COCO REBECCA EDOGAMHE
Coco Rebecca Edogamhe is a breath of fresh air for the Italian film and entertainment business. Her star is bright, and as she lays out her plans for the future, it is steadily rising. A novice actor without previous training, her breakthrough performance in the successful Netflix series Summertime is an example of raw talent and what happens when individuals are given an opportunity to spread their wings in new directions.
A true reflection of her socially-engaged generation, Coco has focused the platform rewarded to her in exchange for her hard work on championing diversity and inclusivity in her industry. A rare sight in the Italian creative industries, Coco looks forward to the day where BIPOC faces on screen will be the norm, and not cause for pause or discussion. I sat down with the budding actor to learn how growing up as a biracial girl and young woman in Bologna, Italy impacted her self-perception and identity. As with many BIPOC individuals, her personal journey to self-assuredness involved an internal conflict with her natural hair, as it did not represent a thing of beauty in her eyes, as dictated by white conventional beauty standards. After damaging her crown through relentless braiding, she was forced to give her Afro room to breathe. And it is precisely at that point in time that she fell in love with her natural beauty and recognized an important part of herself.
Please join us as we hear Coco’s story.
Tamu McPherson:
Tell us a little bit about you; your family, where you were born. About your mother and father and also your grandparents, these sorts of things.
Coco Rebecca:
I was born in Lecce - my mother was originally from Lecce, but she went to university in Bologna at 18 years old, and ended up remaining there. My father is Nigerian, and he originally came to Italy as a journalist. Through mutual friends, they met, and then they had me. I’ve lived in Bologna my whole life.
My mother’s family remains in Salento, in Puglia, and I’ve always gone there for summer holidays. Before I started filming the series, I spent a lot of time there. Unfortunately, I still haven’t been able to go to Nigeria. Now that it is possible, financially and free-time wise, I would like to organize to go there and meet my father’s family. We hear from each other and write to each other, but I have never met them in real life.
My sister and I grew up a little outside of Bologna in a town called Castel Maggiore, in the suburbs. I loved growing up in Bologna. I probably appreciate it even more now - not because I didn’t appreciate it before, but because when you are younger, you take everything for granted. And this life feels a little monotonous, all the same. But I love how accessible Bologna is - you can get around by foot and public transportation. I understand better now that this is not a small thing when you live in Milan or Rome. You don’t have as much freedom. Here, you can reach everything by foot. In Rome, this is not possible.
On a cultural and human level, I feel Bologna is very much my home, so when I am away for work for a period of time, I always like coming home here. Being a very rich city, but at the same time rather small, it gives you the sense of home, of warmth and that is beautiful, and definitely stimulating because it is always full of young people being a university town. So, in the evening when you go out or even walk down the street, you see a lot of young boys and girls from abroad, Spanish and French. There are also some evenings where some places have ‘university nights’, where all the foreign people get together to pass a Bolognese life.
I will also say that I have been very lucky in that I have been able to create a network of friends that are beautiful and authentic. I have my group of friends I have known for a lifetime, and now I am getting to know a lot of new people.
There is this breath of beautiful air. Here, it’s like a family. I admit, there is always a sense of limitation, especially doing this work and staying here in Bologna, which offers a lot of things, but it is not a city of fashion and it is not a city of cinema. I understand that maybe to do the work I am doing now, it is not obligatory to live in Milan or Rome, but I understand the things you find in these places. In one of these two cities, I would have a lot more opportunities, and opportunities to meet people that directly work in these sectors, while here in Bologna it is a little more limited.
Tamu McPherson:
When you go to Nigeria to visit your family, what are your expectations? Are there questions you would like to ask? Are there things about the culture that you are curious about? There is this part that is practically unknown.
Coco Rebecca:
Yes, absolutely. When you organize a trip like this, you want to go with the mindset that welcomes everything that awaits you. You can have absolutely no expectations whatsoever, for the simple reason that it is a reality that is completely different from the one that I am used to. So, in my opinion, it would not make very much sense to expect something specific, because really anything can happen.
I want to go there and live in the moment with everything there is - starting from food, to clothing, from the cities to the countryside. Of course, you can go there as if it was a blank canvas for a picture that is not ready to be painted. I do not want to be heavily influenced by external things, I want to experience it on my own, to find things and welcome them as much as possible.
Tamu McPherson:
The beauty, the braids will be very fun for you because on the continent of Africa, braids are a point of pride. I got my braids done in Cape Town and I spoke with both my friends in Nigeria and Ghana and they told me ‘no, you need to come to Ghana,’ ‘no you need to come to Nigeria’ for the braids, because they do it differently, or they attach them differently. You love braids and you grew up really loving your braids, it would be very interesting to also make this connection with the actual traditional attire of Nigeria, and for sure it changes between regions. You will see.
