GBEMISOLA IKUMELO has just wrapped the day’s filming for the second series of Black Ops, the BBC comedy centred on a duo of rookie police community-support officers, Dom and Kay, on which she is a co-producer and writer, as well as a star. She received both the BAFTAs’ and Royal Television Society’s awards for Best Female Comedy Performance in 2024 for her portrayal of the cynical PCSO Dom, in the first series. From her Manchester hotel room, she tells me over Zoom that filming on set requires waking in the dark and finishing in the dark, with scant time in between.
She has, however, still found the time for a project close to her heart. For the past three years, Ms Ikumelo has also been a judge for The Pitch, a short-film competition offering funding for shorts based on the Bible. She was a Pitch entrant in 2016, with YADA, a science-fiction interpretation of the Fall, in which the tree of knowledge is represented as a book giving people the precise time of their death.
“I’ve always been in love with the Bible’s ability to transcend time, distance, and genre,” she says. “As a storyteller, I think those stories and the messages within — they’re never going to be not powerful. With YADA, I remember this image of the book, the idea of the knowledge and what that caused to mankind; and, on a more intimate level, what it caused to the relationship between Adam and Eve — because you never hear ‘And then they got divorced.’ It was ‘And then they had a kid.’
“The Bible has an amazing ability to do brevity: ‘And then he went into the wilderness . . .’ And you think, ‘What happened in those years we didn’t know about?’ I wanted to look into what happened to these two characters, then reimagine that for a modern audience. But also reimagining what the representation of the fruit is. I’ve always been interested in innocence lost, and the story of it in Genesis: this place where we were, and what that did, the unmaking of the world.”
In 2020, Ms Ikumelo’s short film comedy Brain in Gear won a BAFTA. The film centres on Remi, as she tussles with two inner characters: one urging caution, the other advocating living in the moment. “I never wanted it to be, literally, this is an angel and a devil on your shoulder. As a creative, and as someone who spends a lot of time in solitude, I’ll talk myself through situations, say those things out loud, and won’t even realise I’m doing it.
“I wanted those voices manifested in a creative, artistic way. More than one being good and one being bad, one [of them] is more a present ‘Live now, no consequences,’ and the other is those intrusive ‘What if?’ thoughts.”
FAITH is interwoven into Ms Ikumelo’s work. References to Jesus cropping up in Famalam, the BBC3 sketch show that she performed in and co-wrote.
“I’ve always thought God has a great sense of humour. In the Bible, Jesus is so full of hyperbole and sassy comebacks,” she says. “When he was healing a man with a bad arm, and the Pharisees said: ‘You can’t heal on the sabbath,’ and Jesus responds ‘If one of your animals fell into a ditch on the sabbath, you’re not going to pull it out of the ditch and give it water? Well, I’m going to heal this guy.’
“In the King James version, it sounds very pious, but I imagine Jesus said that with such sass, humour, and wittiness. There’s really interesting things to say with humour about our faith.”
Her own faith started as a teenager, and she attends ARC Church, Forest Gate, near Newham, in east London, where she was brought up. “I didn’t grow up in the faith. I became a Christian when I was 16. I was going through a lot of changes, and I heard there was this God who would be really useful. And I thought, ‘All right, let’s give this a try,’ and never looked back. They were right. At 16, I was treating God like a genie in a lamp that I got to rub and go ‘God help me!’ And a lot of the time he did. I thought: ‘This is great. This new thing works. I’m asking God for things, and he’s giving me the things I asked for.’”
The counter-cultural element of being a Christian teenager in inner London was buffered by church community: “It’s not cool being a Christian as an adolescent, but that’s where community came into it. A lot of the people I was hanging out with were other young Christians, figuring it out. We were all really cool in our own little minds. We were changing the lyrics of hip-hop songs, and adding Jesus to it, and thinking we were really edgy. And doing church skits about teen pregnancy felt important for the things we were dealing with at that time.
