Akin McKenzie

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Akin McKenzie is a production designer born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. After graduating from UCLA’s School of Theater, Film, and Television, McKenzie ended up back in Brooklyn in 2003 working as a display artist for retailers like Barney's New York and later designing high-end showrooms for brands such as Dior and Valentino. In 2014, McKenzie transitioned his design work back to film, and in 2016 worked as production designer on the music video for Common’s Black America Again, directed by Bradford Young.

In 2018, he gained significant industry recognition for his mixture of surreal work on Terence Nance’s HBO series Random Acts of Flyness, and the more grounded and lived style for another HBO series, Katja Blichfeld and Ben Sinclar’s High Maintenance. The following year, his production design on Rashid Johnson’s Native Son (2019) brought Richard Wright’s seminal novel into modern day through the dense visual language of Black visual arts—from Glenn Ligon to Amy Sherald, Deanna Lawson, and Kara Walker—colliding with the continuing, quotidian life of white supremacy.

In 2019, McKenzie worked once more with Bradford Young on Ava DuVernay’s critically acclaimed limited series When They See Us. The emotional and political weight of the Exonerated Five’s lives and story highlights the grounding ethics of McKenzie’s practice. Building on the lessons he learned in display design, it is the details—the specificities and intimacies of the worlds we build and navigate—that show our love, our care, and our lives. “I feel that the most respect I can offer comes from the details and intricacies that we embed into worlds,” Mckenzie says about designing the homes of the Exonerated Five: “So if we’re painting a bedroom blue, we want to understand that that was a choice that came from love and compassion.”[1]

Most recently, McKenzie provided the production design for Gina Prince-Bythewood’s historical epic, The Woman King (2022). His work on the film involved extensive historical excavation to reconstruct the Dahomey Kingdom, utilizing West African ritualistic patterns and architecture. McKenzie says of production design to “see spaces as more than settings, but as characters that carry their own stories.”[2] With The Woman King, McKenzie turned to the archive of Dahomey to find and feel what he calls “the purpose” of the object—not its use value but the role and life it holds for a people.[3]

Across his career, McKenzie has consistently asked: “How can we use creative energy to fill in for the things we don’t have?”[4] A question about making the most of what resources are available, but also of how our creative and collaborative practices can bridge the gap between what we know, what we can render, and what we need to show.

[1] Edelbaum, Susannah, “Production Designer Akin McKenzie on Recreating Reality in When They See Us,” The Credits (June 10, 2019). https://www.motionpictures.org/2019/06/production-designer-akin-mckenzie-on-recreating-reality-in-when-they-see-us/

[2] McKenzie, Akin, “About,” My Knife And Times. https://www.myknifeandtimes.com/about

[3] “Arthur Jafa and Akin McKenzie, moderated by Shawn Peters,” Film Roundtable (July 28, 2023). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8tLU0ravGhs

[4] Tonner-Connolly, Brandon, “Reject Departmental Sectarianism: Production Designer Akin McKenzie and Writer-Director Terence Nance,” Filmmaker Magazine (October 19, 2023). https://filmmakermagazine.com/123438-interview-production-designer-akin-mckenzie-terence-nance/

SELECTED WORKS

Production Designer

Montefiore Health System: Spot It Early (2024), dir. Seb Edwards

Seeking: Mapping Our Gullah Geechee Story (2023), dir. Julie Dash

The Woman King (2022), dir. Gina Prince-Bythewood

Space Jam: A New Legacy (2021), dir. Terence Nance

Killing in Thy Name (2021), dir. The Ummah Chroma

Wake Up (2020), dir. Olivia Wilde

When They See Us (2019), created by Ava Duvernay

Native Son (2019), Rashid Johnson

Random Acts of Flyness (2018), created by Terence Nance

High Maintenance (2018), created by Katja Blichfeld and Ben Sinclair

Wildlife (2018), dir. Paul Dano

Smile (2017), dir. Miles Jay

Aftermath (2017), dir. Elliott Lester

The Discovery (2017), dir. Charlie McDowell

Black America Again (2016), dir. Bradford Young

I Got the Keys (2016), dir. Daniel Kaufman

11:55 (2016), dir. Ari Issler and Ben Synder

Goat (2016), dir. Andrew Neel

Wiener-Dog (2016), dir. Todd Solondz

The Abandoned (2015), dir. Eytan Rockaway

Before the Bomb (2015), dir. Tannaz Hazemi

Buttercup Bill (2014), dirs. Remy Bennett and Émilie Richard-Froozan

SELECTED INTERVIEWS

Carsey-Wolf Center at UCSB. “Black Hollywood: The Woman King (with Production Designer Akin McKenzie).” YouTube, October 21, 2025. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhwNoMdgSZg

Production Designers Collective. “Research and Inspiration: Production Designers Gathering.” YouTube, October 19, 2023. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ib5xv4OAO5s

Tonner-Connolly, Brandon. “Reject Departmental Sectarianism: Production Designer Akin McKenzie and Writer-Director Terence Nance.” Filmmaker Magazine, October 19, 2023. https://filmmakermagazine.com/123438-interview-production-designer-akin-mckenzie-terence-nance/

Production Designers Collective. “Ways of Seeing: Production Designers Gathering 2024.” YouTube, October 17, 2025. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dRurKO-FiHY

Film Roundtable. “Arthur Jafa and Akin McKenzie, moderated by Shawn Peters.” Youtube, July 28, 2023. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8tLU0ravGhs

Giliberti, Luca. “‘The Woman King’ production designer Akin McKenzie on ‘arduous’ but ‘exciting’ research process.” Gold Derby, January 3, 2023. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7U3KwggWpSU

Film Roundtable. “Chayse Irvin & Akin McKenzie - Moderated by Shawn Peters.” YouTube, July 2, 2020. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVZTcbKK1u8

Edelbaum, Susannah. “Production Designer Akin McKenzie on Recreating Reality in When They See Us,” The Credits, June 10, 2019. https://www.motionpictures.org/2019/06/production-designer-akin-mckenzie-on-recreating-reality-in-when-they-see-us/

Valentini, Valentina I. “How ‘Native Son’ Production Team Re-Created Depression Era Chicago.” Variety, April 26, 2019. https://variety.com/2019/artisans/production/native-son-depression-era-chicago-hbo-1203197067/

July, Beandrea. “Why the Art and Design Details of Rashid Johnson’s Native Son Matter.” Hyperallergic, April 8, 2019. https://hyperallergic.com/native-son-rashid-johnson-akin-mckenzie/

Marine, Brooke. “The Modern Thing About Rashid Johnson’s Native Son Might Be the Black Art.” W Magazine, April 6, 2019. https://www.wmagazine.com/story/native-son-movie-rashid-johnson-art

Research and writing done by Arri Brookins and Dr. Daren Fowler