Our host Vick Hope is joined by actor Nikki Amuka-Bird.
Nikki’s career spans across film, television, and stage. Born in Nigeria and grew up in Antigua before moving to the UK to attend boarding school, she studied at LAMDA – the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art – and quickly fell in love with the craft, before beginning what would become a stellar stage career with the Royal Shakespeare Company. Nikki has starred in a number of critically acclaimed roles in both British and international productions. She is perhaps best known for her work in television, with standout performances in Luther & the adaptation of Zadie Smith’s NW, which earned her a BAFTA nomination. Nikki also appeared in the BBC adaptation of Small Island by Andrea Levy, winner of the 2004 Women’s Prize for Fiction, and most recently as the lead in UKTV’s I, Jack Wright. Her impressive filmography spans a wide array of roles, from starring alongside Rachel Weisz in Denial, to working with director and producer M. Night Shyamalan in Knock at the Cabin.
Listen to the full episode here and read on to discover Nikki’s five most influential books by women.
I just couldn’t put it down. It’s written by an innocent as well, and Alice Walker is obviously brilliant, but she’s writing in Ceelie’s voice who is innocent and simple and she’s not well-educated, so it actually became really accessible to me as a child. […] I think it’s the first time I really realised the power of a book to transport you to a different time, a different place, and in hindsight I feel so grateful that I read it young because it is about female empowerment. It’s about a dark-skinned Black woman; it’s about someone who is really considered the bottom of the barrel in terms of importance. And yet she finds this way through friendships and the love and support of other women to discover herself and her strength and spirituality. It was just a mind-blowing experience and I remember getting to the end of that and feeling like I just really experienced a lifetime as a child.
This book reminds me of my mother’s journey and how she handed that to me. I think discovering this book in the 90s we had a lot of new age books and self help books in the house, and this is kind of the mother of that genre. The idea that love is a radical concept, that it’s a doing word, it’s a verb, it’s something you’re choosing moment to moment, that you’re either living in a state of love or fear. These are big concepts, but for me, it’s like distilling religious ideas into an experimental thing, a spiritual thing.
I’m always looking to expand my education, my experiences, my work, and this is one of those books which is so juicy and there’s so much information you feel like you’re studying as well, you’re engrossed in this psychological thriller. It’s about privilege and academia and there’s a lot of study of the classics. The classics are always something that’s interested me, it’s our relation in the modern world to ancient times and what the parallels are.
I read this during the pandemic, we were in such a fascinating period of cultural identity and discovery. I know so many different people [who were] going through so many different revelations and realisations, it was an extraordinary time. I had conversations with Black and white friends that I’d never had before, and somehow Kiley Reid with this book kind of tackles all of those issues but most importantly with humour and fun. I think that’s the best way to tackle issues like this – she’s not preaching, she’s simply amusingly interrogating things that need to be interrogated. It was such a needed antidote.
I feel like everyone was talking about this book when it came out […] and I was really craving a good read. I was travelling and picked it up at the airport and it was just as good as you could ever have imagined, it was better! I really appreciated it genuinely opening up [the gaming] sub-culture to me, and this idea of platonic love, an epic love story between friends is something that resonates with me more and more as I get older. Relationships or lovers might come and go, but your friends, you real friends, have seen you through so many different chapters in your life.
