‘Dark Matter’ Exclusive: Dayo Okeniyi Opens Up About Playing Drastically Different Versions Of Leighton Vance

Have you watched Dark Matter on AppleTV+?

Fans of sci-fi will love the Apple TV+ series which stars Joel Edgerton, Jennifer Connelly Oakes Fegley, Dayo Okeniyi, and more. The show is about a man who is abducted into an alternate version of his life. Our Sr. Content Director Janeé Bolden interviewed Dayo Okeniyi who takes on the role of Leighton Vance in the show.

It turns out that Okeniyi had already read and loved the Blake Crouch novel that the series is adapted from when he was cast in the role, and while he is a huge fan of the book, he says he believes the show is actually an improved version.

“I was a big fan of the book and honestly I was most nervous because my character in the book isn’t fully fleshed out,” Okeniyi told BOSSIP. “A lot of the additions that we’re doing to Season 2 is really beefing up that Leighton character and using him as a cog in the story, setting up things that hopefully we can pay off if we get to do more installments of the show, so I was like, ‘Ohh man audiences are just going to want us to do the book — like, ‘What’s all this other stuff we’re doing with Leighton?’ I just didn’t want to be that storyline where they go, ‘Can we get back to Jason?’ They were really responding to what was happening and I think Blake just really stuck the landing. I think this is really one of those few adaptations where it’s just as good, if not slightly better than the book and Blake would agree with this. He said it a lot. All the loopholes, all the plot holes, he sourced the Internet from when the book was released until now. So thank you for pointing them out so he could correct all those on the show. I’m genuinely proud of this and I honestly can’t believe I’m part of this. I don’t know any time in my career where I’ve read something as a fan, on my own, not for research and then found myself in in that world.”

As Jason and Amanda enter the box, opening door after door in hopes of him returning to his life, they discover their thoughts have an effect on the world they find on the other side of the door. Anyone familiar with manifestation will instantly recognize the role it plays in Jason’s outcome, so we had to ask Okeniyi how he related the concept to his own experiences.

“I 1000% subscribed to manifestation,” Okeniyi told BOSSIP. “I think if you want to go anywhere in this life you gotta go there in the mind first and yes, there’s no question that I, on some subconscious level, manifested this role. I was working on a different science fiction show, a time travel show that I was writing with a couple of partners of mine and we kind of got to a roadblock. My sister was like, ‘You should check out this book by this guy Blake Crouch. Maybe if you read it, it might give you ideas of a different direction you could take with the show.’ We had gotten to a place where we were kind of stuck. I read Blake’s book and I was like, ‘Ohh f**k, like he cracked it!’ To the point where I was so depressed. I stopped working on the project I was writing before. This was so fresh and so different, even with all the spectacles it was so grounded. So yeah, I was working on something and this was supposed to be you know inspiration for what I was working on and then God just said, ‘No, go work on this, that’s why it’s coming into your Life.”

In Dark Matter, Joel Edgerton’s character discovers there are many versions of Jason, most of whom are so similar it’s hard to tell one from the next, the audience meets drastically different versions of Okeniyi’s character Leighton Vance.

“Trust me, we had more Leightons,” Okeniyi told BOSSIP. “There’s stuff we filmed that didn’t make the final cut and and hopefully we get to get to see somewhere. We’re looking to get a second season, but honestly I just give a lot of credit to Blake really for allowing us the actors to push those boundaries between our characters as much as possible. I was talking with Joel earlier on and I was like, ‘Joel how are you going to do the different Jasons?’ He was like, ‘It’s going to be hair thin differences between them. He wanted it to be very, very subtle and there were a lot of people who wanted to do that as well. I said, ‘Where’s the fun in that?’ I asked Blake about it. I was like, ‘I want to do like blonde tips, what do you think about that?’ He was like, ‘Sure do it.’ Then was like, ‘What do you think about silk pajamas?’ He was like, ‘Sure.’ I was like, ‘Why not tattoos?’ Anything I’ve asked for he’s like, ‘Yes, yes, yes, yes.’ It’s one of the things where, you get to set and I’ve been filming late in the morning and then you go to lunch and come back and I got the Odell Beckham tips. I’m sitting there going, ‘Ohh man this might be a joke, like this couldn’t work or it could be really bad.’ You just have to go for it. You have to fully commit to it. I remember after the very first take Joel just looks at me and he’s like, ‘Yeah this is going to be awesome’. You’re trying it out but you’re trying to read the cast, the crew on set. We had Tim Cook Leighton and Diddy Leighton — which is funny because we filmed this like three years ago.”

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Dark Matter is currently streaming on Apple TV+