Emmanuel Kabongo | |
---|---|
Born | Emmanuel Kabongo December 25, 1986 |
Education | Canadian Film Centre |
Occupation(s) | Actor, producer |
Years active | 2009–present |
Emmanuel Kabongo (born December 25, 1986) is a Canadian actor and producer. Born and raised in Zaire, now present-day Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kabongo immigrated to Canada and began his acting career as an extra before achieving recognition for his performance as the lead protagonist in the acclaimed web series Teenagers (2014–2017), for which he earned his first Canadian Screen Award nomination. [1]
Kabongo subsequently became known for his performances in the CBC Television series 21 Thunder (2017) and Frankie Drake Mysteries (2017–2018) and in films such as The Animal Project (2013), Antibirth (2016), and Brown Girl Begins (2017). He played a gladiator in Paul W. S. Anderson's Pompeii (2014) and has guest-starred in television series such as Murdoch Mysteries (2013) and Star Trek: Discovery (2020). In 2023, he played a supporting role in the sci-fi thriller film Simulant .
Kabongo earned additional Canadian Screen Award nominations in 2022 and 2023, for his performances in the television film Death She Wrote, [2] and in the web series Chateau Laurier. [3]
Kabongo was born and raised in Lubumbashi, a city in Zaire (now known as the Democratic Republic of the Congo). [4] He later relocated with his family to South Africa during the war. He has four brothers, including basketball player Myck Kabongo, and one sister. [4] [5]
In the 1990s, Kabongo immigrated to Toronto with his family. [6] [7] Kabongo's father often worked as an extra in film and television, which exposed Kabongo to show business at a young age. [5]
During school, Kabongo played competitive basketball; he later turned down a basketball scholarship from the University of New Brunswick to pursue acting. [4] Kabongo struggled with scoliosis in his youth. [4]
Before he began pursuing acting, Kabongo worked several jobs, including at a daycare, a Foot Locker, at the Canadian National Exhibition, and vacuuming floors and cleaning toilets at a train station. [6]
Kabongo began acting in 2009, appearing in a little seen short film. [4] He subsequently worked as an extra on the television series Nikita and Flashpoint. [4] One of Kabongo's early background actor jobs was on the hit 2004 film Mean Girls . [4] [5]
Kabongo's first role in a full-length feature film came in 2013 with the release of The Animal Project , directed by Ingrid Veninger. The film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival and received generally positive reviews. [8]
Throughout the 2010s, Kabongo guest-starred in a variety of television programs, including Call Me Fitz (2012), Murdoch Mysteries (2013), Rookie Blue (2013–2014), and Quantico (2015). [9] [7] He completed an actor's residency at Norman Jewison's Canadian Film Centre in 2015. [10]
In 2014, Kabongo portrayed a gladiator in Paul W. S. Anderson's romantic historical disaster film Pompeii . The film won the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television's Golden Screen Award for 2014 as the year's top-grossing Canadian film. [11]
Alongside filmmaker M. H. Murray, Kabongo co-produced the first season of the web series Teenagers . [12] In 2013, Murray approached Kabongo with the scripts and asked him to help produce the series; they subsequently cast the rest of the characters together using only actors from Toronto. [13] Louis Chunovic of Playback published a piece on the series, writing that "the young creators of Teenagers had to have plenty of luck, pluck, talent, and grit to get this far. And that portends a Hollywood ending". [12] Kabongo also starred as the lead male protagonist in the series. [14] Teenagers received positive reviews from critics and was frequently compared to the Degrassi franchise and the UK television series Skins. [15] [16] The series amassed more than 10 million combined views on YouTube over the course of three seasons, from 2014 to 2017. [17] For his performance in the second season of Teenagers, Kabongo earned his first Canadian Screen Award nomination. [1]
