Ayoola Smart: “I have compassion for my younger self and hope for who I'm becoming”
The actor on distance from her heritage, taking a lifetime to work it out and qualifying her Irishness
Photo: Kate Bean
Hi, welcome back to Mixed Messages! This week I’m speaking to actor Ayoola Smart, who is of mixed English and Nigerian heritage. I first saw Ayoola in Paradise Now! at London’s Bush theatre and knew I needed to speak to her for the newsletter. Since then, she’s added cult comedy horror Cocaine Bear and a second series of Prime Video’s The Wheel Of Time to her CV. Now, she shares her story of growing up English, Irish and Nigerian – read it below.
How do you define your identity?
My mum’s English, my dad’s Nigerian. When I was a baby we moved to the West Coast of Ireland for the quality of life.
I have two older sisters with a different dad to me, who’s Aboriginal, Indonesian, Scottish and Irish – they’re mixed but white presenting. I have a younger brother on my dad’s side whose mum is Polish, so we’re a whole family of siblings with a lot of mixes.
I was the only person of colour in the first town I grew up in and while I identify as Irish, my mum is English. It took moving away to drama school before I was able to unpack all of that. I’ve still got quite a way to go.
Considering drama school is often quite a white environment, how did it help you feel more comfortable with your identity?
It was kind of a stepping stone. I didn't realise how much I only identified with my white side until I got to drama school. I went to East 15 and there were four of us [people of colour] in the BA acting, which was a lot at the time.
There was a Black society that I wasn’t a part of, and I remember feeling ‘why is this a thing?’ and simultaneously ‘why haven’t I been asked to be part of it?’ There was a lot of passive ignorance and shame around my own experience that stopped me from getting involved, learning more or dissecting my feelings.
In third year, I was cast as Othello and people thought it was an obvious choice. When I graduated, there were comments that this would be a really good time for me as I’m mixed-race and it’s ‘fashionable’ now. It's belittling everything you've worked for. I don’t think there’s malicious intent a lot of the time, but you get to a point where you want to invite people to be more inquisitive as to how they got to these conclusions.
A lot of mixed-Black people shared that they had a difficult time during 2020 – did you have a similar experience?
Massively. I found peace or validation weirdly, realising ‘this isn’t not for me, this is a space I can occupy as well.’ I keep coming back to not feeling like I know enough, and then turning that towards my mum, asking her why I didn’t know enough. It started more of a dialogue between us. It was quite painful at times, but it allowed me to start unpacking stuff.
When people are contacting you during that time and asking if you're okay, it feels nice and weird at once. But it was a great time for me in that it allowed me to research more and start an active journey of becoming more comfortable in my skin.
Did you have any connection to your dad’s culture?
None. I didn't grow up with him and we have a telephone relationship, Christmas and birthdays. There’s actually quite a big Nigerian population in Ireland, but I didn't have access to it. My experiences at school made me other that part of me quite a lot. Even when there were opportunities to celebrate, I often turned away from that. I was always taught to love the colour of my skin and how I look, so in that sense it was never a negative. But anything past that? No.
My dad’s family are in London and I could have been much more involved with them, but my relationship with my dad got in the way of that. I separated myself from it more than I needed to. Maybe it’s age, the state of the world or the need to identify, but it feels a lot easier now than when I was younger.
The nice thing is that we have our whole lives. There shouldn’t be any pressure to show up in any way that isn't yourself and whatever iteration you're in. If it takes like a lifetime to work it out, that should be fine.
I really want to go to Nigeria this year. Spending time with my grandad and uncles, my Nigerian friends, books and literature, it helps. But there's still a lived experience that I'm trying to figure out – I don't know if I’ll ever get that ‘aha’ moment. If I go to Nigeria and live there for 20 years, I don't think I'm going to feel Nigerian. That's fine because that's not my lived experience, it’s not the entirety of me. Still, I’m not a bit part, I’m wholly Nigerian and wholly Irish. I’m not minimising any part of me, just living in the beauty of all of it.
Do you feel Irish?
I do, very steadfastly since I was quite young. I haven't lived there full time for 12 years now, but it will never not be true that I grew up there. It will never not be the culture I tried to fit into, what I changed myself for.
My mum’s English, so my home life wasn’t typically Irish. West Cork is interesting because it has a melting pot of farming and alternative culture, so fitting into West Cork was easier than necessarily feeling Irish.
In the industry, I'm put forward as an Irish actor, but I’m always questioned on that. I’ve noticed that I don’t get asked where I’m from anymore, but I do get told ‘you don't sound Irish.’ Knowingly or unknowingly, I'm constantly having to qualify my Irishness. I shouldn't have to give this huge explanation as to why my accent is what it is. I’m keen to not feel shaken by someone else's lack of scope or imagination and let go of other people's idea of who I should be.
I feel sad that the younger me changed herself so drastically a lot of the time to fit in or supported quite racist behaviour towards myself. That learning curve has been huge, what you stop allowing to happen to yourself. Professionally, it's really nice to see more and more Irish artists of colour gaining traction in that space and helping expand the notion of Irishness.
Have you noticed any stereotypes around mixedness?
The stereotyping around mixed-race people is directly linked with colourism. My experiences growing up or the access I was granted would not have been what they were if I was darker. That positively impacted how adults treated me. I could feel this pity that spurred them into wanting to help me when I was younger. That’s tied into multiple factors, like being from a single parent family and needing to get things for free sometimes – playing into being this cute little brown kid helped.
In the industry, mixed-heritage people might get speaking roles over others, which is very diminishing for mixed-race people on the whole – it reinforces that there's two camps and not a space for us to exist that doesn't impact taking away roles from people with darker skin. These limiting belief structures need to shift in a big way.
What’s the best thing about being mixed for you?
We all have a right to learn and experience the wealth of culture and history. Recently I’ve been looking at different kinds of literature. I want to learn more about Nigeria and I’ve been looking into African mythology and how I can draw on those gods and goddesses and that spirituality. I can equally do that with my Irish side.
I really love that I am the sum of multiple things and that I get to draw from so many different cultures and places.
Can you sum up your mixed identity in one word?
Complicated. There’s something in being the only person of colour in my family unit and whilst that is something to dissect, it’s also just what my experience is. I have a lot of compassion for my younger self and a lot of hope for who I'm becoming.
I’ll be taking a break next week, but subscribe to hear from Evie Muir, Peaks Of Colour founder and author of Radical Rest, a week on Monday. Don’t forget you can now shop Mixed Messages on Etsy!
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Mixed Messages is a weekly exploration of the mixed-race experience, from me, Isabella Silvers. My mom is Punjabi (by way of East Africa) and my dad is white British, but finding my place between these two cultures hasn’t always been easy. That’s why I started Mixed Messages, where each week I’ll speak to a prominent mixed voice to delve into what it really feels like to be mixed.