Coco Rebecca:
Of course.
Tamu McPherson:
In your community in Bologna, what was your experience in beauty and the values of beauty as a young biracial person? Are there any specific experiences that stuck with you, even relative to your Afro or your braids?
Coco Rebecca:
I have had a conflicting relationship with my hair, and I think that it went hand in hand with how I saw myself aesthetically and how others perceived it. I started straightening my hair with natural chemicals when I was little. I was in the 5th grade, so I was 10 years old. I absolutely loved straight hair, and I saw myself as a lot more beautiful with straight hair. With this hair straightening, it started to break and get damaged.
My mother decided to cut my hair, due to how damaged it was, so they took me to the hairdresser and this man left me with my hair so short. I was in a state of trauma, because I did not like it. I saw myself as ugly and was very worried about what others could think of me. A year, a year and a half, in middle school I had this hair. This very, very short Afro, and I did not like it at all. And seeing myself as ugly, by consequence, others perceived the same thing, right?
And so I’ve always told myself that people don’t like me because I am like this. I tried to live this in the lightest way possible, without trying to make it heavier. But it was inevitable, I started to damage my hair again, and decided not to cut it, but to start braiding it constantly. From the age of three or four, I had already started doing braids to help my mom, to take care of my hair in the simplest ways. And after a certain amount of time, I would have them for a few months, and then it was time to take them out. So, in order to not cut my hair again, I decided to do braids. And with the braids I saw myself as super cool, because I had this long hair, and so it was almost as similar to having straight hair. When I felt confident, I reflected this on others.
I started doing the braids and then taking them out and doing them again without breaks. For two or three years, without a break in between. I did not want to go around with my hair unbraided, so when I took them out I would get them done again the next day. This caused a lot of stress on my hair and my mother could not stand it. “Rebecca, just try to stay with your natural hair for a while, because this is not good for you.” But I just didn’t see myself with an Afro, and my main concern was that I would not like myself like this, and consequently others would not like me like this.
And the absurd thing is, when I saw these amazing girls with Afros, I knew that I did not see myself at all. Then I came to a point where my mother said that is enough of getting your braids done, you are no longer going to do them. You need to stay for a little bit with natural hair. And at that point, I said alright, ok, now that is enough with braids.
I started to inform myself, watched a ton of videos on YouTube on how to take care of your hair, the products to use and even the next day I went to a salon in Brescia for natural hair. It wasn’t as if I had any negative feedback. My classmates, I remember, were amazed, probably because they had never seen natural hair. And there were definitely people that said that they preferred me with braids. But I said who cares!
Now I want to stay with my natural hair, and I will take care of my hair. And it is okay if other people do not like me like this. I had a period where I was proud of this, I was very proud to have overcome this fear to be with my natural hair, and practically I felt very confident and I remember that others perceived that. One day, I entered a makeup store in the center of Bologna, and they asked me if I wanted to be part of a workshop to learn how to do makeup, which is something that never happened to me before. People proposed work for me. Working in a clothing store, in terms of my appearance, was very strong for me, very, very strong. And so I started my journey with natural hair.
Naturally, there were moments when I felt very confident and periods when I felt very confused. I mean, it is always like a swing.
Tamu McPherson:
Yes, it is absolutely a journey.
Coco Rebecca:
It is a journey.
Tamu McPherson:
Because, as an adolescent, you were living that very impressionable part of your life, and you were growing your opinions and perspective of the world. There is an intersection for us BIPOC women - we live the experiences of young women, girls, but there is also the fact that we are BIPOC and society does not consider us to be the standard of beauty, or they don’t consider us or we do not see ourselves. So, you live with this, that you have to understand yourself without seeing other experiences, and for this I think it is only natural that you went up and down in trying to gain confidence in yourself.
I remember the first time we talked about your family, it was clear that your mom strongly supported you with your hair. And your community and your friends were super open and kind with you. Speaking with my friends that are biracial, there is always the conversation about how the mothers that are not BIPOC have to learn how to take care of their children’s hair, but what I have understood from our conversations is that your mother had the vision to intervene in that moment, and put you on that path and you were even stronger.
I think it is also connected to the fact that she, being a mother, wanted the most positive thing for you, because obviously they do not know how to take care of Afro hair. Also I am surprised that you found this chemical straightening even in Bologna, even before researching natural hair, because there are many people in Italy that cannot find these products. I mean not like in the United States, where there is a whole industry of it. Even in France and in England. Where do you find these products at ten years old?
Coco Rebecca:
Since I was young, I always went to this store owned by a Nigerian woman, and she was also the one that almost always did my braids. And she had this store where she sold a lot of things, from food to products for your hair and chemical straighteners. I started with a straightening cream from her store. The following times though, I went to Italian hairdressers that did reverse perms.
