AKTA INTERVIEWS: ALISTAIR NWACHUKWU TALKS A FRIEND OF DOROTHY, BLACK TENDERNESS, AND THE ROAD TO AN OSCAR-SHORTLISTED FILM
- Akta Photography
- 4 days ago
- 5 min read
Writer: Takunda Muzondiwa
I Medicine, Law, and Engineering and the Cost of Choosing Otherwise
In many African households, the evening meal is loud with warmth. Laughter ricochets between plates of pounded yam, stew soaking into rice, and plantain caramelising at the edges. The room hums with joy but there is one thing Africans do not joke about. Education.
In homes where success is often defined by a narrow set of professions, choosing anything else can feel less like a dream and more like a rebellion. Alistair Nwachukwu knows this sentiment intimately. He laughs now when he remembers it. “God forbid,” he says, recalling the moment he told his family he wanted to act.
“I never thought I’d be able to do it,” he tells me. “I went to university to study marketing…twice. Dropped out twice. Before that I was playing football. Before that, I was in a boy band and I lived in Ireland for six to eight months. It’s just been a rollercoaster.” He laughs gently as he lists the detours, and suddenly, it makes perfect sense that such a rich, unconventional life would inform his powerful portrayal of the character JJ in the breathtaking, recently 2026 Oscar-shortlisted short film, A Friend of Dorothy.
II How the Work Was Built
A Friend of Dorothy which is available now on Disney+ is a short film that unfolds in the space between two lives.
Directed by Lee Knight, the film centres on Dorothy, an elderly widow played by Miriam Margolyes, whose life is defined by routine and isolation. JJ, a 17 year old boy, played by Alistair Nwachukwu, accidentally kicks his football into her garden. What develops is an intergenerational friendship that resists sentimentality while delivering profound emotional truth.
When Nwachukwu first encountered the script, he didn’t know any of that. He didn’t know Margolyes was attached. He didn’t know Stephen Fry would be involved. “I saw it on Instagram,” he says, almost shocked at the mundanity of it. An open casting call. It was January. The Industry was sluggish from Christmas. “I thought, it’s been a while, let me just audition for this thing.”
He sent a self tape. Then waited. “I didn’t hear anything back for two, three weeks,” he says. Long enough for the familiar conclusion to settle in. That’s that, then. But the call came. A recall. This time, in the room. Still, he had no awareness that acclaimed performers like Miriam Margolyes or Stephen Fry were attached. “I didn’t know any of the details about who else was involved,” he says.
When the scale of the project revealed itself, “imposter syndrome was the first thing that came,” he admits. “I was like, ‘What? How am I going to step up to working alongside these powerhouses?’” What steadied him was the environment created on set. “Lee Knight, the director, created this beautiful space where we were enabled to just be vulnerable,” he says. “There was no ego. We were equal.”
That ethos shaped the work day to day. Miriam Margolyes, he recalls, was disarmingly open. “She would invite me into her changing room and tell me stories about when she was an actress back in the day,” he says. “There was just no wall.” That absence of hierarchy translated directly into performance. “We were really listening to each other,” he explains. “Really hearing each other. Really responding.”
Alistair Nwachukwu x Akta
III What It Means to Be Seen Gently
AKTA: There’s a political quietness to this performance. JJ isn’t asked to explain himself, prove his goodness, or redeem anyone else. We rarely see Black boys be soft on screen without that softness being explained, punished, or tuned into tragedy. What did it mean to you, to inhabit that kind of tenderness?
ALISTAIR NWACHUKWU: JJ is a character with a gentle sensitivity to him. A lot of the time, Black men are seen as one thing. We have to be strong, masculine, and aggressive. With JJ I just wanted to live and reflect his humanity. I think it’s important for people to get to see that softness, that sensitivity.
There is a great deal happening in the space between the characters JJ and Dorothy before either of them speaks. A young Black man. An older white woman. Decades of cultural narrative arrive ahead of them. The body of the Black man has historically been read through lenses of danger or excess; rarely through care.
Alistair was acutely aware of this inheritance when he stepped into the role. “A lot of the time, Black men get narrowed into just one way of being,” he says. “For me, the script does an amazing job at getting people to see more. That’s how I knew this was something I wanted to be a part of. The writing was just so good.” What A Friend of Dorothy refuses to do is argue with stereotypes head-on. Instead, it simply steps outside of them.
JJ is not positioned as a lesson. He is not softened to reassure the audience, nor hardened to fulfil expectations. He is allowed to be attentive, playful, shy, emotionally porous, without justification. His relationship with Dorothy is not symbolic of reconciliation or moral progress. It is simply relational. Two people meeting each other with care. That simplicity is what gives the film its quiet power.
“I just wanted to show, through JJ, that we are more…More than just one thing”
That refusal to over-explain is one of the film's greatest strengths. JJ’s Queerness is not named, or problematised. It is lived. Held gently. Allowed dignity.
IV What Remains
AKTA: Years from now, when A Friend of Dorothy is no longer a new release but something people discover quietly late at night, on a laptop, alone, what do you hope this film gives them? What do you hope its legacy is?
ALISTAIR NWACHUKWU: I just want whoever watches it to feel seen. I think when I first watched the film, it grounded me to my senses. It made me pause and just feel present. So I want that for anyone who watches it, to feel seen, to feel held by it in some way. And maybe to think about the places their love could extend to. To think about community, and how important community is. That connection. That care. I think that’s what I hope lives on.
A Friend of Dorothy is a film that makes you come undone. Its warmth changes the temperature of the room in the softest way. The short film is not ambitious because of what it includes, but because of what it refuses. It refuses spectacle. It refuses explanation. It refuses the familiar grammar of pain that so often frames Black and Queer lives on screen. Instead, it offers something far rarer: gentleness without justification. In twenty minutes, the film manages to hold multiple generations. It holds memories of secrecy and coded language, of love that once had to hide in plain sight. It holds the tenderness passed between people who have learned to care for one another despite what the world has demanded of them.
A Friend of Dorothy does not demand your attention. It earns it. And once seen, it remains a quiet, radiant reminder of what cinema can do when it chooses truth over performance.This is not just a film to watch. It is one to carry.
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