Released in , Before 30 was a series that followed the love lives of four young women navigating the well-known, uniquely Nigerian pressures to settle down and get married before they hit From carefully curated color palettes to meticulous costume design to hair and makeup, the pages of sketches and decks that Spaine shows me on our late-May Zoom call are nothing short of a creative shrine to a very personal story.
It was toward the end of her time in South Africa that Spaine received a script for the pilot episode of what would become Before Spaine worked with Nemsia over the roughly four years it took to make Before 30 , and helped build the story and the audience that helped make its follow-up, After 30 , possible. It felt like something that was slightly more elevated in terms of the storytelling, [and] the character development. So it was a lot of edge for that time as well, that I think we got feedback on being very successful.
Before 30 was re-released on Netflix in , and then saw a resurgence during the COVIDnecessitated lockdowns in that brought a broader audience. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
I struggle to think of a part of the film that does not have a piece of me in it. I fancy myself a [Temi] in some ways, which is the lead character. I love fashion, I have that legal background, and I have almost the same relationship with my mom. But Nkem played by Beverly Naya is who I would like to be: that level of confidence, sexiness, just being this powerful woman that does what she wants and is unapologetic about it, but is still soft and honest at heart.
Ama, for me, is an expression of who I think we should all aspire to be. The kind of good, pure-hearted, well-intentioned person, β that youthful, naive energy. All these years after making the original show, how do you think the ways that you have grown as a person show up in the way that these characters have changed? With [Ama], I wanted to do a storyline where a character had to contend with their sexual identity, but from a very respectful place, from a true place that was not going to make fun of or minimize that experience.
