Apr
20th
SEX ON SCREEN - MY BODY MOVES
By Jane bond
By Funke Egbemode & Samuel Olatunji
Sunday, April 19, 2009 • www.sunnewsonline.com
She has a to-die-for figure even after four children, a face to match, talent that stands out in the Nollywood crowd and a marriage that has loads of made-in-heaven trimmings. She was the 12-year-old girl who grew up in a hurry when her father suddenly died and had to resort to a moneylender to keep her brothers in school. She was also the schoolgirl who watched victims of Kaduna religious crisis stabbed and slaughtered as they scrambled to scale her school walls into safety while helping to deliver babies of female refugees when she hardly knew what to do. Try and imagine this same girl being thoroughly whipped by her mother for coming home a minute after 5pm which was her curfew time. Do those descriptions sound like Omotola Jalade-Ekeinde? Well, she is the actress who has lived all these parts not in her movie world but in her real life in addition to singing for armed robbers and listening to their eerie confession, and has turned it all into a money-spinning venture.
The ‘A’ Class act dropped by our corporate office and told us things we are sure you haven’t heard and we also learnt a few things from her apart from tips on how to invest in real estate. For instance, if you have had to speak up for yourself since age 12 and watch out for three younger ones and a widowed mother, bullies do not easily cow you. The journey has been long, very long, from the days she sold the family television set to pay urgent family bills to getting married to a pilot in an aircraft 20,000 feet above sea level. It is a no-holds barred story, another promise kept from Sunday Sun
I got into acting while waiting for my JAMB result.
When I left school in 1994, I was waiting for my JAMB result, and I had to wait for about nine months. A friend of mine, Akorede, who was a model told my mum that instead of wasting time at home I should join him in the modeling thing and my mum consented. That was how I started with entertainment. I was going for auditions. It was during one of those auditions that a lady told me about another audition and she asked if I’ll like to go. I said OK. I accompanied her for the movie audition and that was the movie, Nneka Part 2.
She went for the audition but didn’t get the part. She was quite sad and then she said there were still other auditions and would I like to go? I said no, but she said it was not like they would ask for money. I have nothing to lose. So I went and I got the part. That was my first contact with acting in movies. By the time I heard of the following audition, I was bold enough to go for it. That was how I started.
My widowed mother was so scared I would get pregnant before I was 16 and she used to beat me silly if I came home later than 5pm which was my curfew time. I remember those days when I would finish acting and go back home and I’d be beaten silly. My mum was a disciplinarian and there was this belief that if you are into acting, singing, entertainment you have to be wayward. So, when you mention going for audition for a movie, my mum would say “Acting!”. You didn’t even say you want to go into singing or any such area. My mum just couldn’t understand the difference. She was just being careful and protective.
My dad died when I was twelve and there’s a thing with your dad dying early. As a widow there was so much pressure on her. I’m the only girl and the first child and I understood the pressure on her. Everybody was talking and saying that I was going to become wayward and get pregnant. They told her to her face that they knew I was going to get pregnant before I was sixteen. She was really scared and when all those things were happening it was like I was doing exactly the things they said was going to happen.
Her response was to be really hard on me to prevent me from getting spoilt. I don’t know what propelled me to go on despite my mum’s disciplines because one, they weren’t paying me well in the movies; two, I wasn’t that interested in acting then, and three, there was nothing really to look forward to in terms of success models then. There was no fame then because the only famous people then were the ones on TV. Even those that were on TV then weren’t so admired. I still don’t understand what really kept me going. It had to be God or maybe because I didn’t have a lot of things to do. There was no money in it for me, there was no fame and on top of it I got beaten.
I was always coming home late, there’s no way you can do this job and still be in control of your time. No matter how much you try something is going to hold you back. I used to go home late I had a curfew of five o clock set by my mum, which I thought was unreasonable. Then, I still didn’t get home until nine or ten o clock and there was no GSM to call.
