How Adjani Salmon Made Dreaming Whilst Black A Reality

Adjani Salmon is ruled by routine, that is, at least, at the start of his day. “Every Wednesday without fail since 2020, is therapy,” he tells me sharply, his signature of comedically branded transparency on full display. The 36-year-old has just finished this week's session when we speak, as well as consumed two eggs, Greek yoghurt, flax and chia seeds, and a banana. “We start the day running every day and hope we continue.” The director, screenwriter, and front of house actors regime, in part, can be traced to St, Elizabeth, Jamaica, where he’d spend his adolescence enrolled at Munro College, a boys boarding school. “The food there, it was all the same, that morning nutritional aspect stuck with me.”  

Decades before creating, co-writing, and starring in the critically acclaimed comedy-drama Dreaming Whilst Black, Adjani used humour as a strategic armour, successfully able to help him traverse his teenage life, and amass some sort of social standing. “It was honestly social currency for me,” he asserts. Likening school to a ‘microcosm’ of society, he leaned on his charm in place of other conventional high (or secondary) school archetypes. “ I wasn't the smartest kid in school, I was on sports teams, but not the guy on the team. So like the track team which has current mad currency in Jamaica, I [was on the team], but would run the 5,000. Nobody wants to watch that race.” A self proclaimed, ‘middle of the road’ student socially, Adjani was able to slip by, amidst the social hierarchy enough to survive, and ultimately prompt a laugh or two. “‘Oh he's funny like not the cutest guy or not the anything else guy but you know he's funny like we love you, you know it's a good time with him around’,”  Adjani summarises. 

It’s also during school, that he learned of a brand of Jamaican dark comedy, through the tag names associated between friendship groups. Although he didn’t receive one, Adjani recalls one of his peers acquiring the name ‘Dutchie’. “It was short for the bottom of a ‘dutch pot’,” he explains, an ironic laugh painting itself across his lips — it’s filled with both humour, and omnipresence, Adjani is aware of the anti-Blackness associated with it.

“Them call him Dutchie. But that again that tells you how f*cked up comedy can be at that age.”

Like comedy, Adjani’s passion, or reliance on film was conceived in his adolescence. Armed with a low quality camera — “I think it was about four megapixels,” he laughs — Adjani would film Kung-Fu short films for fun. “My friend reminded me recently, it was a memory that I’d forgotten, so I guess it was there early on, the bug.” 

The foundation of Adjani’s personality is humour. Like he says, it’s a tool that aids in his exchange, that allows for his analogies to come alive, it’s a fortified communication style. But beneath the smile, once Adjani warms up, there’s a grit, will, and determination weaved into his fabric — it paints itself across our conversation multiple times. It’s also the connective tissue between him abandoning his architectural career, post studying the discipline at a degree level, beginning his eventual vocation crafting short films and TV. Migrating to London for his degree, Adjani’s cousin would illuminate the world of film for him. “There wasn’t really a formal pathway at the time in Jamaica,” Adjani asserts. “Or not one that was easily accessible.” Studying film themselves at the time, Adjani watched from afar, eventually finding the guts to explore film, and media in real time post graduation. 

Intergenerational tension, especially for an older millennial navigating film is one that much of the Black diaspora know well. Whether Nigerian, Black British, Haitian, or Ghanaian, one is aware of the expectations on the shoulders of successive generations, it's a dynamic often humoured across social media for skits. It’s also an interpersonal dynamic well studied academically. In Adjani’s case it was initially no different. “Doctor, lawyer, working in criminal justice. It was all there, and sometimes still is in Jamaica,” he nods. When he told his family members of his decision to explore film, he was left alone initially. But as he became more tunnel visioned, and wedded to film, he was told by family members that his aspirations were a “joke ting”. 

Adjani uses this inspiration across Dreaming Whilst Black’s second season. In a tensely familiar scene featured in the season premiere ‘Black Sheep’, Kwabena (Adjani Salmon) tells his family and friends of his selective pursuits in curating his career as a director. “No uncle, I’m just being selective about the jobs I choose,” he retorts to Uncle Claude. “So you’re choosing poverty,” he responds sarcastically. The scene culminates in a shift in tone, Claude, casting a shadow across the living room as he harshly articulates that Kwabena isn’t taking accountability for his reality. “Look pon ya mother,” he begins. “She still has on her lanyard because she haffi go to work today, on a Saturday… get a life boy.”

The scene not only communicates a relatable pressure — one that most younger Gen-Z and millennial immigrants can place themselves in — but it serves as a sublime equilibrium between comedy and drama, the tension grips you in the stomach before you’re left laughing to yourself, and each other, seconds after the exchange aptly communicating the show's genre to the masses. It comes at a time when shows like The Bear are critiqued in award categories for their ‘comedy’ wins; Dreaming Whilst Black, on the other hand, proportions itself more adequately across both genres. On the aforementioned scene, and its adjacencies to Adjani IRL, he’s quick to note the similarities. “This character is me,” Adjani asserts to me. He corroborates this further at the season two premiere at Brixton’s Ritzy, and it checks out, both straddling career highs and lows, integrity the backbone of their mission. 

