News about Deborah Ayorinde

Put from your mind any hope that Wedding Band might concern the ups and downs of an Abba tribute group. The slightly unsatisfactory title of Alice Childress's 1966 play disguises a very serious and admirably ambitious drama about an illegal interracial relationship in South Carolina in 1918, as the USA prepares to enter World War One. Childress's focus is on Julia (Deborah Ayorinde), a young black woman who moves into a poor black neighbourhood with her white German-American lover, Herman (David Walmsley). As he succumbs to the Spanish flu epidemic, black objections are pretty mild ('if you're gonna pick white, you better pick rich'). But the white reaction is full-on panic-stricken supremacist poison - including ape chanting, and n-words from Herman's mother (Geraldine Alexander).

Sarah Vine of the United Kingdom speaks to ITV's Riches, a programme that 'channels the youthful spirit' of the old Dynasty, which stars four actors. She's much less impressed by the second series of the Sex and the City spin-off And Just Like That...

Riches, ITV's latest drama about a wealthy and dysfunctional family, has been dubbed a black British spin on Multi-award-winning Succession. Nina, played with aplomb by Deborah Ayorinde (best known for the Prime Video series Them), returns to England for her father's funeral and discovers he has left her much more than she expected. Claudia, on the other hand, has been wildly played by Sarah Niles (Emmy-nominated recently for her role in hit comedy Ted Lasso), and is furious to discover that she and her children Gus, Alesha, and Wanda have been completely ignored. She and Nina go to war quickly, and the real fun comes in watching combat begin.

Riches follows a UK/US based family who runs a beauty salon for black women as their lives unravel after the patriarch of the family's family was killed in a Holby City (left). The show's trailer (right) reveals how two different branches of the family, who live on either side of the Atlantic, clash when brought together. People of Succession, which follows the fortunes of the wealthy Roy family, who own Waystar Corporations, will no doubt recall the intense family relationships and blaming rivalry at the top of the powerful, wealthy family.