There are so many producers in this country today that will tell you they’ve met Omotola’s mum. Kingsley Ogoro, Emeka Ossai, Zeb Ejiro, Fred Amata, who has not seen my mum? Who? She never came on set. They had to go and meet her in the house to explain to her why they want to use me, and that they’d take care of me and when they were going to bring me back home. Everybody that had used me during that time had to go to her, all of them had to go to her. She had to know you personally, you have to give her your house address and everything about you. It was terrible I was so embarrassed.
In the initial days, you were into movies more like for the love of it and anybody who got on any pedestal at that time was purely on merit. Nollywood was not as wild as it is now. There was not much of the issue of sexual harassment then. I think Nollywood was decent then. It wasn’t as wild as now. Most of the people I met then were like father figures. It was even worse when they got to know your family. They felt they had to watch out for you. Sometimes when I was loitering around Zeb Ejiro’s office then he would shout and order me home and I’d have to immediately take a bus and go home. We weren’t that many, it was a small world. Everybody knew everybody. There wasn’t too much money in the game so nobody was trying so hard to impress anybody. Most of us used to come around in slippers (laughs) and shorts. We were all family and you wouldn’t even find anybody to attract you for affairs then, unlike now when you look at another colleague and he’s all trushed up, rich, clean.
I was still a virgin when I got married.
Given my mum’s stern attitude, it is natural to think I didn’t date anybody before I got married. But, that’s not the case. I had boyfriends before I met my husband but it’s not something too deep as people may think nowadays. You just go out and have lunch together and all the rest of it. As for deep my affairs went before I met my husband, it is just to say that I got married as a virgin, so that answers the rest of the question.
Everybody already knew my husband in the family before I got married to him and he was just like one of those friends. We actually got to know his elder sister before him because he didn’t live here and when he started coming around it was like an extension of the family friend, though my mum was always suspecting that that he had something up his sleeves. She was like hmnnnnnnnnn(laughs) but my husband is a very humble and likeable guy. I think she just naturally fell in love with him and we became like family. And I guess she knew when something started between us but she was doing as if she didn’t want to know what she didn’t want to know! She didn’t want to hear any story.
When I was 18, I felt I was already an adult. We told her what we wanted to do. She found it very difficult because she felt that this is not America, this is Nigeria, nobody sees you as an adult at 18. She thought I should finish my education at the higher institution before getting married. She knew the guy was good and didn’t want me to lose him. She knew the guy would take care of me but because she was thinking of my dad’s family, she didn’t want things to go wrong and get blamed.
Growing Up Without A Father
I wish I don’t have to answer this question. My father died when I was 12. My younger brother was four while the one after him was just two years old. My mum did not see it coming because my father was so full of life. It was my father’s club Ekimomi Social Club that paid my school fees throughout my secondary school. He was working at Ikoyi Club. I remembered that lots of meetings were done after he passed on so that we can keep up with our lifestyle. I was attending Chrisland, (an elite private school in Lagos) and that was not a cheap school. My mum was like a full time housewife though she had a store where she was selling drinks. Lots of people were telling her about all sorts and incisions were made on our bodies to keep away evil. You can see the one they put on my chest. It was a very terrible period.
The most interesting thing was that everybody would be with you within a few weeks when the incident happened and all of a sudden everybody leaves. It is the worst feeling in the world because you feel confused and alone. That was where I started developing independence. I had two options at that time, it was either I went down the drain or up the ladder. I did a lot crying in private but I never cried in front of my mother. She would cry and I was always telling her everything would be alright. But anytime I left her for my room, I would cry. My brothers had to move to another school because Chrisland was too expensive and by then I had gained admission into Command Secondary School, Kaduna. My mum had to struggle. There were times when we did not have food to eat.
