The wait is finally over: all 130 episodes of the first season of Ghanaian drama series Madam have just landed on Showmax.
The Akwaaba Magic series, which aired its finale on Friday, stars four-time Africa Movie Academy Award nominee and Ghana Movie Award winner Joselyn Dumas (Flawsome, Glamour Girls) as Lankai Morgan, a woman on top of the world who will stop at nothing to protect her status.
In Madam’s world of money, sex, power, drama and suspense, few people have managed to stir the pot quite like Lankai.
With her captivating beauty and enigmatic personality, she has built up her True Woman Foundation, a noble initiative aiming to rescue disadvantaged women, that paints her as a saviour of the less fortunate.
But beneath this virtuous exterior lies a web of intrigue and manipulation that has earned her a multitude of adversaries, including her husband James Morgan and a young, ambitious politician who’s looking to make a name by exposing Lankai’s true nature.
Dumas describes Lankai as a mother, a businesswoman (with both legitimate and illegitimate businesses), a friend and a mentor.
“I think she’s able to wear all these caps so well. It’s quite admirable and exciting to play such a character because she’s everything in one,” she says.
Madam is written and directed by Shirley Frimpong-Manso, the brains behind other recent hits like the telenovela Dede and the Showmax Original drama series ENO.
The award-winning Ghanaian filmmaker is known for telling stories about strong, complex and progressive female characters, and Lankai is no different. She’s fierce, even in her fashion choices, something Dumas enjoys about playing the character.
“One of the things I absolutely love about this character is her fashion sense. Lankai is bold and unapologetic; she wears whatever she wants to wear and that sets the mood and the pace for the rest of the day for her. There are so many similarities between myself and this character in terms of their fashion sense,” Dumas says.
Like Dumas, who she’s worked with before in her groundbreaking series Shampaign and Dede, Madam also stars other actors from Frimpong-Manso’s universe, like ENO’s Godwin Namboh and Michael Katahena and Dede’s Adomaa Adjeman, Jasmine Baroudi and Dean Amegashie, as well as Luckie Lawson (40 and Single), Salma Mumin (The Agency) and more Ghanaian favourites.