Janice Okoh: Recognising Emerging Talent

Writer Janice Okoh has been honing her craft for more than a decade; first as a playwright, then screenwriter, and now as an author. But that’s not all, because as of this year she can also add BAFTA Award Winner to the list having won the Emerging Talent: Fiction category for her show Just Act Normal.

The emerging talent categories, both factual and fiction, pay tribute to those working behind-the-camera who have begun to capture the attention of their peers with their exceptional talent and ambition. It’s a category that has been updated to recognise career transitions and reflect the evolving pathways into and across the screen industries. For Okoh, who is also a BAFTA Elevate alum, the experience of winning the award at the 2026 BAFTA Television Craft Awards with Samsung OLED “just felt like it was a dream”. She says: “You know, you say ‘I’d love to win a BAFTA, I’ve got to win a BAFTA’ and then you do and it’s just like, it’s crazy.”

Here Okoh talks about the importance of recognising emerging talent, how her BAFTA win has impacted her and why she hopes others will be inspired by her journey…

For Okoh awards that recognise emerging talent “shows that the industry is open” when “often it feels like it is closed and it’s only certain people that get the nods and pats on the back, the work and all of that.”

She says: “It just shows you that other people are acknowledged. It is the acknowledgement from the industry that they are talented and they are good enough and that they may not be at the top where all the big shows are and all the big money is, but they are still talented. I think that is very good for BAFTA to acknowledge, and it helps people keep going and feel like ‘I can get there’…it acknowledges talent that is outside the main hub.”

This feeling of recognition and support, as someone who moved into the screen industry after already being well established in the theatre world, is something the BAFTA winner also experienced as part of 2018’s cohort of the talent programme BAFTA Elevate.

Okoh reflects: “These things just flag you out as yes you are talented, we see you and you need to keep on going. It’s encouragement to keep going… you’re not alone, it’s a supportive environment.”

Acknowledging that the process of idea generation, writing and development can be slow Okoh highlights that having belief in yourself plays an important role in keeping you going. Something she is familiar with as someone who describes the process of reworking her 2013 play about childhood grief and resilience Three Birds into TV show Just Act Normal as “like childbirth”, and who is currently preparing to launch a debut book Girl Number 8, an atmospheric thriller set in Nigeria, while already working on the sequel.

Personally, this self-belief is something that she feels she now has much more of having won a BAFTA Television Craft Award.

She reflects: “Sometimes you just think when things aren’t working out the way you want ‘oh my god, maybe I’m not good enough’. Winning a BAFTA has given me that strength of belief in myself and confirmed that it’s not my fault.You just need that strength to keep yourself going on in a career that is a long-term thing. That’s what it’s given me, it’s given me a thing like ‘ok I still want to be in this industry, I still want to do this because I love TV, I love film’ and it’s given me that self-belief in myself that I can do this.

“I don’t need any more validation – winning a BAFTA, that’s the biggest one you can get. So, you know I can do this no matter what anyone else thinks… Sometimes I think, ‘oh do I want to do this?’ and [my BAFTA] is something that I can look at and I know I’m really good… It doesn’t matter what’s happening outside or how hard it is I know I’m really good and it helps me to keep trying.”

So, what would Okoh’s advice be for anyone who is still deciding whether to submit an application for this year’s BAFTA Television Craft Awards? “Apply because you never know. I didn’t even know that BAFTA looks at the background of an applicant and other things as well, it looks at everything it’s not just what that one piece is, it’s everything. So, I would definitely apply you have nothing to lose and so much to gain.”

Highlighting this the award-winning writer admits: “I did not feel like my name was going to be picked especially when I was looking at the other contenders and I was like ‘oh they’re really good’. So, it was such a shock, it was like a bubble I mean I still can’t believe it, but it happened and it was an amazing once in a lifetime experience.”

• Applications for the Television Craft Awards Emerging Talent category are now open. There are two categories; one for fiction and one for factual. Find full details including how to apply at https://www.bafta.org/awards/tv-craft-rules/.