In 2016, Kabongo produced and starred in A Man's Story, a short film for which he received funding from bravoFACT. [18] The short film premiered at the ReelWorld Film Festival. [19] That year, he also played a supporting role in Antibirth , which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and was released on September 2, 2016 in the U.S., by IFC Midnight. [20]
In September 2016, CBC announced it had commissioned a one-hour drama series that follows the star players of an under-21 soccer academy in Montreal, titled 21 Thunder , with Kabongo slated to star as one of the lead characters, an Ivory Coast mid-fielder named Junior Lolo. [21] [22] The series premiered in Canada on July 31, 2017, to generally positive reviews. [23] Also that year, Kabongo appeared in three episodes of the CBC series Frankie Drake Mysteries as a boxer named Moses, [24] and he starred opposite Mouna Traoré in Brown Girl Begins , a post-apocalyptic science fiction film directed by Sharon Lewis. [25]
In 2020, he starred in an episode of the CBS All Access series Star Trek: Discovery as V’Kir. [26] That year, he also played a supporting role in the Canadian political comedy film Québexit , which premiered at the Cinéfest Sudbury International Film Festival in September 2020. [27]
Kabongo received a second Canadian Screen Award nomination in 2022, for his leading performance in the television film Death She Wrote. [2] He received a third nomination in 2023 for this supporting performance in the web series Chateau Laurier. [3] He won several other awards for his performance in Chateau Laurier at web series festivals.
In 2022, he was cast in April Mullen’s sci-fi thriller, Hello Stranger. [28] That film, later retitled Simulant , was released theatrically in Canada by Mongrel Media on April 7, 2023. [29] Kabongo was featured in the film alongside a cast that included Sam Worthington and Simu Liu. [29]
Kabongo found early acting inspiration in action films from the 1990s that his mother showed him as a child. [30] In an interview with CBC Arts, Kabongo said that "taking acting serious came from watching how my mom reacted to films of the '90s ... [She] loves Denzel, Van Damme, Sylvester Stallone... My mom watched all those movies growing up, and knowing how that made her feel, I just wanted to do the same thing for her." [30]
Kabongo has cited Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Hardy, Mahershala Ali, Viola Davis, and Daniel Day-Lewis as acting inspirations. [5]
Kabongo was active during the protests following the police murder of George Floyd in summer 2020. [31] In an interview with Harry Rosen, he said that "it’s important to me as a Black man to stand up for what is right, supporting the cause against police brutality." [5]
Kabongo became engaged to his girlfriend, Raquel Melnichuk, in December 2021. [32] They were married the following year. [33]
Year | Association | Category | Nominated work | Result |
---|---|---|---|---|
2013 | African Entertainment Awards | Best African Actor | Self | Won |
2014 | Los Angeles Web Series Festival [34] | Outstanding Drama Series | Teenagers | Won |
2014 | Black Canadian Awards | Best Male Actor | Self | Nominated |
2015 | Black Canadian Awards | Best Male Actor | Self | Nominated |
2016 | ReelWorld Film Festival | Impact Award | A Man's Story | Won |
2016 | 4th Canadian Screen Awards [35] | Best Performance in a Program or Series Produced for Digital Media | Teenagers | Nominated |
2017 | International Academy of Web Television [36] | Best Male Performance – Drama | Teenagers | Nominated |
2017 | AfroGlobal Television Excellence Awards | Rising Star Award | Self | Won |
2019 | ReelWorld Film Festival | Trailblazer Award | Self | Won |
2022 | 10th Canadian Screen Awards [2] | Lead Actor, Television Film or Miniseries | Death She Wrote | Nominated |