Adjani Salmon, the man, isn’t afraid of critique. Where Kwabena, may at times, dish out his fair share of it to characters like Amy, Adjani is a sponge in that sense, quick to call himself out in his pursuit of his dreams. Where Dreaming Whilst Black is concerned, he’s critical of his portrayal of Black women in the show's inaugural season. He shares with me that across the web-series edition of the imprint, he toed the line of not making fun of Black women, sensitive of their intersectionality and microagressions in the wider world, but in the pilot, decided to showcase laughter at anyone's expense, tentatively however. “‘Well, actually, no, we can [make humour towards Black women]. We just need to do it sensitively,’" he and the team of writers (inclusive of Black women) told themselves. 

The scene in question, that closes the first season's premiere episode features character Vanessa’s wig getting caught on a closing bus’ doors. Kwabena returns the wig, eventually leading to the pair's second exchange, and beginnings of a romantic entanglement. “I can see why people would ask ‘why did something bad have to happen to her hair, at her expense and not Kwabena’s, but we wrote it so it led to a good thing, the characters love blossoming,” he explains. In this light, he’s read some of the light pushback that’s come from Black women. “She was the only one singled out like why nothing ever happened to Kwabena. I can see how you can look on that and say, ‘yo, like, but why only her ting mashup though?’” 

He takes it on the chin, and season two elevates the time given to Black women, allowing for nuance, autonomy and compelling storylines, building from season one. Amy’s flesh, in particular, is allowed to breathe, audiences granted access to both her mother and sister. “That was the Black woman, the Black writer in the room, [Yemi Oyefuwa], so credit to her,” Adjani says aptly. “‘Does Amy have a mum, friends, does she even have a kid? I don’t know anything about Amy and that bothers me. So are we doing something about that, or is this the Kwabs show’” Adjani is quick to laugh off that the show's central premise is Kwabena, however, he wants a democratised landscape, where audiences feel not just his experience, but the reality of those around him, in a deeper way as the show progresses. 

That’s reflected in not just the writers room, but in how the show tests its humour. Adjani’s perspective was changed early during his transition into film, reading Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o’s Decolonizing The Mind. “That challenged everything I knew, western standards and how our perception can be shaped by biased information,” he says leaning back. Utilising the critical analysis in the book, Adjani Salmon, as a show creator, wants accurate portrayals, sentiments and experiences behind the screen. It’s why he uses comedians from all backgrounds and standing to tell his stories. “I do think that being able to see it from another person's different perspective helps just to make the show a better story.” When the show gained the support of BBC and then A24 in 2023, he ensured that comedy punchups were central to the show's climate. 

An element that remains unapologetically Jamaican however, is the influence from Anansi stories. Fictional in their format, and part of folklore in the region, they always feature a proverb or lesson — in a similar manner underneath the aesthetic, drama, laughter, or navigation of plot, the archetype follows the premise of trying to teach lessons across Dreaming Whilst Black. “I had to evaluate what our way was, a black Jamaican way. That’s a thesis of where the writing starts. After we go back and forth and argue about what we care about, then it's like, right, how do we turn this into a story that our characters can do. We need to bury this so deep that you can watch it and not clock what we're saying because at the end of the day, it's entertainment.” Adjani’s approach can be seen across season two — trusting your gut, patience, following one's own path, honesty being tough love, and so on. It’s all there, told through humour as its praxis, as opposed to cynicism. 

Dreaming Whilst Black feels fitting for Adjani Salmon, the person, at this juncture. His ability to convey hope and comedy at the best — and strikingly the worst of times — has placed him here. He follows in the canon of Black web-series creators who have overcome, landing bonafide television deals like James Bland and Issa Rae, but, like the moniker for the show, he’s still dreaming. Amongst his accomplishments like the 2022 BAFTA Emerging Talent: Fiction Award, he’s tunnelvisioned on raising the stakes, for not just himself, or his format, but for Jamaican’s. “I would love to build a studio in Jamaica, a proper stage in Jamaica.” Realising the cultural pedigree of the island, an island that’s helped to birth a Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, Marlon James, Sheryl Lee Ralph, or Tamara Lawrence, he’s cognisant of the tug to lift as he climbs wedded to his soul. His inner-child peers out once more, one that still relates to the kid navigating his social status across his academic years. “The talent back home is exceptional,” he states earnestly, the gleam of his eye piercing through his glasses. “I don't believe I've gotten this far as a Jamaican because I am the most talented. I believe it's because I literally just had the opportunity and others didn't.”

Dreaming Whilst Black series 2 is available on BBC iPlayer now.

Credits:

Photographer: Seye Isikalu

Creative Director: Chadley Larnelle

Hair & Grooming: Cynthia De La Rosa

Stylist: Ramario Chevoy

Vest – Jean Paul Gautier

Trousers – Juntae Kim

Boots – Christian Louboutin

Jewellery – Lucky Little Blighters