I went to a money lender, sold our TV and Video sets to pay my brother’s school fees. I tried to keep busy and even though my mum was not in approval of what I was doing it was helping. The modeling and acting helped. And I’ve always been a shrewd person. Though my mum was not willing to take the money I was making but there was no where else money was coming from. I remembered a particular experience. There was this particular actor that was called Black. I used to go to Zeb Ejiro’s office and he knew about my struggles. My brother’s school fees was due and there was no money.
The people that were supposed to pay couldn’t come up with the money. I was at Zeb’s office crying when the Black guy saw me and asked what the problem was. I told him and he promised to help. He took me to one man who did Visa for people to travel out. I met lots of people in the man’s sitting room seeking help. When we met him he asked what my problem was and everybody’s attention shifted to me. I just started crying considering the background I came from. He loaned me some money and I was supposed to pay the Black guy the money from a job I did. Unfortunately, they didn’t pay me on time. The Black guy turned my life into a living misery. It got to a point where I had to sell personal effects from my house. I had to sell our TV and video to pay him which were the only consolation my younger brothers had. My mother cried during that period and it was then that my mother told me never to borrow money again. Yet, I didn’t take it against Black because he was there for me when I needed help. It got to a point where he was threatening my life because the guy was threatening his too. That was the peak of our suffering.
Mortal Inheritance was my fifth movie but it shot me into limelight
A lot of people thought Mortal Inheritance is my first movie because it shot me into limelight. It was officially my fifth but it came out as my fourth, coming out before Abused. Then, unlike now, you first have to be a local star in the movie circle before you’ll now be projected to the world. There was still a measure of formality then unlike now where you come from nowhere, do one movie and you’ll start feeling like a star and they start calling you top actress. In those days you came on set and you see the people that are older than you in the industry and you have to show them respect because you know that these same people are the ones that would recommend you. I was one of the first to earn N150,000 per movie The defining period for Nollywood came with Onome and Rattlesnake in 1995/1996. People started turning to it.
I was one of the people that started earning good money like N150,000, N200,000 but before that time it was just between N30,000—N70,000. And even the first time, they were telling me I was overpaid and the guy is still owing me N5000 (laughs). That was when the traders started trading with the Nigerian movie industry and later became marketers. It was that period that they came in that it now moved into home video the way it is now. Stories were very balanced then, not written to project any particular region but towards 1997 things changed.
I don’t blame them (the Igbos) for doing what they did, naturally I think you will want to project where you are from. I don’t think the Igbos necessarily buy more movies. Till date, the people that still goes to the theater to watch cinemas are Yorubas. I don’t think Igbos are still buying more movies than Yorubas but I think the bone of contention is that people think they should have been doing the movies in Igbo language so that we’ll know that they are doing Igbo movies. A filmmaker will not do a film based on a belief but because they were not film makers they projected their belief and I don’t blame them. The Igbos took over Nollywood because they are better businessmen while people like the late Hubert Ogunde made great, in-depth pictures just for the love of the arts. The theater started in the west with the likes of Hubert Ogunde but somehow the Igbos seems to have taken over especially when you are talking about home videos not cinema. I think it’s because they are business men. When Hubert Ogunde and the rest of them started it wasn’t because of business it was for the love of the game. I’ve watched some of these movies that were done back in those days and you could see the depth of art and you could tell that most of these people weren’t paid in millions but they enjoyed what they were doing, pictures that could live to any standard. These days a lot of people are more interested in doing movies for the gains. The first Igbo people that joined then were traders but now we have people who have transcended from traders to producers and marketers but in the beginning they just came in as business men.
I once heard that there was a gang-up to get me out of Nollywood because I was getting too powerful for an outsider. When I started in the movie industry, we had a lot of independent producers then who just wanted to work. You didn’t have to be Igbo, Hausa ,Yoruba then to be in Nollywood. We had people from every tribe in Nollywood but as time went on I remember a notable producer whom I don’t want to name but I’m sure if he’s reading this interview he’ll know I’m talking about him and he’ll probably be laughing. He called me and sat me down because he was like a godfather to me. He said you are a very bright act but there is a gang-up against you and you really have to be careful because some people have vowed to get you out of Nollywood. And I said what did they say I did wrong? He said because I’m not from their place and I’m becoming too powerful as an outsider. Actually, there were two of us that he talked about. The other person was a lead actor and I don’t want to mention his name as well. He is also not Igbo. They said both of us were becoming too powerful and we were outsiders and that there was a gang up to move us out of Nollywood.
He was really scared because the people that they were talking about were powerful. I laughed and said I was not going to bow at anybody’s feet just to win their admiration or anything. I believe I got to where I am on merit and by God’s grace I believe those two things should sustain me and if they don’t I’ll just fall back to business and in the mean time I have a man taking care of me so I won’t suffer. I remember him bursting out laughing and saying he should be discussing with the guy and not me. After that discussion I looked out for the signs of the gang-up. Maybe they came but I didn’t notice. Most of the people that have employed me are actually Igbos. To me there is no balance in that story. Maybe it happened and I didn’t notice, maybe people tried and they gave up or maybe they are still trying.
I don’t know what they mean by I was getting powerful but I think if you comport yourself in a certain way in an industry that was beginning to employ a lot of people with many suffering from poverty syndrome and people talk a lot to curry favour and some people do other things to get work and stuff. When you don’t fall into those categories, don’t greet anybody specially or call them any special name, you don’t attend their naming ceremony if you don’t feel obliged to so that they can count you worthy; at that point they start to feel who the hell do you think you are. Maybe when they meet with their friends they talk about it and end up saying ‘but we need am sha’. Yeas, I’ve heard those things like producers telling people to change to Igbo names. I don’t think anybody will risk telling me that to my face because they know that I might talk. I might say we have talked about it because we joke about it. People say I look like an Igbo girl. They gave me names like Ugonma. Instead of calling me Omotola they call me Ugonma in the movies. I don’t have any problems with it because my husband is half Igbo. I don’t see it as a slight on my person but as a continuation of who I am. I understand also that people think I’m Igbo because when I went to the market in those days people used to speak Igbo to me.
Top actors and actresses were banned to drive down our fees and pave way for new actors and actresses. Actually before the one-year ban happened I was told it was going to happen. There were so many things some of us heard and then when it happened there were so many other things that you now saw on the news and we were like are they trying to confuse us. The people that we heard were going to be banned were a certain kind of people (I don’t want to say more than that) and then we felt if it was because of this why is this person there or what am I doing there. It was one event that was confusing in a lot of ways. What we arrived at as the reason is that they were probably doing it to push down our fees.
Some people were not from a particular region, also that they wanted to launch some new faces into the industry at a cheaper cost. Obviously, they’d been struggling to do it because of us. There were some personal things also like somebody insulted one person, also that some people came on set with big cars. That was the most ridiculous of it all, and that some people tell the producers to pay their fees into their accounts. But we’ve come to agree that the reason was simply because of the pay because most of the people on that list are the highest earners.
I think initially it worked because they had to bring up a lot of propaganda to justify their actions and to get the whole public to lose respect for us. Things like Omotola is a snob, she’s very troublesome on set and people are like why is she like that now? There were all kinds of rumours about those on that list just to get us on the wrong side of public opinion and tilt goodwill towards the new person that they were bringing. Even journalists helped them hype it a bit but after a while the whole thing just died down.
I invest in real estate
I’m comfortable. I invest. I’m a business woman even before the so called boom in Nollywood. I was making money from other things. The only thing I don’t do is buy and sell because I feel I’m not cut out for that. I don’t think I have the temperament for that. I’ll lose money. I think a lot of us have seen what happens all over the world and are wise. We don’t want to end up being famous and then ending up in poverty. If you are from my generation of actors and that happens to you then they are following you from the village because you should have known better. I think a lot of my colleagues are money-wise.