2023 | 11th Canadian Screen Awards [3] | Supporting Performance, Web Program or Series | Chateau Laurier | Nominated |
Year | Title | Role | Notes |
---|---|---|---|
2009 | The Red Pearl | John | Minor role |
2011 | Night Express | Crazy Billy | Minor role |
2013 | The Animal Project | Ray | Main role |
2014 | Pompeii | African Gladiator | Minor role |
2016 | The Other Half | Officer James | Supporting role |
Antibirth | Luke | Supporting role | |
A Man's Story | Kam Eganda | bravoFACT short film, lead role, also producer | |
2017 | Brown Girl Begins | Tony | Lead role |
2018 | Extracurricular | Mike Vanden | Supporting role |
2019 | Run This Town | Abe | Supporting Role |
2020 | Québexit | James Brodie | |
2021 | Death She Wrote | Rand Tollson | |
2023 | Simulant | Joshua | |
2024 | Sway | ||
TBA | Write Place, Write Time | Daniel Rose | |
TBA | Rising 6 |
Year | Title | Role | Notes |
---|---|---|---|
2010 | Breakout | George Hyatt | 1 episode |
Forensic Factor | Jack | 1 episode | |
Flashpoint | Kevin | 1 episode | |
Nikita | Safwani's Bodyguard #4 | 1 episode | |
2011 | Christmas Magic | Chef #1 | Television film |
InSecurity | Shinka | 1 episode | |
2012 | Cybergeddon | FBI agent #1 | 2 episode |
Call Me Fitz | Joe | 1 episode | |
2013 | Murdoch Mysteries | Al | 1 episode |
Mayday | First Officer Beyene | 1 episode | |
Black Actress | Jessie | Web series: 1 episode | |
2014 | Defiance | EMC Soldier | 1 episode |
The Ron James Show | Actor | 2 episode | |
2013-2014 | Rookie Blue | Shay Bishop | 2 episodes |
2014–2017 | Teenagers | T | Lead role, Web series: 22 episodes |
2015 | Hemlock Grove | Marshall | 2 episodes |
Quantico | Kamran Tahan | 1 episode | |
2017 | 21 Thunder | Junior Lolo | Lead role; 8 episodes |
2017–2019 | Frankie Drake Mysteries | Moses | 5 episodes |
2018 | Evolve: Year Zero | Blue | Lead role, Web series: 8 episodes |
Darken: Before the Dark | Artemis | Web series: 4 episodes | |
Kristal Clear | Benjamin | Web series: 5 episodes | |
Taken | Domingo | 1 episode | |
2019 | Street Legal | Roman Mussi | 2 episodes |
Ransom | Tyler LeFebure | 2 episodes | |
Departure | Orderly | 3 episodes | |
Hudson & Rex | Valentine Anson | 1 episodes | |
V-Wars | Jack Fields | 2 episodes | |
2020 | Star Trek: Discovery | V’Kir | 1 episode |
2021 | Death She Wrote | Rand Tolson | Television film |
True Story | Man | 2 episode | |
2022 | The Kings of Napa | Everett James | 1 episode |
NCIS: Hawaiʻi | Pirate 2 | 1 episode | |
Chateau Laurier | Actor | Web series: 5 episodes | |
Tatiana Gabriele Maslany is a Canadian actress. She rose to prominence for playing multiple characters in the science-fiction thriller television series Orphan Black (2013–2017), which won her a Primetime Emmy Award (2016), two Critics' Choice Awards, and five Canadian Screen Awards (2014–2018). Maslany is the first Canadian to win an Emmy in a major dramatic category for acting in a Canadian series.
Noah Nicholas Reid is a Canadian actor and musician, best known for his work on the television series Franklin and Schitt's Creek. In 2016, he received a Canadian Screen Award nomination for Best Original Song for his work in the feature film People Hold On. In 2019, he received a Canadian Screen Award for Best Supporting Actor in a Comedy for his work on Schitt's Creek.
Yannick Denis Bisson is a Canadian film and television actor and director. He is famous for playing Detective William Murdoch on the series Murdoch Mysteries for over 15 years, since 2008.
Maurice Dean Wint is a British-born Canadian actor who has starred in both films and television series.
Murdoch Mysteries is a Canadian television drama series that premiered on Citytv on January 20, 2008, and currently airs on CBC. The series is based on characters from the Detective Murdoch novels by Maureen Jennings and stars Yannick Bisson as William Murdoch, a police detective working in Toronto, Ontario in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The series was titled The Artful Detective on the Ovation cable TV network in the United States, until season twelve.
