The comedy series "African Booty Scratcher" emerged from the creative mind of Damilare Sonoiki, a Harvard ‘13 graduate and staff writer on the hit ABC sitcom Black-ish. Sonoiki needed a new sample to showcase his writing abilities.
Sonoiki explained: "The way you get a writing job is usually you write something, somebody sees it, and they want to meet with you to write for their show. I needed a new sample. I thought a good pilot to write would be about growing up in an immigrant house because it’s something I knew very well."
The internet has provided instant global distribution in modern times. It’s a lot cheaper to shoot now. Sonoiki noted, "Before, you would have to go a gatekeeper…maybe your agent or a network…with your script and say “I have a script idea for a TV show.” They might say, “We’re not sure if this is something that people want to see.”
By putting this online and given the response, it’s like this isn’t just a good sample. It’s something that people want to see on television. Sonoiki realized the potential of his work when he put it online and saw the response. "If I’d written this script and sent it to my agent, they would have said that it was a good sample and that they would use it to get me a job somewhere," he said.
Kenya Barris, the creator of Black-ish, has this saying, “Never stop telling your story.” Sonoiki learned valuable lessons in the writer's room for Black-ish.
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He learned to: Make sure everything that I use is something that I own and to treat it like it’s the show. For Black-ish, every piece of music we have to clear.
Someone had a quote where it’s like, “If you laugh a little bit throughout and you feel something at the end…that’s an episode of television.” You always have these heart-to-heart moments at the end where the characters grow and learn.
In African Booty Scratcher, even though it’s a trailer… at that little moment at the end where the parents are like “An 89 every once in a while isn’t so bad…” [is an example of that.] You still want to undercut that moment with a joke.
The series revolves around Ayo, who is struggling to fit in as his parents are making it hard.
For example, Ayodeji’s teachers, both black and white, struggle to pronounce his name and resort to calling him everything else but his name; from Arrivederci to Ayo-bibliboop. In addition, all his classmates (White, Black and Asian) resort to teasing Ayodeji and calling him an African Booty Scratcher.
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All this pressure leads Ayodeji to ask his parents if he can be called ‘Justin’, a more acceptable, digestable, white-sounding and easily pronounceable name, at school. And like a true Nigerian father, dry jokes and all, his dad responds with… “Justin?! No, we couldn’t make this up if we tried."
Sonoiki started writing the pilot and trailer around February and Black-ish wrapped writing on March 4th. He gave himself a week after wrapping and said he would shoot it the following Saturday.
He shot it that Saturday and started editing. Sonoiki said there are a few other people who are NIgerian and they aren’t saying anything…maybe it’s just in my head. I have that joke about Will Smith [in the beginning] so to have someone whose accent was not authentic would have been tough.
Sonoiki really didn’t want to reshoot it but as we were doing more…it became clear. The accent was all I could hear. I reached out to [a different] and asked him if he could come in and do the audio. I had him go in and say all of the dad’s lines in a way that we could match it.
I really didn’t want to reshoot. I’d have to pay more money. We shot it in a day, but it was a long and draining day. So, we did the dubbed version and we had an editor match it up. After a few times of watching that version, I didn’t [feel right]. You can tell. I thought that I might as well reshoot the whole thing.
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A friend of mine who worked in music told me, “Do you know how many times we shot music videos that we never aired and scrapped it because it wasn’t good enough?” I said that I’d be on my Kanye West and make it perfect. There was no deadline, but it was like I was rushing toward a deadline. I could release it whenever.
Sonoiki reshot it on April 16th. The reshoot was actually good. Since I had already shot an edited version of it…it moved a lot quicker because we knew exactly what we wanted. We were able to move through it faster since we knew what we needed.
Sonoiki is using the funds for more promo and to shoot a mini eight-minute episode. Sonoiki has a $30,000 fundraising goal on Kickstarter.
Sonoiki focused on the Nigerian immigrant experience in America, because it’s always refreshing to look at something and see [your] story on TV and know that you’re not the only one. If you look at the episode on Black-ish about police brutality…. Why not?
The series also touches on Isatu, a typically composed character, as prom nears and things seem to be spiraling out of control for her. In this coming of age story, West African tradition conflicts with American idealism as Isatu is forced to reassess her idea of the perfect dress.
