Page 60 - Powerlist 2020

Femi Oguns
Media, Publishing & Entertainment Agent, Founder and CEO

of Identity Theatre School

An established actor, Femi founded Britain’s first black
drama school because of the lack of roles for actors of colour
– and now he is the man behind some of biggest names to
come from these shores in years.
Stars Wars actor John Boyega and Black Panther’s Letitia
Wright are just two of the stars to have trained at Identity
School and Femi is their proud agent.
He launched the school in 2003 using all the money he
had – just £200 – with the aim to better serve and train
potential black actors into roles beyond stereotypes.
Initially working with just ten pupils, the school’s
reputation quickly grew, and demand for its talent came
from the Royal Shakespeare Company, the National Theatre
and other leading producers.
Femi is now recognised as one of the UK’s best agents,
with a clientele list that includes Malachi Kirby (Roots) and
Melanie Liburd (Game of Thrones).
Based in Hackney, he also works with Hollywood
organisation William Morris Endeavor Entertainment
and ICM, where he helps to cast black British actors in
David Olusoga OBE Hollywood productions. His theatre school has expanded,
Historian; Joint Creative Director of with branches in Birmingham and Los Angeles.
Uplands Television Ltd Femi also co-runs a production company with Boyega
called Upper Rooms Productions, which produced the big-
budget Maelstrom, the sequel to Pacific Rim.
David Olusoga has been described as the “new face of In 2017, Femi became the first agent in the UK to be
BBC history”, charging through the “pale, male, stale” awarded a special jury prize by the British Independent Film
ranks to front a series of high-profile, prime-time Award for his contribution to the British Film Industry.
documentaries, including the acclaimed Black and British:
A Forgotten History.
The son of a Nigerian father and white British mother,
he and his family suffered violent racist abuse that drove
them out of their home on a council estate in Tyne and Wear.
David says the experience inspired an interest in history
“because I wanted to make sense of the forces that have
affected my life”.
He joined the BBC following graduation from university,
working first behind the camera as a producer before
presenting 2014’s The World’s War: Forgotten Soldiers of
Empire, about the Indian, African and Asian troops who
fought in WWI, and the Bafta award-winning Britain’s
Forgotten Slave Owners in 2015.
His 2016 book Black and British: A Forgotten History was
awarded both the Longman-History Today Trustees Award
and the PEN Hessell-Tiltman Prize. It was made into a
documentary series, which David fronted.
In 2017 he co-hosted BBC2’s flagship series Civilisations
with Mary Beard and Simon Schama and also presented the
BBC2 series A House Through Time. He writes regularly for
The Guardian, The Observer and the BBC History Magazine
and sits on the board of The Scott Trust, shareholder of the
Guardian Media Group.
He is a patron of the Wimpole History Festival and
a member of the Advisory Panel for the Imperial War
Museum’s Second World War Galleries.
Among his many awards, David was given an Honorary
Degree of Doctor of Letters from the University of Liverpool
and an OBE in the New Year Honours 2019 for his services to
history and community integration.

60 Powerlist 2020