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“How are you?”, her crisp voice rustled through the device like rattled leaves in the autumn wind as her words arranged themselves where they ought to be like a radio recording. “I’m very well”, I replied casually. “No, how are you really doing?”, she retorted. Chuckling, “I’m doing great”, I reassured. 
It surprised me how intentional she was about wanting in on how my morning was really going. I have conducted a fair number of interviews, but most people only asked how you were fairing for courtesy’s sake. Well, not For Folu Storms who, halfway through our conversation, ensured that my initial surprise gave in, like paper giving in to water. Storms is a lover of humanity through and through and she’s not afraid to wear her heart on her sleeve when it comes to showing just how much she cares.
Ada Afoluwake “Folu Storms” Ogunkeye is a Nigerian radio and television host, presenter, lawyer, voice-over artist and actress. The Surulere-born actress has made a mark from radio to film, featuring in movies such as Unmarried, MTV Shuga Alone Together, Lara and the Beat, The Men’s Club (Season 3), and Price of Admission, among others. For her recent, perhaps most challenging role yet, Storms plays SP Kelechi ‘KC’ Farasin in Crime and Justice Lagos, a police procedural drama series which debuted exclusively to Showmax on Thursday, 8 December 2022.
Crime and Justice Lagos is a first-rate thriller that explores the crimes committed in the highbrow of Ikoyi, down to the suburbs of Ikorodu, Lagos, and everywhere in between. From catching cold killers and daring dangerous criminals to solving mysterious murders, Sp Kelechi and SP Danladi (Jammal Ibrahim) are bent on ridding Lagos of crime one case at a time in the crime series.
“We’ve created a crime series that captures the pulse of the city — from its glitzy clubs to its grimy ghettos — through the lens of law enforcement agents tasked with keeping its citizens safe. Each episode mirrors real crime stories that audiences will connect with and will give them a lot to ponder about”, Dr Busola Tejumola, Executive Head of Content and West Africa Channels at MultiChoice Nigeria, said about Crime and Justice Lagos.
For Folu Storms, garnering the prowess and stamina to play such a major role has an antecedence. She had always been passionate about film from a young age, even though she doubted she could make a living out of it.
“So, it was my birthday on the 25th of November, and I got to spend it with a lot of my family members. Going through old family videos, I could see that I did a lot of singing, dancing and performing for my family members.
I have an aunt — aunt Bernadette — she’s such a big storyteller. She grew up telling me stories; she would always get us to do little plays. As a result, I’ve always been a performer. I always performed in primary school and secondary school.
So, acting has always been something I’ve always enjoyed. It’s a way I’ve found to express myself. Even though I didn’t think I’d be doing it for a living.”
Storms attended primary school at Corona VI, then had her secondary education first at The Lagoon Secondary School, then St Leonards Mayfield in the UK before proceeding to Aberystwyth University where she studied for a Bachelor of Laws (LLB) between 2005 and 2008. Storms, despite her sheer diversity and multifacetedness, made a deliberate decision to venture into the legal world. Unbeknownst to her at the time, her true passion, which was bubbling behind the curtains, would soon take charge of her path.
“My little dream was like a dream of a multiverse, to be honest with you. And I think I should have known from the start or my parents should have known. They just ignored the signs. A teacher sent us home to decide what we wanted to be when we grew up. I can remember discussing with my parents, especially my dad, and I couldn’t pinpoint what I wanted to do. I was doing gymnastics, I also enjoyed debating and a lot of other things.
But when you get a bit older, you have to make A-level choices and university choices. And Law became my deliberate choice, not just because it touched on a number of my strengths, but also its ability to affect the way my society functions.”
After graduating from Aberystwyth University, Storms received her Master’s degree (LLM) in Commercial Law from the University of Bristol. She also graduated with her Legal Practice Course (LPC) to work as a solicitor. On finishing from The Nigerian Law School, Storms worked as a Junior Associate at her father’s Law Firm, Allan & Ogunkeye. However, her passion for media and her mission to change lives in terms of how people saw themselves; that is, self-identities, ensured she sought something more, something beyond the legal borders and something only media could help her achieve.
