Today we’d like to introduce you to Joivan Wade.
Hi Joivan, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I studied at a performing arts school in London, England called The Brit School known for its alumni such as Adele, Amy Winehouse, Tom Holland & More. After three years of studying theatre, I booked an agent and was not getting the kinds of opportunities that I wanted or thought I deserved. So I decided to take my destiny into my own hands and used the tools around me to create an online show on YouTube With my best friend, now business partner and Co-star Percelle Ascott.
The Show was entitled “Mandem On The Wall”. After its first episode, the show blew up online amassing hundreds of thousands of views. Four months later it was picked up by Channel 4 & made into a show called “Youngers” This launched my career and gave me some notoriety amongst the television space. I then felt that after what we had achieved with mandem on the wall the only thing left to do was to take it to the theatre producing a sold-out theatre show to just over a thousand people per night at the prolific Hackney Empire.
Once mandem on the wall had finished its trajectory, a new show was born. “The JPD Show” a Sketch show which starred myself and my two co-stars Percy and the great Denis Kaate. The show was produced for The BBC and they felt that it did not perform to the ability they wanted. But that didn’t stop us. We took back the rights for the sketches and created our own online platform called ” The Wall Of Comedy ” and distributed the sketches ourselves, proving the BBC that it wasn’t the content. But the distribution time and marketing behind it. The sketches amassed multiple millions of views online (Over 100 million) between the sketches on our own platform.
The power of distribution was now in my hands and we realized that we could do the very same for other content creators in the UK, and we did. We reached out to creatives such as Chunkz, Yung Filly and More that had content on Instagram or Snapchat and offered to create them online shows and produce them free of cost, and distribute them on our social media platform to the millions of viewers that watched our shows.
Shortly after, the platform blew up even further and became the largest platform for comedy in Europe. Amassing 300-500 million views per month. After some years, we continued to create the content and expand. Meanwhile, I was finding success for myself as an actor while on the journey. Landing some of the most prolific UK television roles such as Doctor Who & Eastenders, as well as producing and starring in my first feature film “The Weekend Movie” which aired on Netflix.
I then felt like I was being capped and the ceiling was too small in the UK as an actor and had aspirations of going to LA and trying to break Hollywood. After all, if you wanna be a Hollywood actor, then that’s the place to be. No one buys pet food from the hardware store…
So I did just that in 2016 packed up my life and moved to LA in pursuit of a Hollywood career, and needless to say God was with me. I booked my first lead role in Hollywood in a movie called ” The First Purge ” The fourth installment of the purge franchise. Shortly after I landed my dream role-playing Victor Stone A.K.A Cyborg in the critically acclaimed Emmy-nominated DC Superhero show “Doom Patrol”
After four successful seasons (with the most recent season set to finish airing this year) I moved onto crossing over onto DC’s TITANS. Reprising the role of vic stone and finishing the year out as a guest star in peacocks Fresh Prince remake “Bel Air” Playing the role of Frederick.
Throughout the time of developing my acting career, I’ve always continued my love and passion for writing, selling two feature films to major studios as I continue to develop and write them until they’re ready for the big screen.
My production company has continued to thrive in not only creating content for influencers and creators but also building IP and shows for Brands, Television and now Film.
The paved road is long, and I’m just getting started 🙂
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Not at all, in 2018 when I received the best news of my career, playing DC’s CYBORG. I also received the news that my 10 million follower platform along with all of its content will be removed from Facebook for false copyright claims. A 40-man team and offices in Shoreditch, Central London, were gone. Everything was taken away with immediate effect.
We were forced to let everyone go and start from scratch myself, my business partner Percy and my managing director Tafara Mapoka. We started a WhatsApp group chat and named it “Start Over” because that was literally what we had to do.
After losing everything, we were forced to pivot and instead of distributing content on our own platform. We took our content ideas and talent and pitched to brands about creating content for them in efforts of building their channels and successfully built case studies such as Foot Asylum and more. Amassing over 2 million subscribers 120 million views on a single original YouTube format and changed the game. Their sales went up as a reflection and it brought in more business from other brands that we would work with on the same formula.
Three years later, we were able to build our company back to where we are now back to a full team of 50 and offices in central London with a vision to build the same here in LA.
Appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about The Wall Of Entertainment?
Wall of Entertainment is Europe’s Leading entertainment platform which is broken up into several subsidiaries.
The Wall Of Productions – The UK’s Leading production company for Gen Z Content.
The Wall of Talent – Talent management company servicing talent all over Europe
The Wall of Comedy – Comedy network with millions of followers across all platforms
The Wall Of Music – Music platform distributing content and discovering new artists.
We are known for Producing the best content for Brands and digital and Television. Managing and developing Europes leading talent as well as distributing content that TV no longer creates for Generation Z, Y & X
We have amassed several hundred million views across all of our original content online. And continue to break the mold for what content looks like in this era.
We’re always looking for the lessons that can be learned in any situation, including tragic ones like the Covid-19 crisis. Are there any lessons you’ve learned that you can share?
What I learned during the Covid 19 crisis is that in order to stay ahead you have to continue to re-invent yourself and be ready for anything!
Contact Info:
- Website: www.thewallofentertainment.com
- Instagram: instagram.com/joivanwade
- Facebook: Facebook.com/joivanwade
- Linkedin: linkedin.com/joivanwade
- Twitter: twitter.com/joivanwade
- Youtube: YouTube.com/joivanwade
Image Credits
Caleb Auston
