We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Antonio Williams a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Antonio, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. When did you first know you wanted to pursue a creative/artistic path professionally?

I certainly knew I wanted to go into the creative path as a child. I would be given task from my English teacher to write creative stories and I loved the idea of coming up with some made up world and writing out stories that i felt would be captivating to people. I read a lot of books as a kid and loved drama and suspense genre. I always admired how the writer takes the reader on a journey with the character. I wanted to share that feeling with others and take people on great journeys, mysteries, suspense and adventure with my writing as well. It would be later as an adult that i was introduced to the idea of going from writing books to writing screenplays.

Antonio, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I was born and raised in St. Louis, MO and started out as a writer. I’ve dabbled in several different writing including; short stories, poems and songs. I realised out of all of them the common thread was storytelling, I just enjoyed telling stories. I wrote my first book ‘The Glass House’ which is now on Amazon. It was my first psychological thriller that I’ve written and continued to write more stories like it. It was when I moved to Las Vegas, NV back in 2014 that I was encouraged to try to make my book into a movie. I took a chance and learning translate book into screenplay and at the time I met my wife Hellene. She so happened to also be into film and writing and she was an actress in Nigeria. After we married we formed our own film production company together; Eleven Twenty-One Entertainment which is named after our wedding anniversary November 21st. My book has not yet turned into a movie as we embarked on other film projects that will eventually lead to filming ‘The Glass House’. I’m most proud of our latest television series we made together ‘African Twist’ its a dramedy about 4 hair braiders in Las Vegas who’s lives are turned upside down when a Nigerian immigrant affects the course of their lives forever. My wife and I are Christians and whatever movies or tv shows we write and produce we always want to spread the gospel of Jesus Christ in our stories. We love to entertain while raising awareness of pressing issues in society,

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

The most rewarding aspect of being a creative in this industry is releasing to the public something tangible that was once just an idea in my mind. Being able to bring stories to life for others to take in and interpret for themselves gives me so much joy. On top of that I’m able to give opportunities to actors and crew members to use and showcase their talents where other film companies may have looked them over. I take a lot of pride in that.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

There was. a time we saw how well African American filmmakers and actors in Atlanta were thriving. We thought that maybe we needed to move there to make connections in the film industry with people who look like us and we could thrive too. It so happened COVID hit that same year we made the bold move to Atlanta. We went through a lot of financial hardships with no connections in sight. It was quite a struggle. We’ve gone through getting scammed with someone claiming to want to invest in our projects and that was really difficult to come back from emotionally. We felt like we were failing at this goal to be successful .The good that came out of moving there at that time, was finding a great church at Dominion City Georgia and a church family to lift us up and we still to this day are actively involved in that church even while now living in Las Vegas. Regardless of the pitfalls we faced, the drive and desire to do what we love never left us and we made a conscious to decision to. keep going no matter what

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.eleventwentyoneent.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamantoniowilliams