EXCLUSIVE: Award-winning British musician Stormzy, who fell in love with movies as a kid watching Titanic and Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit with his mother, says he wants to “learn from the best.” He is launching his #MerkyFilms shingle with a starring role in short film Big Man, directed by Oscar-winning The Long Goodbye filmmaker Aneil Karia and produced in association with Apple. He reveals to Deadline that #MerkyFilms has entered into a development deal with Netflix.
There are, he says, plans with Netflix for a television drama series and a biopic of a “powerful figure.”
“We have a few projects developing with Netflix,” but he’s not allowed to discuss them in any detail.
”But they’re really exciting,” Stormzy says. “I’m bursting at the seams to talk about them. … It’s fair to say it’s Black stories, Black experiences depicted through the screen. … We want to give that feeling of a narrative that you’ve experienced but never seen it on screen.”
There are also ongoing discussions with other film companies as well.
In an exclusive interview, Stormzy tells Deadline that he wants #MerkyFilms to embrace all facets of film and not necessarily limit output to the Black experience alone, though that would be a strong force.
During our conversation, Stormzy says that he’s intent on learning “from the best, all aspects” of the industry, including acting, producing and “everything.”
He heaped praise on Adolescence star Ashley Walters, who started out in the early 2000s as a member of garage collective So Solid Crew. “He started in music as well, but you can tell that’s someone who has taken his craft so seriously, and the work he’s done is exemplary. I want to do that. I want to be a student, and I want to do my 10,000 hours and my due diligence on all aspects. … It deserves that respect, it’s a craft and it’s an art form, and if I’m doing it I want to do it to the best of my ability,” he stresses.
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Stormzy, all 6-foot-5 of him, allowed me a sneak of the aptly named Big Man, a 24-minute short film shot entirely on an Apple iPhone 16 Pro by cinematographer Stuart Bentley (Black Mirror, The Long Goodbye) and released June 18.
In Big Man, the artist plays Tenzman, a fictional rapper who’s stuck in a rut until he finds inspiration to write new music after meeting two cheeky teen lads in his London neighborhood. In turn, he encourages them to “dream bigger.”
In the credits, he is billed as Michael “Stormzy” Omari, and is hilariously almost unrecognizable, sporting an impressive Afro wig.
The hairpiece, he admits, was his idea. “I feel like, playing a rapper, I really wanted to distinguish myself from myself,” adding, “that’s always a tough thing, that.”
Stormzy as Tenzman, and his wig, co-star in ‘Big Man’
Big Man/#MerkyFilms/Apple
Laughing, he adds, “The wig felt like the most drastic way to [make clear that] this is not Stormzy the rapper, this is Tenzman.”
In any case, he says that “in a mad way,” the film’s not about him. Rather, he wanted the film’s focus to be on the two cocky youngsters, Klevis and Tyrell, played with endearing naughtiness by Klevis Brahja and Jaydon Eastman, than on himself. “Even before we really got started, I really wanted to put the spotlight on them. For me, it was about the relationship between Tenzman and the boys; for me, that was the biggest underlying factor … it was about the joy of youth, the spirit of youth.”
It’s amazing how Bentley, on the iPhone 16 Pro, captures a sense of raw energy between the trio. The BTS footage I viewed further emphasizes the jolly japes they very clearly enjoyed. Plus, the two boys’ wicked sense of humor is readily apparent.
Also, it’s instructive observing how Stormzy’s Tenzman interplays and allows both himself and the character he plays to be sent up, often uproariously so.
“They were honestly my favorite part of the entire process,” Stormzy says of Klevis and Jaydon, both 14.
“They were so fearless — not even fearless in an abrupt way but in the way that kids don’t even know how confident and how funny they are” he says. “They would say stuff, and from their perspective it’s hilarious, but they don’t even know why it’s hilarious because they’re just talking in their truth. Just a very innocent and pure experience just being around them.”
He says they reminded him of himself at that age. “Life’s an adventure,” he says wryly.
As much as Stormzy argues that the film’s not about him, it does manage to underpin the travails an artist endures to gain relevancy — and longevity.
Stormzy’s had little problem on that score; he’s remained relevant through his BRIT Award-winning music and through branching out into books, football and now film — all under his #Merky banner.
He says that Akua Agyemfra, a mainstay of team #Merky who runs her own branding consultancy Bea Global, always has been “super passionate” about film and television “and has always been the driving force behind it.”
It was Agyemfra who wrote the Big Man screenplay, though he observes that Karia encouraged the cast to rehearse and then improvise, which Stormzy says he found “scary” and says no amount of acting lessons prepared him for that. However, he loved the process of being thrown “in at the deep end.” It was “a tough and often uncomfortable experience,” but he relished the opportunity of doing it, referring to the experience as “a training ground.”