READ ENTIRE INTERVIEW at www.sunnewsonline.com
Sunday, April 19, 2009 • www.sunnewsonline.com
She has a to-die-for figure even after four children, a face to match, talent that stands out in the Nollywood crowd and a marriage that has loads of made-in-heaven trimmings. She was the 12-year-old girl who grew up in a hurry when her father suddenly died and had to resort to a moneylender to keep her brothers in school. She was also the schoolgirl who watched victims of Kaduna religious crisis stabbed and slaughtered as they scrambled to scale her school walls into safety while helping to deliver babies of female refugees when she hardly knew what to do. Try and imagine this same girl being thoroughly whipped by her mother for coming home a minute after 5pm which was her curfew time. Do those descriptions sound like Omotola Jalade-Ekeinde? Well, she is the actress who has lived all these parts not in her movie world but in her real life in addition to singing for armed robbers and listening to their eerie confession, and has turned it all into a money-spinning venture.
The ‘A’ Class act dropped by our corporate office and told us things we are sure you haven’t heard and we also learnt a few things from her apart from tips on how to invest in real estate. For instance, if you have had to speak up for yourself since age 12 and watch out for three younger ones and a widowed mother, bullies do not easily cow you. The journey has been long, very long, from the days she sold the family television set to pay urgent family bills to getting married to a pilot in an aircraft 20,000 feet above sea level. It is a no-holds barred story, another promise kept from Sunday Sun
I got into acting while waiting for my JAMB result.
When I left school in 1994, I was waiting for my JAMB result, and I had to wait for about nine months. A friend of mine, Akorede, who was a model told my mum that instead of wasting time at home I should join him in the modeling thing and my mum consented. That was how I started with entertainment. I was going for auditions. It was during one of those auditions that a lady told me about another audition and she asked if I’ll like to go. I said OK. I accompanied her for the movie audition and that was the movie, Nneka Part 2.
She went for the audition but didn’t get the part. She was quite sad and then she said there were still other auditions and would I like to go? I said no, but she said it was not like they would ask for money. I have nothing to lose. So I went and I got the part. That was my first contact with acting in movies. By the time I heard of the following audition, I was bold enough to go for it. That was how I started.
My widowed mother was so scared I would get pregnant before I was 16 and she used to beat me silly if I came home later than 5pm which was my curfew time. I remember those days when I would finish acting and go back home and I’d be beaten silly. My mum was a disciplinarian and there was this belief that if you are into acting, singing, entertainment you have to be wayward. So, when you mention going for audition for a movie, my mum would say “Acting!”. You didn’t even say you want to go into singing or any such area. My mum just couldn’t understand the difference. She was just being careful and protective.
My dad died when I was twelve and there’s a thing with your dad dying early. As a widow there was so much pressure on her. I’m the only girl and the first child and I understood the pressure on her. Everybody was talking and saying that I was going to become wayward and get pregnant. They told her to her face that they knew I was going to get pregnant before I was sixteen. She was really scared and when all those things were happening it was like I was doing exactly the things they said was going to happen.
Her response was to be really hard on me to prevent me from getting spoilt. I don’t know what propelled me to go on despite my mum’s disciplines because one, they weren’t paying me well in the movies; two, I wasn’t that interested in acting then, and three, there was nothing really to look forward to in terms of success models then. There was no fame then because the only famous people then were the ones on TV. Even those that were on TV then weren’t so admired. I still don’t understand what really kept me going. It had to be God or maybe because I didn’t have a lot of things to do. There was no money in it for me, there was no fame and on top of it I got beaten.
I was always coming home late, there’s no way you can do this job and still be in control of your time. No matter how much you try something is going to hold you back. I used to go home late I had a curfew of five o clock set by my mum, which I thought was unreasonable. Then, I still didn’t get home until nine or ten o clock and there was no GSM to call.
