusing on British Nigerian 25-year-old Sadé who is at a crossroads at her life. She has big ambitions to be a writer but is conflicted because of her allegiance to her parents and their dreams for her.

She’s trying to decide what to do both for her dreams, against the pressure of parental expectations, especially as a second-generation immigrant daughter.

It's not cynical ambition. It's somebody believing in herself and believing that she has something to show the world. It's about a group of young people getting to know themselves, supporting each other and, being each other's own family.

How would you describe the term ‘Big Age’?

It's quite hard to directly translate, but it's originated from West African slang, Nigerian slang specifically. It's something that is said almost as a playful admonishment, but also as a reminder; if somebody is acting immaturely, family and friends generally say ‘why are you acting like this at your big age?’

And so, in Sadé's mind, it's a representation of that - because she’s 25 and because of how’s she’s been brought up, she has an expectation of where she should be in life, at her big age. Fundamentally, it’s about being 25 and thinking ‘Oh no, I'm an adult now and I need to figure out who this adult is, and who am I really’.

And what was your inspiration?

Not to sound narcissistic, but myself! I came up with a concept when I was 25 – I have a law degree that I wasn’t using, and I was temping in an office and was offered a permanent job.

I was thinking that I really needed to make a move to achieve my dreams, I didn’t want to be trapped in a corporate world forever and felt like this was the time to do it. I had massive creative ambitions, but I had no clue how to go about it but knew it was something I had to do, like it was a calling.

I was fortunate enough to have very supportive parents, they never questioned that I wanted to be a writer; according to them, they always knew it was within me. I'm aware that that's a privilege and that it’s not the norm, especially in my culture, across the older generations. They came to this country with big stable dreams for their children.

For me, Big Age is not condemning parents wanting that for their children, it's understanding that and where they’re coming from and that it comes from love. It’s also understanding that we're  now in a very different, more evolved world, and though we respect their wishes, it's time for us to make our own decisions.

So, it's just exploring the nuances of parental expectations versus a younger generations ambition.

You are a best-selling author for your book Love In Colour. How does writing for TV differ from writing a book?

I call myself a storyteller, so, my dedication is to the story.  I've been writing stories since I was a young child and then, at 14, I started writing long form stories - I don't want to call them novels because they most definitely were not! That form is very natural to me, you can just pick up a piece of paper and just start writing a story.

Writing for TV is a completely different beast, the structure is different, although the basis in storytelling is the same; the structure is different, you have to think about different things, and I find it a really beautiful challenge.

I love storytelling, and that part of it comes relatively easy for me but writing for TV brings out a different side of my skill set and makes me hone different techniques and approach storytelling in a different way from writing a book. I am meticulous with all my storytelling, but with script writing, it’s a different kind of meticulous. You must think about different things and think about is this going to come across? How is it going to come across visually - you must show, not tell, whereas in a novel it’s the other way around.

If I'm given an actor a note, I know exactly the emotion I want to convey because I'm so used to acutely exploring emotion within written texts. I want people to be able to taste the texture, smell the texture from the screen.

You wrote your thesis on Beyoncé’s album Lemonade? What is it about her that you admire specifically?

Oh my, where do I start? I mean, there's so many things. She is very good at what she does, but it's very easy to be talented. For me, it's her dedication and meticulous approach to her craft, the fact that she is all over everything and that she takes risks, the fact that she's ambitious.

She grew up and then grew the confidence to accumulate the power to tell the stories in the way she wanted to tell the stories completely and gain control in terms of censoring black women and censoring black people.

I've watched a lot of her documentaries, and I think she's very big on working with other people, centring on other people’s talents and incorporating them into the work. She's a student, she learned how to edit on her own, she learned how to direct on her own.

I think for me, what is amazing in bringing Big Age to life is the amount of people that I work with.

So many people's talents coming together to bring so much colour and life to this project. it's my brilliant director Nosa Eke and my amazing producer, Amy Annette, who both completely understand and share my vision, and make it better. It's my amazing cast who have not only brought these characters, who have lived with me for years to life, but also brought more to them by making parts of their personality brighter and bigger. So yes, Beyoncé is a big inspiration into how I approach my work.

You have a huge following on social media, do you feel pressure to deliver on these platforms?

No, I don’t feel the pressure at all, I think that would be very, very unhealthy, that’s not my approach. My social following wasn't something that I deliberately went out and amassed. I think it came from talking about things that I enjoy.

I'm a writer and so naturally, that is my outlet. I started properly tweeting when I was temping, years ago, in my early 20s. I didn’t have a job in media at all. I was looking for ways to just express my creativity, my opinions and I like to share in my joy, if I am excited about something, I want to talk about it and I  think when you are naturally that way, people gravitate to it because people always like talking about things that make them happy.

I talk about romcoms - I love the genre so much. I think that for a long time that genre was considered frivolous and weak, and I think I talk about it in a way that contextualises and intellectualises it and people liked that.

I don't plan anything I want to talk about, I don’t draft tweets, I don’t wake up and think about what I’m going to share on socials, I tweet what’s in my heart and it’s authentic and I think that’s what people are drawn to. When I start being contrived, what is the point. When it stops being fun then I’ll just stop.

Sadé (played by Ronké Adekoluejo, above) is a strong believer in affirmations – is this something that you can relate to?

I don’t actively have a mantra, but in my family, we have this thing where we don't speak out negativity. If you want something good to happen you say it out loud. It means that- God forbid- something unfortunate happens you deal it with hope. Positivity is about retaining hope.

So, for all my life, I've been living in that positive realm and so many things I say, I end up doing it. I feel like it's a mental and spiritual thing for me; once I set intentions out in my heart and in my mind, I move according to that, you know.

I think by saying things out loud, writing them down and acting as if they're going to happen, you start to be proactive without even realising it, you start to work a little bit harder towards that goal. So, for me, the affirmations and manifestations are something that's kind of embedded into my life and into my heart.

If there was one thing, you’d like viewers to take away from the pilot, what would that be?

Joy, friendship and hope. Sadé goes through a range of emotions, but she ends up with hope and I think hope is something that I always want people to carry away from either my books, my shows or anything I create.

I think that's always the hardest thing to cultivate in life and because life is so hard, and I always look for joy and hope. I don't want to look for more darkness in the world, there's enough of it. I like to read and watch things that make me happy and that’s what I want to give to other people.

• Big Age airs on Channel 4 at 11.05pm on Friday September 10.

Published: 1 Sep 2021