For him, it was “super enlightening and a good learning experience.”
(L-R) Stormzy bantering with Klevis Brahja and Jaydon Eastman in ‘Big Man’
Big Man/#MerkyFilms/Apple
There’s a natural vibe to his performance, and the laughs — drawn from his relationship with Klevis and Jaydon — emerge organically. He credits Karia for “pushing” him into improv.
Karia’s also been in post on Hamlet, Michael Leslie’s feature adaptation of Shakespeare’s popular tale that stars Riz Ahmed as the troubled prince. It also stars Art Malik, Morfydd Clark, Joe Alwyn, Timothy Spall and Sheena Chaddha.
The idea behind using Big Man to officially launch #MerkyFilms was, Stormzy explains, to give the endeavor as “much traction as possible” and to show serious intent. There are executives involved in running the film division, but he felt it imperative for “me to be involved in some way shape or form creatively,” as he was in the launch of his #MerkyBooks imprint in partnership with Penguin Random back in 2018.
As with the central “dream bigger” theme of Big Man, the #MerkyFilms ethos is to “think of big ideas” to make British cinema and television accessible for the Afro Caribbean and other communities.
Yes, there will be a focus on Black talent, but the spotlight will turn to other communities as well, he tells us.
However, Stomzy also tells us that “in all our initiatives in all our companies, there’s always this kind of narrative where people sometimes see ethnic stories or representation as a monolith, like a one-dimensional thing, and I think with #Merky what we’ve always tried to do is always broaden that horizon.”
He adds that “we are multi-faceted. The Black experience is so intricate, it’s so nuanced. We always want to be able to reinforce that through all our companies.”
When I ask Stormzy about the films he watched growing up, I love that he immediately offered up Titanic and Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit. ”They were films my mum watched. She just used to watch the same films all the time … and the most integral film in my growing up was Sister Act 2,” he says with the broadest smile.
“To this day I adore that film because I loved the music, the singing and Whoopi Goldberg. To this day it’s my favorite film.”
He was raised in the Pentecostal church, he states. ”I guess that film probably has all the elements that I like in life — music, culture, It’s got everything,” he says before adding, impishly, “Lauryn Hill’s in it.”
Those films were on a repeat loop that he’d eagerly watch with his mother. And if it wasn’t Titanic and Sister Act 2, it was Nollywood. “They’ve got a tenth of the budget but 10 times the laughter,” he asserts.
Stormzy and his colleagues want to find those people who are going to be the “Aneil Karias of tomorrow who haven’t had that shot yet. We always like to give that opportunity before the world latches on and catches up. I definitely, in 30 or 40 years time, want to see whoever wins the best director of the year at the Oscars to say that the first thing they directed was for #Merky Films.”
He tracks young filmmakers through film schools, in theatre and on the streets. ”It’s about just having the right conversations with the right people … like with any industry, the buzz always starts on the ground.“
Stormzy in a big sky moment from ‘Big Man’
Big Man/#MerkyFilms/Apple
Earlier this year, Indu Rubasingham, the National Theatre’s artistic chief here in London, revealed that she and Stormzy are collaborating on what she calls “a cut-through show that goes beyond theatre” and will feature Stormzy’s music.
“We’ve got such a really exciting piece,” he boasts. “It’s been bubbling, and it’s been very much Indhu spearheading it. She had a really golden idea and really wants to do this. I had no idea it would work. …It’ll be my first ever time working in that kind of landscape. It’s extremely exciting and inspiring. I’m just buzzing to get it off the ground.”
He’s forbidden to discuss exactly what the show’s about, though he stresses that “it’s a lot more exciting than being just a musical.“
The piece is very much at pre-production stage, “and it’s something like two or three years away.”
The rapper paints an amusing portrait of rolling up at the National with a group of friends and seeing a performance of Kendall Feaver’s adaptation of Noel Streatfeild’s Ballet Shoes directed by Katy Rudd.
“I had no idea I was going to love it,” he says. “I saw it with five of the lads, and I knew we were going to stick out a little bit. And two of my friends had never been to the theatre before; it was just so hilarious. I said to them, ‘Who wants to roll?,” it was super pure. We had no idea what we were going to see. It was sick, man.“
The show fueled his appetite for more theatre and for watching more movies. “I want do more, and I really want to be a student because I think with the same way with music — if people want to jump into music, there’s some things they’ve got to learn and got to understand.”
He adds: “It deserves a studious and respectful approach. I have opportunity and there’s a bright future ahead for me, by the grace of God. … I’m very much a newbie, a novice, when it comes to acting and films.”