Tamu McPherson:
Which is a perm to make your hair straight?
Coco Rebecca:
Yes, it is basically Keratin and a super chemical. And why? I thought having straight hair was what was most beautiful. That people would appreciate it more.
If I could go back, I would have never done it. But it is a phase that all biracial or Black girls go through, everyone has gone through that in their life, before starting the journey of total appreciation of their own natural hair. Even now, everyone has gone through the phase when they straighten their hair, because they have grown up in a society in which their standards of beauty are not yours, but the girl with super straight hair or wavy hair, and that’s it.
Tamu McPherson:
Yes me too, also all the girls I know that are BIPOC did the same thing, we all have done it. I also have friends that have gone back to straightening their hair. We are all completely free to choose. That’s it, we are choosing and it is something personal, each one of us decides how we want to present ourselves to society. Which is good, but until a few years ago that was not the case.
You went into professional acting at such a young age, while a lot of people are still in the middle of finding themselves. We were talking before about how you had already prepared yourself for professional work. Was it something that came easy? And in what way do you think you have changed?
Coco Rebecca:
Well, the journey…my journey was very strange. I found myself, from one day to the next, on a movie set without ever having done anything before. In the beginning it left me rather shocked and in fact, the first year I felt a lot of pressure also, because it wasn’t that I was only doing a series, but a series for Netflix that was at an international level, and I am a main character. So, exactly from 0 to 100 and for sure it has been an experience that helped me a lot. I met a lot of people that helped me at the level of growing and even at the level of being human. It gave me a lot. Since I was little, I knew that when I was older I would like a career that would allow me to express myself. I have always been in search of this, finding something that helps me express myself and that could be done through design, done through photography, done through fashion, done through, I don’t know, dance.
I have always searched for this because for me it is fundamental, in the sense that this is what allows me to keep going, this fire. And let’s say when this opportunity arrived, it opened a door for me to become an actress and they had picked me for this series. Naturally this is something that surprises you, right? But deep down, I remember having this sensation, like I knew that if it was not this moment here that another moment or another opportunity of this type would have happened, because I really wanted to do this. I did not see myself working in an office or doing a job that is static or set up. With all respect for these jobs.
Tamu McPherson:
You understood that you were going to do something creative where you could express yourself.
Coco Rebecca:
Yes. Naturally, to find myself on set was actually very strange. Because it is one thing to imagine yourself doing it, but it is something else when you actually live it in a concrete way, and you find yourself with a video camera in front of your face and you have to understand that that is not you, but a character that you are interpreting. At the same time though, it is you and you have to seem as authentic as possible. This is where it was most difficult, but I have to say starting this journey with my colleagues, the actors of Summertime, the cast and with the directors, it was very beautiful, really really beautiful.
Tamu McPherson:
Yes, I read that they had chosen you not because you are BIPOC, but because you reflect the leading character that they wanted. In you, they found something they were looking for. I read that this is practically what you were searching for in life - all of us arrive at a moment in which we are chosen for our talent and potential that we have. Have you ever told them what it meant that they chose you, that they had done something even bigger than what it seems?
Coco Rebecca:
When I went to do the audition, the very first audition for this project, it was not specified what the characteristics of my role was. So when I continued to do other auditions, I did not have the impression that I was getting called back because I am biracial or because I have an Afro.
It was not actually specified, I did not think they were doing it for that reason. Also, maybe it is because I am a little naive at times, or maybe it is just what I want, the fact that I want to be chosen for my projects and at a working level because I can offer something or because they see my potential, my abilities that can reflect and they are good for the job.
In fact, what I would like to do is to continue this and search for these projects that are not only searching for boys and girls of second or third generation, because I want to do the same audition as a white person. But when you suggest someone white, you do it automatically and I want this to also happen for us (BIPOC actors). At the same time, it is right and it is ok to also do projects or even so to work for these things in which this theme is emphasized and is specified. I am not saying absolutely not to do it, it can be done. But it should not only be done like this, in the sense that you need, in order to normalize things, you need to take for granted or behave in such a way as to make people understand that these things are normal.
And I think Summertime did a great job on this point of view. Because it simply tells the story of a girl who spends a summer with friends and falls in love with this boy that could have been any other person. But the fact that I have an Afro, or that I am biracial, is not a fundamental detail in the telling of the story, and I probably never spoke about this with them, but by doing this they have certainly opened a new world which maybe before was never taken into consideration. Because making sure it comes in a natural way, because nobody concocted this, it is not something made up, it for sure comes in a way that I think, is needed in Italy. Other people’s stories should be told in this way, without pausing on these details.
Tamu McPherson:
Both you and your sister are establishing a vision more like this, with this series being more inclusive of entertainment in Italy and elsewhere, because this series is also watched all over the world. You are setting an example for your sister’s generation and for the generations after. Do you talk with her about this? Because I think it is very beautiful, doing this with your sister, and helping her and her friends and those that come after. It must be a wonderful thing to live together.