“It didn’t feel like I was being counter-cultural until I started going into spaces like the National Youth Theatre, and everyone was getting drunk. And did I say, ‘I’m a Christian, and won’t be joining you in this madness’? Absolutely not! I have, as a kid, found myself getting swept into things so I could fly under the radar. I was not always brave, growing up. We are all trying to fit in to an extent, and those are the moments when you must remember, it’s not about self, and say ‘No, not for me.’”
The National Youth Theatre was followed by studying drama at Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh. She found that it was necessary to exit the easy path, the comfort zone, to spend time with God. “As I got into my early twenties, I started to see there is sacrifice. There is an obedience that is a dying to yourself — a time when I felt it necessary to give away all my CDs. My music tastes were a bit crazy and wild. There needed to be an act where God was the thing I put first. He came above these musicians I had almost idolised. Sometimes, I can feel this niggling ‘This thing in your life is a bit of an idol.’
“Sometimes, it’s even the work that I love. Dying to self is this constant reminder that God is bigger: bigger than awards, and BAFTAs, and money, even though those are blooming great. But to realise that the Christ died to himself for us, and there are times when we can’t forget that’s what we’ve been called into, in this faith. Sometimes, you’re in the midst of dark spaces, and you need to separate yourself from that.
“This can feel difficult, especially in the modern times we live in, where anything goes. Anything that is slightly disciplinary in your own life can be called repression. Or you’re asked: ‘Do you think you’re taking this too seriously?’ And I do take it seriously; for me, it’s a matter of life or death, and that can sometimes be a dying to self. But, in the Bible, God also says, get married, go buy your house, go do those things, eat and drink and plant, and be fruitful and multiply. Those things are also beautiful.”
THE balance between being in the world and practising faith is a universal challenge. “I’m not alone, in that it’s the constant battle of everyone in this time with reconciling one’s faith, and how they are active in their faith, with the things they need to do for the taxman.”
Last year, Ms Ikumelo read the Bible from cover to cover. “Sometimes, God will make space and insist I sit and study and listen. Last year, I felt like I was given a lot of grace to do that, and I was given a good year, really in the word, reading the Bible from Genesis to Revelation. And I had such a beautiful time in that space.
“Then 2025 hit, and it was like that never happened. When will I get a time to sit and study and learn? It does feel like I’m constantly trying to carve that out. I can feel the absence of growth, I can feel the absence of spirit, when I’m not tuned in to his word and tuned into a church community.”
She recommends the Bible Project podcast, with Jon Collins, a digital marketing expert, and a former Western Seminary professor, Tim Mackie, for animating the Bible. “I never had any time for Leviticus until the two guys from the Bible Project discussed what the priests were wearing and what that symbolised. The imagery was so beautiful and important. As a storyteller, it was the first time I’d seen Leviticus come to life.” She reflects: “I’m trying to look at the Bible as an article for wisdom most of the time.”
C. S. Lewis is also an important influence in Ms Ikumelo’s faith, as is her pastor. “I constantly go back to C. S. Lewis. He was a creative. My pastor is a good barometer of someone who is an undercover intellectual. His ability to look into the word of God and break it down in a way that is exciting and simple and, at the same time, really deep never ceases to amaze me.”
In the spring, Ms Ikumelo will be seen on TV as a contestant in Stand Up To Cancer’s Celebrity Bake-Off, and will be returning home to east London when the filming of Black Ops in Manchester is complete. Describing herself as an “East Ender”, she says that her ties to the area are strong: “I’d move abroad, but if I stayed in London I don’t think I’d ever leave east London. It will always be my home.”
She continues: “I have a wonderful church, and they are so supportive and prayerful. The moment I’m back in London, I’ll pop in, and they’ll be, ‘Hey! Tell us about your travels.’ I really feel that’s my home, and I feel welcome there.”
For more information about The Pitch, visit: enterthepitch.com
