Joan Iyiola has spent her career refusing to stay in one lane — and it's working.
She began at Cambridge, studying law under a supervisor who used to perform alongside Derek Jacobi, before making the slow, careful pivot to acting her Nigerian parents had long suspected was coming. After years of fringe theatre, tutoring, temp work and a brief, chaotic stint at cold calling (done alongside Josh O'Connor, mostly as an excuse to practice accents), Joan secured a place at Bristol Old Vic Theatre School — and never looked back.
Her theatre career took her to the Royal Shakespeare Company, where she became the first Black woman to lead a show. But it was a different kind of milestone — three consecutive auditions in a single week, all of which told her she \"wasn't fragile enough\" — that would change her direction entirely.
Rather than collapse, Joan channelled the rejection into creation. She had already spent a decade co-running The Mono Box with movement director Polly Bennett — a resource organisation that grew from a handful of donated plays to nearly five thousand, running workshops from Bermondsey to the Hampstead Theatre. That experience had quietly made her a producer. All she needed now was a film.
Delapo Is Fine was first. Made on a shoestring, it won the HBO Short Film Award at ABFF, went to Netflix and then Disney+, and — after being submitted to SoulFest — became a catalyst. Joan walked away from that festival experience with a new resolve: she would direct the next one herself.
That film was Mango — an 11-minute, visually intense short about fibroids, shot while her son had just turned one and the whole household had been through a nursery bug. It won Best Film, Best Actress (Olivia Nkuintu) and Best Craft (cinematographer Yinka Edward) at SoulFest 2025. It was the festival's UK premiere. Within months it was on Disney+, and is now also being used in hospital training programmes.
Joan talks about all of it in S.O.U.L. Cast's very first episode — the Nigerian parent psychology, the dark nights of the soul, the difference between getting rejected and getting rejected in a way you can't do anything with, what motherhood actually taught her about directing, and why she believes \"short is king\" right now for Black British filmmakers with something to say.
You can watch Joan’s directorial debut ‘Mango’ on Disney+
SOUL Cast is edited by Nuru Mkali
Recorded at Run VT
Music By Christian Jermane
With thanks to Janine Kempadoo and Mariam Adamson
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