Olisa Odele talks moving on from Big Boys: ‘I gained a lot of body confidence in playing Yemi’ (EXCLUSIVE)

“Olisa was in My Parents Are Aliens,” Big Boys writer Jack Rooke tells me excitedly. “One of the greatest TV programmes of all time.”

“It’s true,” Olisa Odele says with a smile. Indeed, by the time Big Boys, Channel 4’s heartwarming queer sitcom burst onto our screens in 2022, Odele already had an impressive resumé which included credits on shows like Chewing Gum, It’s A Sin and Scarborough, as well as 40 episodes of the aforementioned iconic, intergalatic kids show. However, as he tells us when we sit down to chat ahead of the final season of Big Boys dropping, he had found himself at impasse in his career – jaded and no longer sure if acting was the road for him.

Thankfully, his run as Yemi, a sex positive fashion student, in his longterm pal Rooke’s runaway hit show seems to have all but cured him of his anxieties. We learn more about what he’s learned from playing the character for three years and what he’ll miss about him below.

The series is about how life’s challenges help us grow. How has your character grown from season 1 to season 3?

Yemi was someone that really came into the show thinking that he knew who he was. Period. He clearly lived a lot of life, and at the tender age of 19 came to university being like, ‘I’m not really checking for these people’. Then he met these lot, and he’s like, actually, I kind of like you lot but this is against some other things that have served him in other environments, the more cutthroat things that he’s had to develop, being part of communities, being quite ambitious from a young age. I think that season one was kind of Yemi being on the outskirts, dipping in a little bit.

Then season two, he’s like, actually, I really care about you lot and he’s just fully immersing himself, allowing himself to experience people who have been raised completely differently, have a different set of values, who love and communicate differently, and integrating within that and then fighting against it at points is kind of what I watch on screen in a really beautiful way.

Season three is Yemi going, hmm, so I know who I was before this. I know who I’m becoming but how do these two reconcile? I think that’s the journey that he’s been on. I think a lot of people go to university, and that’s what happens to them. They go to university, have a great time, and then they have to return to their families, or actually the goals that got them to university in the first place, they have to think about those again. I feel like that’s been Yemi’s journey. It’s forever changed.

What will you miss most about Yemi and what did he teach you?

Oh my goodness, I mean, by season one, I had been acting for a minute. I was like, I’m not really here it, it’s a lot. Everyone, but specifically Jack and Izuka, had to kind of hold my hands for many meltdowns. Then I finished season one, and was like, oh no, I do actually love this. I spent a year doing, like, acting classes, all this stuff, and I come back season two and I’m having a great time. I’m playing. But I think when Big Boys came out, it was a period time where I felt quite vulnerable and not really walking in my confidence as a performer and really looking at what the industry offered people like me, thinking I don’t know what’s really there, and feeling quite not confident which is the opposite of what Yemi is on page.

I remember doing a scene in season one, we had to walk into the nightclub and strut and do all this stuff, and people were looking at me thinking, Olisa I’ve seen you do this but I was like, I’m not actually there right now. It was a real thing to do that. I remember Izuka literally jumping in front of the camera and being like, ‘Give it some!’, hyping me up.

I gained a lot of body confidence in playing Yemi. I wasn’t the guy at university that everyone was checking for. So to play a character that believes that was a mental thing that I had to go through to find it in a genuine way. So yeah, I learned a lot from Yemi. My friends watched season one and were like, ‘Why can’t you dress like this in real life? Olisa, what’s this fashion you’re doing?’ Even the styling alone, I’ve been taking stealing costumes from the beginning because their wardrobe is giving! It’s the best thing, because these are outfits I should be wearing my personal life, like let’s dress your physique nicely.

So I’ve learned a lot from Yemi, and I’m leaving the show in a very different position to how I started it internally, and how I feel about myself and in confidence and what I want to do next. It’s wonderful.

The show is such a celebration of the British university experience, I was hoping you could cast your mind back to your own uni days for a moment – I’m curious to know which songs conjure memories from that time in your life?

Cheryl‘s second album, A Million Lights with ‘Sexy Den A Mutha’. Ariana. Nicola Roberts‘ album. Me and Jack were at the Girls Aloud reunion last year like ‘Go Girls, go go go go go!’

Staple uni drink?

I wasn’t drinking. I was teetotal at university. I wasn’t about it. After I drank but I had all sober nights at university. I didn’t understand the concept of a pub crawl, I was like what is this? Why you go from one place for the next place?

Staple uni meal?

I did a lot of cooking. Before I was gluten free I did a lot of spag bol, but my spag bol was not just the normal. It’s curry powders, a lot of seasonings and stuff in there. I had a lot of people around my halls, cooking a lot of the time. And I would sing really loud with headphones in the student halls, and they would throw stuff at the kitchen! They’d be on the forums, like ‘Can that drama school student stop singing!’ I was known for belting out at 2am, which is quite Yemi.

The final season of Big Boys is available to stream in full now on Channel 4.

The post Olisa Odele talks moving on from Big Boys: ‘I gained a lot of body confidence in playing Yemi’ (EXCLUSIVE) appeared first on Attitude.