Kola Bokinni, who plays AFC Richmond captain Isaac McAdoo in Apple TV+'s Ted Lasso, has spoken publicly for the first time about his father's dementia. The 31-year-old actor's father, Taiwo, 81, is living with vascular dementia and now needs round-the-clock care. Bokinni is sharing the family's experience in support of Alzheimer's Research UK and its search for a cure.
The details he describes will be familiar to many families. Symptoms began surfacing around four years ago, while Bokinni was filming the first series of Ted Lasso. His father, a meticulous man with a fixed routine who normally rose at 8am, was sometimes still in bed at noon, and had forgotten to eat. The moment Bokinni knew something was seriously wrong came when his father mistook his cousin for his girlfriend. Tests followed, and the diagnosis was vascular dementia.
That sequence - small changes to routine and self-care, then a clear lapse in recognition, then finally a medical answer - is worth noting because early dementia symptoms are so often filed away as ordinary forgetfulness or low mood. Bokinni's account is candid that he had no idea what he was looking at until tests provided a name for it, which is the situation many relatives find themselves in.
His story accompanies Change The Ending, a new campaign film from Alzheimer's Research UK voiced by Oscar-winning actor Olivia Colman, which highlights the many ways dementia reshapes people's lives. Personal testimony of this kind does not change the science, but it does affect whether families recognise what they are seeing early enough to seek answers, and whether research aimed at a cure keeps public attention.