A Senior Colleague Almost Ended My Career – Damilola Oni

Nollywood actress Damilola Oni has shared how a senior colleague almost disrupted her acting career. She recently had her say during an interview on Oyinmomo TV, and fans have been reacting.

Stating that the unnamed colleague refused to work with her, Damilola shared how it created so much tension on set and ended up affecting a big role she would have played.

The moviestar added that the producer eventually offered her a smaller role to maintain the peace on set.

Her words, “Someone once said they can never work with me. I don’t know if it was an offence, but the person said they can’t work with me, that they can’t work on the same set with me.

In fact, there was a time when I was on set and supposed to play a role. It was quite a big one for me, and I was excited about it. I had waited for five, six, and even eight hours, and no one had attended to me. I was wondering why I hadn’t started filming when I was supposed to be the lead actor. Later, the producer came into the room and asked if I had offended a certain person.

I asked what happened, and he said the person we were supposed to act together with said we had to pick between them and you. And he said he can’t pick me over the person. So, I said there is no problem. So I asked what next, and he said the only thing he could do is to offer me a minor role with about 4 to 5 scenes. That’s what I will end up doing. I wanted to pick up my bag and leave.

I was distraught, I was pained, but I thought that leaving would mean that I allowed the person to crush me, and I didn’t want to. Because we will both succeed in our careers, and no one can frustrate me to stop this job.”

WOW.

Nollywood is a sobriquet that originally referred to the Nigerian film industry. The origin of the term dates back to the early 2000s, traced to an article in The New York Times. Due to the history of evolving meanings and contexts, there is no clear or agreed-upon definition for the term, which has made it a subject to several controversies.

The origin of the term “Nollywood” remains unclear; Jonathan Haynes traced the earliest usage of the word to a 2002 article by Matt Steinglass in the New York Times, where it was used to describe Nigerian cinema.

Charles Igwe noted that Norimitsu Onishi also used the name in a September 2002 article he wrote for the New York Times. The term continues to be used in the media to refer to the Nigerian film industry, with its definition later assumed to be a portmanteau of the words “Nigeria” and “Hollywood”, the American major film hub.

Film-making in Nigeria is divided largely along regional, and marginally ethnic and religious lines. Thus, there are distinct film industries – each seeking to portray the concern of the particular section and ethnicity it represents. However, there is the English-language film industry which is a melting pot for filmmaking and filmmakers from most of the regional industries.