Folu Storms echoes Sean Cubbit who, in his The cinema effect, believes that “cinema does something, and what it does matters…the effects it produces — images and sounds, dimensions durations, sensations, understandings, and thoughts — all share a quizzical and oblique relation to reality.”
“When I moved back to Nigeria for Law School, I realised very quickly that even though Law is supposed to be the course for the common man, the way that we see the world and we think about the world is through media.
Whoever controls media has a very powerful control over how our society functions. They control how young people see themselves and their thought systems. From my experience living in different parts of the world, I realised that as black people — as Nigerians — we needed to be more proud of ourselves. We needed to be able to see ourselves in a global context and know that we belonged there. I’ve always wanted to do Law; I definitely miss it, but my purpose is to affect how people see themselves. And I think I’m moving the needle a little bit.”
Of course, the duty of the soul is to stay loyal to its own desires. And Storms’ own gave itself to its master passion. Folu Storms relinquished her Law career to pursue a job in the media space to rewrite stereotypical narratives about Africa, help people rethink their identities for the better and make the world a better place.
Encouraged to put in for a graduate film called Slumber for the London Film School by a photographer friend, Storms’ first professional acting career kickstarted in the UK. To put her foot through the door on her return to Nigeria, she put in for different auditions and even conceived an idea for a travel show. Again, a friend, Chike Aka, helped her with a lot of groundwork and encouraged the ingenious idea. However interesting the idea was, she wasn’t getting sponsors and the dream had to be deferred. What happens to a dream deferred, does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?
“It was Sola Thompson at Inspiration FM at the time that invited me to just gist with him on air on one of the days that I went in for a meeting to try and launch my media career. When we started talking on air, the phones just started buzzing. People wanted to know whose voice it was. Sola and I flowed so naturally that he was like ‘come back tomorrow’. And that’s how I got a job at Inspiration FM.
Sola Thompson forced me down the throats of the Nigerian media industry, if he hadn’t taken that shot, defying the regular way of employing people, I don’t think I would have got that job at inspiration at that time.”
After getting into radio station 92.3 Inspiration FM in 2012. She competed in MTV Base Africa’s VJ search and she became of the three finalists. Storms was later hired by Ndani TV as a presenter and content producer after the Nigerian company had come across her audition for the MTV VJ search. There, she pitched her travel show “The New Africa” which was met with approval and even became nominated for the best documentary award at the 2016 Africa Magic Viewers Choice Awards.
“Ndani TV was one of the best creative oxygen I ever went through, so many stars came out of that place. The creativity, camaraderie and freedom are something that I’m grateful for. There, I learnt how to produce shows and how to handle cameras.” It was the guys there — Daniel Etim, Frank Donga and the others — that told me this ‘Nollywood thing you’re doing, why not do it full time? We are the ones making films now, they said.’”
As a result of that push, Storms decided to get more training under her belt. When Relativity Media Film School showed up at AFRIFF in 2015, she signed up and went to L.A. There, again, she met amazing people, like Adesua Etomi, who recognised her talent and encouraged her along the acting path.
Like any fresh graduate, Storms thought that jobs would fall in her lap after film school. However, there was no substantial breakthrough. While working at Smooth FM, she kept auditioning for gigs, and it wasn’t until she was contacted by Victor Sanchez who wanted her to feature in the web series Man of Her Dreams with Sonia Irabor in 2019 that the beginning of more roles came. She went on to feature in Unmarried, MTV Shuga Alone Together, Lara and the Beat, The Men’s Club (Season 3), Price of Admission, Rule Number One and Charge and Bail and Cake.
Folu Storms, who has been blessed and “thankful for honest and helpful work relationships”, became the face of the global show Crime and Justice Lagos through recommendation. The cherry on the cake: she fell in love with the script after a terrific audition.