Coco Rebecca:
Yes, we are aware of this, but maybe we are not so aware of the fact that what we are trying to do has a very big impact, because we currently see it in our small way.
Tamu McPherson:
In Brazil for example, the Brazilian girls see you and they certainly feel it, because Brazil is huge, but the relationship with race is like in Italy. So yes, it is a big deal, love. It was a global impact, ok?
Coco Rebecca:
Ok, ok, ok. But I see the attitude of my sister and maybe some of her friends that this very problem or “problem” is not something they think about all the time. It is always the adults that influence the thoughts of kids or children. Because in the end, if you want to show Summertime to a kid that is twelve or eleven years old, it is not as if he will ever think, ‘ah, but the main character of the series, they picked her because she is like this’. There is no malice behind this. These are perceptions that parents and adults instill in children. Children are not born with these ideas, and therefore certainly what we want to do is continue on this path and try to open other doors. I am sure that Summertime took a step forward, and I hope that in the next few years there will be more things like this in the cinematographic field. And that Summertime will not be the only symbolic series there is, but many more will be produced, because there is a need for this.
Tamu McPherson:
You talked about adults that offer criticism of these shows. What are adults in your life saying about your role, adults that you have spoken to about inclusivity? Do they know what you have been through? Are they able to relate? Are they able to understand that you grew up as a biracial girl in Italy? Are they surprised? Are there things that they are not able to understand in your opinion? Do they talk about this with you?
Coco Rebecca:
We haven’t had very many discussions with adults on this subject. Alright, apart from my mom.
Tamu McPherson:
Well she is the most important.
Coco Rebecca:
Well for sure with her. When she reads my interviews, and sees what I say, she is always very happy. She likes the message that I am trying to send. But beyond my family sphere, there are certainly several people who have come to me and thanked me or have told me that Summertime is a series that they showed their children and that you can feel this sense of inclusivity. And for them it is very important. Surely there have been discussions of this type, and it makes me very happy because it means that there is something that is about to change and that it is going towards change and to know that maybe a kid watching this series, when they are older, will live in a reality in which this would be normal. And that is something very beautiful, right? And as far as the criticisms are concerned…
Tamu McPherson:
No, no, I did not mean that, it was only adults that noticed these things. Not criticism. I meant exactly that. You said that your sister’s friends maybe do not recognize this, simply that the adults recognize these things.
Coco Rebecca:
Maybe adults who live in Italy but maybe that weren’t born in Italy, or have parents of different origins and are grown up, watching the series, but I happened to read comments that said how nice that finally there is something like this, because when I was younger, there wasn’t this representation on TV. And now for them, it must be a feeling of redemption, I don’t know how to say it. I imagine someone who has maybe lived all of their adolescence in Italy and has never seen themselves represented anywhere, has been discriminated against, and maybe now they see instead that it is possible and that things can be changed. That person is not alone but there are a lot of us, we are many and now we want to have the same space, the same opportunities as everyone else, because it is right and it should be like this.
Tamu McPherson:
And in your opinion, have you ever had conversations with white people that are not able to understand, because they have lived a life with their privilege, have seen or read the things you have said, do you think they see the world in a new way or start to open their eyes on this topic in general? Or no?
Coco Rebecca:
Sincerely, that I can remember, for now no. Probably it is due to the fact that I try not to surround myself with that type of person. It is always a bit difficult getting in touch with people that have that type of reality. And surely there are certainly a lot of people who maybe will think these things, but not for now. Maybe tomorrow it will happen, but for now I haven’t had the chance to confront people about this.
Of course I have met people with ideas far from mine, but I’ve never had a real confrontation. I have never even discussed the series and talked about what they thought about these issues. I am very focused on other things. To me it is fine to talk with everyone, even if you see it…maybe they ask, why do you have this idea? But then, once you have had that confrontation, I cannot stay here to try and convince you to change your idea on these things. Because if for your whole life you have thought like this, I doubt that I will be able to help you change your mind from one day to another. I would be curious to hear their perception, or according to them, their reality of how they live this. But once I have done that, then I prefer to spend my energy on, as I said earlier, opportunities that have come to me that can come to other people in the cinematographic field. That this process becomes a little faster, because steps have been made and we are all in agreement on this urgency, but I know that there can be many more and we have arrived at the moment to speed things up. We cannot wait ten years.
Tamu McPherson:
I think the point is to not use our energy in trying to change the ideas of these people or their vision. As you said, going ahead with your work is what you can do because you are right, you can’t change the idea of people who are fixed in their minds, and grew up in a certain way, but how you said, to express yourself in your creativity is the best way to resist racism.