There are so many producers in this country today that will tell you they’ve met Omotola’s mum. Kingsley Ogoro, Emeka Ossai, Zeb Ejiro, Fred Amata, who has not seen my mum? Who? She never came on set. They had to go and meet her in the house to explain to her why they want to use me, and that they’d take care of me and when they were going to bring me back home. Everybody that had used me during that time had to go to her, all of them had to go to her. She had to know you personally, you have to give her your house address and everything about you. It was terrible I was so embarrassed.
In the initial days, you were into movies more like for the love of it and anybody who got on any pedestal at that time was purely on merit. Nollywood was not as wild as it is now. There was not much of the issue of sexual harassment then. I think Nollywood was decent then. It wasn’t as wild as now. Most of the people I met then were like father figures. It was even worse when they got to know your family. They felt they had to watch out for you. Sometimes when I was loitering around Zeb Ejiro’s office then he would shout and order me home and I’d have to immediately take a bus and go home. We weren’t that many, it was a small world. Everybody knew everybody. There wasn’t too much money in the game so nobody was trying so hard to impress anybody. Most of us used to come around in slippers (laughs) and shorts. We were all family and you wouldn’t even find anybody to attract you for affairs then, unlike now when you look at another colleague and he’s all trushed up, rich, clean.
I was still a virgin when I got married.
Given my mum’s stern attitude, it is natural to think I didn’t date anybody before I got married. But, that’s not the case. I had boyfriends before I met my husband but it’s not something too deep as people may think nowadays. You just go out and have lunch together and all the rest of it. As for deep my affairs went before I met my husband, it is just to say that I got married as a virgin, so that answers the rest of the question.
Everybody already knew my husband in the family before I got married to him and he was just like one of those friends. We actually got to know his elder sister before him because he didn’t live here and when he started coming around it was like an extension of the family friend, though my mum was always suspecting that that he had something up his sleeves. She was like hmnnnnnnnnn(laughs) but my husband is a very humble and likeable guy. I think she just naturally fell in love with him and we became like family. And I guess she knew when something started between us but she was doing as if she didn’t want to know what she didn’t want to know! She didn’t want to hear any story.
When I was 18, I felt I was already an adult. We told her what we wanted to do. She found it very difficult because she felt that this is not America, this is Nigeria, nobody sees you as an adult at 18. She thought I should finish my education at the higher institution before getting married. She knew the guy was good and didn’t want me to lose him. She knew the guy would take care of me but because she was thinking of my dad’s family, she didn’t want things to go wrong and get blamed.
Growing Up Without A Father
I wish I don’t have to answer this question. My father died when I was 12. My younger brother was four while the one after him was just two years old. My mum did not see it coming because my father was so full of life. It was my father’s club Ekimomi Social Club that paid my school fees throughout my secondary school. He was working at Ikoyi Club. I remembered that lots of meetings were done after he passed on so that we can keep up with our lifestyle. I was attending Chrisland, (an elite private school in Lagos) and that was not a cheap school. My mum was like a full time housewife though she had a store where she was selling drinks. Lots of people were telling her about all sorts and incisions were made on our bodies to keep away evil. You can see the one they put on my chest. It was a very terrible period.
The most interesting thing was that everybody would be with you within a few weeks when the incident happened and all of a sudden everybody leaves. It is the worst feeling in the world because you feel confused and alone. That was where I started developing independence. I had two options at that time, it was either I went down the drain or up the ladder. I did a lot crying in private but I never cried in front of my mother. She would cry and I was always telling her everything would be alright. But anytime I left her for my room, I would cry. My brothers had to move to another school because Chrisland was too expensive and by then I had gained admission into Command Secondary School, Kaduna. My mum had to struggle. There were times when we did not have food to eat.
