Adam Deacon Interview For His Film ‘Anuvahood’

“It’s a hype hype ting.” ‘Anuvahood’ is Adam Deacon’s side-splittingly hilarious directional debut. Deacon also headlines the cast, co-wrote the script and provides much of the soundtrack. The film follows his character Kenneth aka Kay, who thinks he’s got the moves, thinks he’s got swagger, thinks he can spit bars, but in reality, he’s a WASTEMAN!

With the bailiffs banging on the door, parents screaming in his ear, and finding no luck with the ladies, he needs to FIX UP, and fast. When our boy starts selling weed to get himself out of trouble, local badman Tyrone is VEX, opening up a world of hurt for Kenneth and his misfit crew. But he ain’t gonna go down without a fight. It’s time for him to get rich, or CRY TRYING! Check out what Adam Deacon had to say about his film below. ‘Anuvahood’ is set for UK cinemas March 18th.

How did ‘Anuvahood’ come about?

Adam Deacon: It come about probably around ‘Kidulthood’ you know, to be honest it was an idea I kinda had when I watched ‘Friday,’ even though I was so young I thought this film is wicked, one day if I ever got into acting I’d love to make a film like that, on a silly one. So then obviously ‘Kidulthood’ came about and I remember talking to Femi on the set and saying one day we can do this. People don’t realise that on ‘Kidulthood’ we improvised a lot, we really did. The script was a brilliant script but some of it had to have that authenticity to it. If you don’t get that realness right people will just lock off, so I knew with Jay, he’s going to be real, he’s gonna be one of them characters that will stand out because I’m gonna make him so authentic kids are gonna relate to him.

Then once I realised that worked, once the film came out and it had that connection with people, it felt like people were really rooting for me, it felt like my community were backing me. So then I realised comedy is a bit of a key. People don’t just wanna see kids with guns, kids with knifes, if they wanna see that they can just go back to their council estate and get it there. You’ve got to have a bit of comedy. Then it was me saying “one day I’m just gonna do a comedy film,” but then it was never the right time, and over the years it was just about building up my CV, getting out there as an actor, film after film until I felt I had enough power to walk into an office and say “I’ve got a script, have a look at it.” It was a case of me talking too much, I was doing this film ‘Shank’ at the time and kept telling people “I’ve got this idea for this comedy,” then this producer Paul come up to me and was like “I like this idea, why don’t you write it and stop talking about it, and come with some paper work,” so then that’s what it was, me and Michael Vu, a guy I’ve known since I was a kid, I grew up with, we just done it, I knew it was the only way I can REALLY show this industry I’m not just this kid who can read scripts, I’ve actually put in work to change these films and make them better, I thought no ones gonna believe that so really I’ve got to make my own film and direct it.

Was it always the idea for you to direct the film?

Adam Deacon: You know what it was, I did, but I never thought it would happen (laughs). We wrote the film and I remember Michael Vu saying “ you know they’re never gonna let you direct it, who’s gonna let you direct it bruv, are you mad,” and I thought he was probably right (laughs). But then as time went by and once we finished the script, we both were like hold one, we’ve worked so hard on this script, who’s gonna be able to direct the film, who do I know out there that will get it as authentic as we can make it, because we couldn’t see who will be able to put it on screen. So then I thought lets take a risk, at the first meeting pitching the film I was like “look, I kind of want to direct it,” and they didn’t really say anything, they were just like “ok, alright maybe you could direct it,” so I was shocked when they said “we’re gonna let you direct it,” they had that faith, and obviously I had a co-director for the first film, but personally I could have done it by myself still I think, I would have loved to.

It was just a few people having faith in me and just letting me run with it, you’ve gotta realise as well, where the film is so different is that there’s not many people who would have touched this film, its not your typical UK film, we’re good at making gritty movies about social issues, even though this has issues it’s just made as a fun film, that was the plan.

What was like directing your peers, I know a lot of them are your friends as well? Was that challenging?

Adam Deacon: That was a madness (laugh), it was mad because like you said I know these people, I’ve known them for years, so they’re used to me being on set and having joke with them, having banter, talking a lot, obviously when the cameras on you put in work, but just being one of the boys on set – with this I couldn’t be that, I’d look over sometimes and see all of them lot bussing joke and I’m behind the monitor (laughs). But what was good was that after the first couple weeks of rehearsal everyone started to realise Adam’s being serious, we’ve gotta listen to him, even though he’s our boy he knows what he wants, and know one wanted to kind of let me down in a sense, they all knew how much this meant to me. When it was time to knuckle down, and stop chatting sh*t, and focus and do your lines everyone done it. And bruv, the cast, I swear to god we were BLESSED, everyone worked so hard, you’ve got people like Jazzie who’ve never been on a film set before, so much talent, SO much talent, so humble, it was brilliant. It was a big look for UK, I just wanted to put the best of UK in one basket and say we can do it.

Seeing as the films pretty hilarious it must have been hard to stay in character during the takes?

Adam Deacon: (Laughs) Yeah there were a lot of moments like that when the crew were just in hysterics. But for me comedy is about details, for me I was probably a bit to focused on the details, it was always like “no, you said blood wrong, say blood like this,” it sounds crazy, I was probably walking around the set like a mad man but it was that little attention to details, I was just analyzing everything, I know it sounds mad but I didn’t really get time to have a good laugh until I saw the edits, then I actually saw some of the footage we got, that was quite  fun putting it together. We had a lot of big characters on set.

It must have been mad seeing your friend Richie doing the ketchup stuff?

Adam Deacon: Richie goes INNN (laughs), that guy, out of all the actors I know, we call him the actors actor. It doesn’t matter what you give him to do, if he likes the film and he’s on it, he’ll go in, he’ll give it 120%, I love that. I don’t know if I could have done that scene (laughs), I would have asked to change the script (laughs), lemme get a stunt double. He went and done it, he done it three times as well, and he made it look authentic.