The series was announced as commissioned by Netflix in November 2021 with Mouktar Mohammed and Henrietta Lee of New Wave as executive producer and associate producer. The executive producers are Anna Ferguson and Steve Searle of Netflix with Mark Hedges as series producer. The production used a specialized ARRI 35 camera which has been designed to show Black skin in the best and most complimentary way.
Supacell filming took place between July 4, 2022, and December 10, 2022 in London. The filming locations included Thamesmead, Peckham and Deptford. The production was confirmed to have wrapped by April 2023.
Andrew Onwubolu, aka Rapman, is a British rapper, record producer, screenwriter and film director. He is known for dealing with socially conscious themes, as well as his uniquely vivid style of storytelling through the medium of rap.
"I've been watching superhero stuff since I was a kid and it's always set in New York, it's always a big drama in New York, and I love New York but London is a crazy city as well," Rapman told BOSSIP. "It's like why are we not portraying that more? So for me I want people from the States, I want people in Africa, I want people in other parts of Europe, to really be like, 'Oh that's what it's like in London! That's the Black experience in London.' That's what London is really like, because how you see the parties, the music they listen to [in Supacell], that is literally South London. The only thing that you see made-up there is the powers, but everything else is the British experience as a Black person in the United Kingdom. So I'm hoping that it's like an education for people that don't know what it's like. I'm really excited.
Rapman began writing Supacell in 2020, the year the pandemic hit everything. There were often heated and frank discussions over writers, special effects and two composers came and went before he persuaded Netflix to let him go with a third, Sillkey, the songwriter, producer and musician. Having persuaded commissioners at Netflix to develop his idea of a drama about a group of regular people in south London who become mysteriously afflicted -- because it's like an illness -- with superpowers, Rapman spent six months writing drafts, alone and then in a writers room, for three of its six episodes and the show's bible.