Torrey Wachanga
Overview
When a serial bachelor's ten year old daughter suddenly appears on his doorstep, he must open his heart and learn to be a father.
Cast
10 peopleReviews
4 min readThe Unscripted Father
I’ve seen this story before. The bachelor who thinks he’s got life figured out—career on track, no strings, no mess—until a child appears on his doorstep like an uninvited plot twist. It’s a setup that’s launched a thousand sitcoms, from Three Men and a Baby to The Game Plan, and now, with An Instant Dad, it’s landed in Nairobi.
But here’s the thing about familiar stories: they only work if they feel true. And truth, in this case, is less about the premise and more about the people. Jennifer Gatero’s film doesn’t reinvent the wheel, but it does something rarer—it makes the wheel feel like it belongs to the characters, not the other way around.
The film’s first act plays like a comedy of errors, with Ricky stumbling through the basics of parenting—how to braid hair, how to pack a lunch, how to answer the question, "Why didn’t you know about me?" without sounding like a coward. But beneath the laughs, there’s a current of grief. Amy isn’t just a surprise; she’s a reminder of a past Ricky thought he’d outrun, and her presence forces him to confront the father he never knew he could be.
Gatero’s direction is unshowy, almost minimalist, but that’s its strength. She lets the performances breathe, trusting that the audience will lean in if the emotions feel real. And they do.
Lung’aho, a veteran of Kenyan television, has a face that’s easy to read—every flicker of panic, every reluctant smile, every moment of quiet realization that he’s in over his head. Wanjiku, meanwhile, is a revelation. Amy could’ve been a cliché, the wise-beyond-her-years kid who exists to teach the adult a lesson, but Wanjiku gives her a stubbornness, a vulnerability, that makes her feel like a real person.
Full Plot (Spoilers)
Spoiler warning
This section contains the full plot, including major story reveals. Overview above stays spoiler-free.
Buzz & Rumors
Public reportsShe posted that she almost quit. Then Netflix bought the dad movie.
Jennifer Gatero wrote the post herself. "Netflix bought it! I am so, so excited!! I took another risk, and I got investors, and I made a movie with Blessing Lung'aho Blace. It's called An Instant Dad." Tuko printed that on 11 November 2023, eleven days before the 22 November streaming date. She called it a win for independent film production in Kenya. latestnetflix.com's take is that the film is 79 minutes, in English, shot around Nairobi.Netflix lists Blessing Lung'aho, Hannah Wanjiku, and Torrey Wachanga in that order.,
Older catalog copy still treats Torrey as the sudden dad. That is the wrong lead. Netflix and Business Daily put Blessing as Ricky, the serial bachelor. Hannah is Amy, the ten-year-old on the doorstep. Torrey is Leah. Stanslaus Manthi praised Lung'aho and Wanjiku in the quiet scenes, plus Ricky's mother, and the drone shots of Nairobi. He also groused about rooms that looked like sets and a haircut that kept reminding him of a local comic.,
A bachelor on screen, a public fight off it
Tuko's other hook was Blessing's life outside the frame. Jackie Matubia, the mother of his daughter Zendaya, had been calling him a deadbeat in public. Tuko said he had not answered. The same week Netflix bought a movie in which he learns to be a father. That is the gossip. It is allegation and timing, not a court finding. Gatero did not address it in the quotes Tuko used.
Weeks later Tuko ran Gatero again, this time celebrating a Netflix chart spike. She had told followers, "I almost quit being a filmmaker!!! A few months before Instant Dad came out, I will be honest with you guys, I really considered quitting film." Independent Kenyan features, she wrote, mean finding the money yourself. "Taking all the risks all on your own. It can be so thankless! So grueling. So, so hard!!" After the film landed she said the comments and inboxes gave her hope. "This is what my soul needed. Thank you!" she told Tuko. Treat the worldwide number-one flourish as tabloid heat. The quotes about quitting are the story.
Grief under the comedy tag
Manthi argued the film is less a sitcom than two people processing grief across an age gap, and that a longer cut might have sat with the revelation about Amy's mother. Gatero had already made the Netflix crime feature Nairobby and the short Granted. Dantez Mwendwa produced. Moses Osidiana shot it. A YouTube trailer posted 20 November 2023, two days before the Netflix date, credits Avant Films and calls it a raw film about a father and a child. That is the sell. The rumor is the near-quit, the buy, and a lead whose real-life fatherhood was already in the Kenyan tabs.,
No salary figures have leaked. No festival-circuit brawl. The column is a director who said she was done, a streamer that wrote a check, and a comedy about instant parenthood that arrived while its star was being scolded in the same papers for the real thing. Gatero kept the post about the investors. Blessing kept quiet. The movie still opens with a door and a child.,
Entertainment rumors and trivia aggregated from public reporting. Treat speculation as unverified unless a cited source confirms it.