“So, casting directors and directors always recommend people they think would be fit for a role. I believe Uche Ikejimba and Busola Komolafe both mentioned me to Yinka Edwards, the executive producer for Crime and Justice Lagos. But then I later found out that Steve Gukas had also recommended me. When I got the script, it was a wrap; it was love at first read.”
The ubiquity of films, of which Nollywood produces about 2500 annually, is reinforced by their entertaining capabilities, the ability to refract and reflect culture and the ability to (re)educate the audience. The latter is a unique power of motion pictures because many subjects that audiences would rather not read in arcane books or listen to in elitist conferences or gatherings could be well put into a movie, all while adding the spice of entertainment and suspense to educate. This has been the driving force behind Storms’ acting career — to try and change lives through media. And she has never been able to do that more than in Crime and Justice Lagos — however physically and mentally challenging.
“Crime and Justice Lagos is sensitive because of the emotional payload that the impact of crime has on everybody. You know, how we end up in criminal situations and how we end up in places we don’t expect to be. I’m a bleeding-heart person. And I just felt it was so important that people really emotionally believed that these things are happening.
It takes a toll on anybody to have to witness the worst of humanity. It takes a toll on how you approach people and how you look at the world. This is why we think that a lot of police officers are gruff; that they are this and that. It’s not easy to look at dead bodies. There’s a part of you that gets desensitized. The fact that they aren’t shielded; that they are as viscerally close to catastrophe as they can be as a person day in, day out.
Then, there are the other issues of working in an environment like Nigeria where there are frustrations and tensions. Crime and Justice Lagos explores all of these. And I really hope that men and women in the law enforcement agencies in Nigeria are a little bit proud of themselves and a little bit reflective of how much we put in to capture their experiences.
People tend to want to become what they can see and what they can hear. Those things influence the way that our society turns out. And like I said, I’ve always understood that the way that we communicate in the world is all through media. People will read your article and they’ll form their opinions; people will watch a show and form their opinions. America is not perfect, but my goodness are they not the best-branded country in the world? And that’s all through filmmaking and storytelling.
We need to do that because when you do that, you tell young boys and girls that this is how they can be. You implant them with the right ideas from a young age. With Crime and Justice Lagos, the idea that you can be a part of a special secret police force — whether or not it exists — can now become a real thought.”
On whether her legal grounding had any bearing on how she captured the character SP Kelechi, Folu Storms believes it “probably did in procedural work”, but it didn’t in the scheme of things because “Kelechi” is different from Folu Storms. She believes that all the characters brought something new to the set and she respects the fact that “they all put themselves on the line”; even though Simisola Alade-Wright (Maggie Osuome), who radiated energy and joy throughout, would be her pick of the bunch.
As an actress who had to leave the bulk of her legal work for film. Folu Storms still does a bit of legal work in the background as a solicitor. However, she doesn’t think she would go into Law full-time because she has committed herself to film and media.
“Whatever it is that I am dedicating myself to, I really want to do it well. I’m interested in impact. I want to draw people into my character so much that when next they see me, they forget where they’ve seen me so they only see me as my current character.
I am and I’ve always been a bit of a team player. If just one person is doing well to me, that doesn’t mean anything. But as a team, as a collection, as a unit, as a society and as a country, we need to be winning. Whatever role I can play to help us win and elevate us mentally is a big thing for me. And stories are a way to do that. Look at how the Western world has told us stories about ourselves that made us downgrade ourselves. Even though we are killing it despite crazy odds.
Influencing, impacting and reminding us that we are great is what I want to do. We just need to rise to the occasion and believe it”.
Folu Storms, who has successfully made the trade between the ambit of the court to the spotlight of the big screen, spends time at the gym, reads books, walks her dog and travels the world to document cultures and experiences in her free time. The actress also watches Viola Davies, Daniel Day-Lewis and Tilda Swinton — among others.
The post Folu Storms: How UK-Trained Nigerian Lawyer Became the Face of a Global Crime Show appeared first on Nigerian Entertainment Today.
Source: TheNet