I went to a money lender, sold our TV and Video sets to pay my brother’s school fees. I tried to keep busy and even though my mum was not in approval of what I was doing it was helping. The modeling and acting helped. And I’ve always been a shrewd person. Though my mum was not willing to take the money I was making but there was no where else money was coming from. I remembered a particular experience. There was this particular actor that was called Black. I used to go to Zeb Ejiro’s office and he knew about my struggles. My brother’s school fees was due and there was no money.
The people that were supposed to pay couldn’t come up with the money. I was at Zeb’s office crying when the Black guy saw me and asked what the problem was. I told him and he promised to help. He took me to one man who did Visa for people to travel out. I met lots of people in the man’s sitting room seeking help. When we met him he asked what my problem was and everybody’s attention shifted to me. I just started crying considering the background I came from. He loaned me some money and I was supposed to pay the Black guy the money from a job I did. Unfortunately, they didn’t pay me on time. The Black guy turned my life into a living misery. It got to a point where I had to sell personal effects from my house. I had to sell our TV and video to pay him which were the only consolation my younger brothers had. My mother cried during that period and it was then that my mother told me never to borrow money again. Yet, I didn’t take it against Black because he was there for me when I needed help. It got to a point where he was threatening my life because the guy was threatening his too. That was the peak of our suffering.
Mortal Inheritance was my fifth movie but it shot me into limelight
A lot of people thought Mortal Inheritance is my first movie because it shot me into limelight. It was officially my fifth but it came out as my fourth, coming out before Abused. Then, unlike now, you first have to be a local star in the movie circle before you’ll now be projected to the world. There was still a measure of formality then unlike now where you come from nowhere, do one movie and you’ll start feeling like a star and they start calling you top actress. In those days you came on set and you see the people that are older than you in the industry and you have to show them respect because you know that these same people are the ones that would recommend you. I was one of the first to earn N150,000 per movie The defining period for Nollywood came with Onome and Rattlesnake in 1995/1996. People started turning to it.
I was one of the people that started earning good money like N150,000, N200,000 but before that time it was just between N30,000—N70,000. And even the first time, they were telling me I was overpaid and the guy is still owing me N5000 (laughs). That was when the traders started trading with the Nigerian movie industry and later became marketers. It was that period that they came in that it now moved into home video the way it is now. Stories were very balanced then, not written to project any particular region but towards 1997 things changed.
I don’t blame them (the Igbos) for doing what they did, naturally I think you will want to project where you are from. I don’t think the Igbos necessarily buy more movies. Till date, the people that still goes to the theater to watch cinemas are Yorubas. I don’t think Igbos are still buying more movies than Yorubas but I think the bone of contention is that people think they should have been doing the movies in Igbo language so that we’ll know that they are doing Igbo movies. A filmmaker will not do a film based on a belief but because they were not film makers they projected their belief and I don’t blame them. The Igbos took over Nollywood because they are better businessmen while people like the late Hubert Ogunde made great, in-depth pictures just for the love of the arts. The theater started in the west with the likes of Hubert Ogunde but somehow the Igbos seems to have taken over especially when you are talking about home videos not cinema. I think it’s because they are business men. When Hubert Ogunde and the rest of them started it wasn’t because of business it was for the love of the game. I’ve watched some of these movies that were done back in those days and you could see the depth of art and you could tell that most of these people weren’t paid in millions but they enjoyed what they were doing, pictures that could live to any standard. These days a lot of people are more interested in doing movies for the gains. The first Igbo people that joined then were traders but now we have people who have transcended from traders to producers and marketers but in the beginning they just came in as business men.
