Samson Kayo

Kayo is of Nigerian descent. He said that growing up in Peckham, he only wanted to be a footballer, but developed an interest in comedy through Jim Carrey, Robin Williams, and British comedian Jocelyn Jee Esien, who inspired him as a black person to enter comedy. He was a childhood friend of John Boyega, with whom he attended church. When he went out to pick up an iron for his mother, he found an open audition for the Channel 4 comedy Youngers, and was cast. In 2017, he played a fictionalised version of will.i.am in the BBC Three improvised comedy series Murder in Successville.

Kayo was nominated for Best Male Comedy Performance at the 2018 British Academy Television Awards for his part in the BBC sketch show Famalam. From 2017 to 2019, he was part of the main cast of the ITV2 sitcom Timewasters, in which a Black British jazz quartet are transported through time to the London of the 1920s and 1950s in each series. He created, wrote and played the lead role in the takeaway-based sitcom Sliced on Dave from 2019 to 2021. He also created and plays the lead Maleek on paramedic-focused sitcom Bloods, which debuted on Sky One in 2021 while being based on an eight-minute short film on Sky Arts. He was nominated for Best Male Comedy Performance at the 2022 British Academy Television Awards for this role, and won the same award at the year's Royal Television Society Programme Awards.

In 2020, Kayo featured in Nick Frost and Simon Pegg's horror comedy series Truth Seekers. A year later, he starred in David Jenkins and Taika Waititi's pirate-based romantic comedy series Our Flag Means Death, which was produced in the United States. He told The Irish Times that although many British actors of colour found more opportunity in the United States, he was committed to making more British series.

Kayo's first voice performance was as Baby Bear in Puss in Boots: The Last Wish (2022), with Antonio Banderas in the title role.

Film

Television