Moses Inwang, director of ‘Ordinary People,’ says the eight-part thriller was created to address socially relevant issues, particularly mental health and domestic violence, while telling layered stories about residents of a Lagos estate.
Speaking during an interview with Arise News on Saturday, Inwang said the idea for the series began during the COVID-19 lockdown after he started socialising with neighbours in his estate and wondered whether their seemingly friendly lives concealed darker secrets.
Inwang said the experience inspired him to develop a story about residents of an estate where everyone appeared nice but was not necessarily as they seemed.
He said he initially conceived the project in 2020 and spent the following years developing its characters and multiple storylines before officially beginning the screenplay in 2023.
“And in that moment, my creative cap came on and I’m like, what if they’re really not nice?” Inwang said.
According to the director, the six-year development period allowed him to continually add plots and build the individual stories before production began.
“That’s why the plots are so, the stories, the sub-stories are so layered,” he said.
Inwang said ‘Ordinary People’ contains five or six different sub-stories, alongside additional subplots, making a series format more suitable than a feature film.
“And I think the only format that could work for this would have been a series, a show that extends, because I needed time to tell all of these stories properly,” he said.
Beyond the thriller narrative, Inwang said the project was also intended to draw attention to social issues that are not sufficiently explored in films.
“We try to shed light on a lot of socially relevant issues, including mental health,” he said.
“I don’t think a lot of films talk about mental health enough,” he added.
The director said he tries to advocate for socially relevant issues whenever he makes films, including mental health and domestic violence, as well as subjects that can help audiences understand what is happening in society.
Inwang said stigma surrounding mental health and the difficulty of portraying people living with mental health conditions can make filmmakers reluctant to tackle such subjects.
“It’s actually really difficult, like Sharon said, to portray a mentally challenged person, you know,” he said.
He added that attempts to portray such conditions can sometimes become diluted, which influenced the approach taken in ‘Ordinary People.’
“And so, with this show, what we try to do is to go neck deep into the crux of what mental health, what bipolar disorder, what all of these other disorders are about,” Inwang said.
The director said the subject has resonated with audiences, including people who have family members dealing with mental health challenges.
“And I’m glad that a lot of people, it’s resonating with a lot of people, a lot of people obviously have family members that are challenged, you know, mentally, you know, aligning with what this show is about,” he said.
“And I’m glad to see that it’s effecting some change in the society,” Inwang added.
On the production’s <a href="https://absafricatv.com/under-the-patronage-of-the-uae-president-abdullah-bin-zayed-inaugurates-35th-abu-dhabi-international-book-fair/” title=”Under the Patronage of the UAE President, Abdullah bin Zayed inaugurates 35th Abu Dhabi International Book Fair”>international reach, Inwang said he had approached Netflix before principal photography to discuss the project and told the platform he intended to make it a globally ambitious production.
“I told them, look, I’m going to try as much as possible to make this show as big as possible. Not in terms of Nollywood big, I’m talking about global big,” he said.
He said he later contacted Netflix after hearing that the streaming platform was pulling out of Nigeria, while he was still working on the project.
According to Inwang, Netflix asked to see the completed project, which he eventually submitted before the platform acquired the series for global streaming.
He also attributed part of the acquisition to his previous body of work on Netflix as a Nigerian filmmaker.
Inwang was asked whether there would be a second season of ‘Ordinary People,’ to which he initially responded, “Yes.”
He later qualified the response, saying he did not want to make an official announcement but suggested that a continuation was possible.
“I’d like to, I don’t want to officially say, but it looks like that’s what’s going to happen,” he said.
When asked whether the second season had already been shot, Inwang responded, “Definitely not.”
‘Ordinary People’ is an eight-part thriller series shot across Lagos, Bayelsa and Berlin and features Ramsey Nouah, Chidi Mokeme, Sharon Ooja, Anthony Ade and Jackie Appiah, among others. The series is streaming globally on Netflix.