Charles Officer was a Canadian film and television director, writer, actor, and professional hockey player.
Jonathan Harris is a Canadian actor and comedian from Newfoundland and Labrador. Harris is best known for his roles in the television series Murdoch Mysteries, Still Standing and Hatching, Matching and Dispatching, as well as the films Young Triffie, Moving Day, and Grown Up Movie Star.
Stephan James is a Canadian actor. After starring in a string of television series as a teenager, he rose to prominence upon winning a Canadian Screen Award for Best Actor for his role as track and field sprinter Jesse Owens in the 2016 film Race.
Cara Gee is a Canadian film, television, and stage actress. She is known for her roles in the television series Strange Empire and The Expanse. She is described by Forbes as "one of the most prominent indigenous women in the entertainment industry".
Kevin Patrick Mills is a Canadian film director, screenwriter and actor, whose feature film debut Guidance was released in 2015.
Chloe Rose is a Canadian actress. She rose to prominence when she portrayed Katie Matlin in the long-running teen drama television series Degrassi: The Next Generation, from 2011 to 2013. Following her time on Degrassi, Rose starred in the web series Teenagers (2014–2017), earning several award nominations for her performance as the lead protagonist, Bree. Rose has also starred in feature films such as Anita Doron's The Lesser Blessed (2012), Bruce McDonald's Hellions (2015), and Adam MacDonald's Pyewacket (2017).
Mathew Hubert Murray, credited professionally as M. H. Murray, is a Canadian writer and filmmaker. He first attracted attention for his work on Teenagers (2014–2017), which won several accolades.
Teenagers is a Canadian web series created by M. H. Murray and Sara Tamosauskas. With an ensemble cast that includes former Degrassi stars Chloe Rose and Raymond Ablack, Teenagers presents various storylines in the form of vignettes and focuses on social issues such as teen angst, racism, violence, slut-shaming, and sexuality.
T. J. Scott is a Canadian film and television director, screenwriter, producer, and former stuntman and actor. He is primarily known for his work directing popular television series such as Orphan Black, Xena: Warrior Princess, Gotham, Star Trek: Discovery, Longmire, 12 Monkeys, The Strain, and Spartacus.
Andrew Phung is a Canadian actor, improviser, and comedian. He played the character Kimchee Han on the CBC Television sitcom Kim's Convenience. For this role, he has been a five-time Canadian Screen Award winner for Best Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series. He is also the co-creator of the sitcom Run the Burbs on which he plays Andrew Pham.
Mouna Traoré is a Canadian actress and filmmaker. She is known for her performances in a variety of television series, such as Global TV's Rookie Blue (2012), CBC's Murdoch Mysteries (2015–2018), and Netflix's The Umbrella Academy (2020). Her film work includes the 2017 films The Drop In, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, and Brown Girl Begins, directed by Sharon Lewis.
Matthew Owen Murray is an American actor.
Amybeth McNulty is an Irish actress. She is known for her starring role as Anne Shirley-Cuthbert in the CBC/Netflix drama series Anne with an E (2017–2019), based on the 1908 novel Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery.
Kelly McCormack is a Canadian actor. She has worked in film, television, and on stage, and she runs her production company, Floyder Films.
Shailene Garnett is a Canadian actress and filmmaker. She is known for starring in a variety of television series, including the CBC Television series Diggstown (2019–2022) and Murdoch Mysteries (2018–present), the Freeform series Shadowhunters (2016), and the Netflix series Between (2015).
During what is known as the "first touch", prior to seeing each other for the first time, just moments before becoming husband and wife, we started our wedding day by holding hands and simply praying together, thanking God. From our inception, prayer was the foundation our relationship was built on and will continue to be the major key for our union. We're blessed to have each other and highly favoured to have been touched by the Holy Spirit on our WEDDING DAY! 🕊 🙏🏼🙏🏾🙌🏼🙌🏾🤲🏼🤲🏾👰🏼🤵🏾♂️💍💒