Movies
Ayo Edebiri talks Acting and Comedy in the Latest Issue of Backstage Magazine
American-Nigerian actress Ayo Edebiri is the cover star of Backstage Magazine’s latest issue.
In this issue, the “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” star muses on what has been an eventful acting career so far, her background in comedy, dealing with the lifestyle demands of being an actor, working on the set of the series “The Bear”, and working alongside her idols on recent projects.
Ayo also talks about her different approaches to acting, her directing experiences, the things that are vital to being an artist, and lots more.
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Read excerpts from the interview below:
On the changed concept of stardom and being “online”
“Because comedy is my bedrock, expressing my opinions is something I’m so used to in my career. Even as a writer, saying your opinions can be beneficial. As an actor…maybe mystery behoves me a little bit.
We have to train the sharks in the ocean to cut [those] tubes. If the orcas organized, that would actually be so sick.”
Ayo reflects on what she had in mind for the sophomore season of “The Bear”
“Most of the battle was just getting over [viewers’ expectations] when we were filming. Knowing that [the audience existed], accepting that, and being like, ‘Great; that’s not why we’re doing it, though.’ We just want to make a good show and be honest to each other and the characters as we know them and feel them.”
On the three intertwined approaches to acting
“The cerebral: You’re thinking about the process; you’re thinking about all the things you’ve learned. It’s very by-the-book. It’s correct.”
“The looser: It’s just free-flowing. It’s almost improvisation. It’s [similar to] that feeling where you’re like, Whoa, I finished writing this thing and I don’t know how I wrote it. I don’t know what I did to get here, but there are some good things in it. It’s messy, but it’s good.”
“The Zone: That’s the perfect mix of both those things, where you have enough awareness that what you’re doing is based in skill and routine. You have that solid and steady foundation, but you still have enough free-flowing energy to be able to have lightness and create.”
On the possibility of working on MCU’s upcoming blockbuster titled “Thunderbolts”
“I love being a sponge. I just want to learn as much as possible. I’m excited [for ‘Thunderbolts’] because I don’t know; and to me, that’s cool. I feel like those are always the situations that I’ve benefited from the most. If I don’t know what I’m going to learn, that’s the best possible scenario for me.”
Read the full interview here.
Photo credit: Emman Montalvan
