In Government Cheese, David Oweloyo channelled a man he never met

David Oweloyo didn’t know at the time but filmmaker Paul Hunter had been trying to track down the British actor, director and producer.

Hunter wanted to make a short film based in part on the memories of his own father, and in Oweloyo, he clearly saw something of his old man. That short, with its blend of quirky comedy, hijinks and family drama, is now a fully-fledged streaming series called Government Cheese, co-created by Hunter and Aeysha Carr.

The 1969-set series is centred on a man named Hampton Chambers, released from prison after serving a sentence for burglary. Hampton is a dreamer and a hustler, a potentially dangerous combination.

Determined to do things “the right way”, Hampton invents a self-filing drill that he believes will be a gamechanger – if only he could get the financing and partnerships to make it a success.

Easier said than done when, it turns out, you owe a fearsome Canadian crime family for springing you out of prison. Oh, and two-thirds of your family – wife Astoria (Simone Missick), sons Einstein (Evan Alexander Ellison) and Harrison (Jahi Winston) – don’t want you back.

The show is bright and idiosyncratic and much of its off-kilter tone relies on Oweloyo’s ability to beguile the viewer into getting behind Hampton’s antics, even, nay, especially, when he’s making silly choices. Compassion for the character is key, particularly when he’s based on the Hunter’s father.

“Maybe there was something about me, even before we met, (Hunter) felt was evocative about his dad back in the day,” Oweloyo, known to audiences for playing Martin Luther King Jr in Selma, told The Nightly. “So, very early on, the choices I was making were ones that not only was he excited about, but he was sort of giddy about it.

“I didn’t get to meet his dad, there’s no footage of his dad or anything like that, or even any recordings. But if (Hunter) was happy, I was happy.

“Just a couple of days ago, we had the premiere here in LA and a friend of his from when they were kids together, who knew Paul’s dad, was like, ‘Whoa, that was very accurate’, and I’d never met the guy.”

Oweloyo said he knew Hunter’s dad was considered a charmer, but someone whose charisma could be equal parts attractive and annoying, because he got away with stuff that would’ve taken someone else down.

So, Government Cheese plays up that conflict within those family dynamics – one son who thinks he’s everything and another who doesn’t even want to talk to him. The show’s tone might be heightened and sometimes surreal, but the emotional layers are grounded.

“That is the tension of the show,” Oweloyo explained. “That’s why I think it has a unique tone. It leans into the contradictions. It’s reality and fantasy. This guy is selfish and selfless. It’s the sixties but we’re not leaning into (the) civil rights (movement).

“There is so much that is fresh but also familiar, and those things rub against each other in a way that I think is really intriguing.”

Government Cheese’s focus on a Black American family in that era that doesn’t centre race relations as the only aspect to their story is one of the reasons Oweloyo got involved not only as an actor but also as a producer through his company, Yoruba Saxon.

The production banner, which Oweloyo runs with his wife Jessica Oweloyo, has also worked on projects including Lawman: Bass Reeves, A United Kingdom, The Water Man and The After. The motto, according to Oweloyo, is to normalise the marginalised.

“Anytime there are stories or characters or creatives who traditionally have been folks we have seen less of or heard less from, those are the stories we tend to lean into,” he said.

“It’s very rare to have two co-creators like Paul Hunter and Aeysha Carr, both African-American creatives, at the centre of this show. Those are where you will tend to find me and my company.

“We’re really trying to widen the aperture for a global audience because traditionally, especially in a pre-streaming era world, the demographic of who have been doing all the making don’t look like us.

“Therefore, those narratives that we have embraced are not necessarily ones that we are central to, and so, redressing that balance is a big focus of mine.”

Government Cheese is streaming on Apple TV+ with new episodes weekly