I once heard that there was a gang-up to get me out of Nollywood because I was getting too powerful for an outsider. When I started in the movie industry, we had a lot of independent producers then who just wanted to work. You didn’t have to be Igbo, Hausa ,Yoruba then to be in Nollywood. We had people from every tribe in Nollywood but as time went on I remember a notable producer whom I don’t want to name but I’m sure if he’s reading this interview he’ll know I’m talking about him and he’ll probably be laughing. He called me and sat me down because he was like a godfather to me. He said you are a very bright act but there is a gang-up against you and you really have to be careful because some people have vowed to get you out of Nollywood. And I said what did they say I did wrong? He said because I’m not from their place and I’m becoming too powerful as an outsider. Actually, there were two of us that he talked about. The other person was a lead actor and I don’t want to mention his name as well. He is also not Igbo. They said both of us were becoming too powerful and we were outsiders and that there was a gang up to move us out of Nollywood.
He was really scared because the people that they were talking about were powerful. I laughed and said I was not going to bow at anybody’s feet just to win their admiration or anything. I believe I got to where I am on merit and by God’s grace I believe those two things should sustain me and if they don’t I’ll just fall back to business and in the mean time I have a man taking care of me so I won’t suffer. I remember him bursting out laughing and saying he should be discussing with the guy and not me. After that discussion I looked out for the signs of the gang-up. Maybe they came but I didn’t notice. Most of the people that have employed me are actually Igbos. To me there is no balance in that story. Maybe it happened and I didn’t notice, maybe people tried and they gave up or maybe they are still trying.
I don’t know what they mean by I was getting powerful but I think if you comport yourself in a certain way in an industry that was beginning to employ a lot of people with many suffering from poverty syndrome and people talk a lot to curry favour and some people do other things to get work and stuff. When you don’t fall into those categories, don’t greet anybody specially or call them any special name, you don’t attend their naming ceremony if you don’t feel obliged to so that they can count you worthy; at that point they start to feel who the hell do you think you are. Maybe when they meet with their friends they talk about it and end up saying ‘but we need am sha’. Yeas, I’ve heard those things like producers telling people to change to Igbo names. I don’t think anybody will risk telling me that to my face because they know that I might talk. I might say we have talked about it because we joke about it. People say I look like an Igbo girl. They gave me names like Ugonma. Instead of calling me Omotola they call me Ugonma in the movies. I don’t have any problems with it because my husband is half Igbo. I don’t see it as a slight on my person but as a continuation of who I am. I understand also that people think I’m Igbo because when I went to the market in those days people used to speak Igbo to me.
Top actors and actresses were banned to drive down our fees and pave way for new actors and actresses. Actually before the one-year ban happened I was told it was going to happen. There were so many things some of us heard and then when it happened there were so many other things that you now saw on the news and we were like are they trying to confuse us. The people that we heard were going to be banned were a certain kind of people (I don’t want to say more than that) and then we felt if it was because of this why is this person there or what am I doing there. It was one event that was confusing in a lot of ways. What we arrived at as the reason is that they were probably doing it to push down our fees.
Some people were not from a particular region, also that they wanted to launch some new faces into the industry at a cheaper cost. Obviously, they’d been struggling to do it because of us. There were some personal things also like somebody insulted one person, also that some people came on set with big cars. That was the most ridiculous of it all, and that some people tell the producers to pay their fees into their accounts. But we’ve come to agree that the reason was simply because of the pay because most of the people on that list are the highest earners.
I think initially it worked because they had to bring up a lot of propaganda to justify their actions and to get the whole public to lose respect for us. Things like Omotola is a snob, she’s very troublesome on set and people are like why is she like that now? There were all kinds of rumours about those on that list just to get us on the wrong side of public opinion and tilt goodwill towards the new person that they were bringing. Even journalists helped them hype it a bit but after a while the whole thing just died down.
I invest in real estate
I’m comfortable. I invest. I’m a business woman even before the so called boom in Nollywood. I was making money from other things. The only thing I don’t do is buy and sell because I feel I’m not cut out for that. I don’t think I have the temperament for that. I’ll lose money. I think a lot of us have seen what happens all over the world and are wise. We don’t want to end up being famous and then ending up in poverty. If you are from my generation of actors and that happens to you then they are following you from the village because you should have known better. I think a lot of my colleagues are money-wise.
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