Local actor Emeka Agada takes his career from stage to screen with Amazon Prime’s new show ‘Reacher,’ based on the book series Jack Reacher by Lee Child, which begins airing February 4.
Before appearing in the first episode as the character JD, Agada had to audition for his role through Zoom thanks to the ongoing pandemic. After being cast, he had to work with an accent coach and train to carry out stunts.
“What was cool for the role is there was action training and stunts – I hadn’t really had experience doing that before. The story takes place in Georgia so I had to prepare an accent – I worked with an accent coach, which was really nice. So, when the day came it was cool because pretty much the whole thing takes place in the prison. One part of it we shot in a manufactured prison, and we ended up going to the Kingston penitentiary and shooting there.”
Agada says he was happy to be able play JD in the new show, as he found the character’s personality to be the complete opposite of his, but he was still able to use his athletic abilities groomed in his hometown of Elmira.
“JD is a force of nature. He’s an inmate doing life at the Georgia prison. And he is a leader of his own tough crew who stand out from the crowd. What I personally found interesting about this character was that he was nothing like me at all, which I liked a lot. It’s the first role where I have been able to use my athletic abilities, which most people in town know me for, the athlete. The character is gritty, and he has nothing to lose, which becomes interesting because he’s the first person who truly makes the attempt to give Jack Reacher his first challenge. And he does this, with no knowledge of Jack Reacher’s level of skill and history. Let’s just say it gets pretty physical between the two of us.”
Currently in England, studying at the Guildford school of Acting, Agada filmed the performance last year before he headed overseas.
“A lot of people working on this project put a lot of care into it, and I think an actor like myself coming on to work you want to give that same respect to what you’re doing.”
The lockdowns haven’t been as stringent in UK as they are in Ontario, so Emeka has been able to continue his time at Guildford without any Zoom classes. He just finished his first semester and is working on the end-of-year play.
“Zoom is interesting because as actors a lot of what we do is connect with our fellow actors, so in person it’s much easier to do that. It’s a little artificial to a degree. So, when I was on Zoom with the showrunner and the producer and director, I had my laptop setup and they’re like ‘OK, we want you to spotlight this person here and look at this thing here. I want you to look into the camera,’ but you can’t be doing that because it doesn’t look right, it’s not the same, but I’m glad I was still able to deliver,” said Agada over a Zoom interview.
Many actors have had to audition over the last couple years through small cameras on their laptops or phones due to the pandemic, which can be difficult as it comes with many technical difficulties, noted Agada.
“Most of the auditions since April 2020 have been self-taped and so I think there are some pros and cons to that. The biggest con is connection – you’re not in the same space so a lot of time you shoot the tape, send it off, fingers crossed and you’re hoping something goes well. Because everything’s online you have to be exact. You can re-tape it as many times as you want, but you better send the best one.”
