A conversation with veteran actor and cultural icon, Yemi Solade, leads to retrospection about ‘old Nollywood’ and the meteoric rise of Nigeria’s film industry. In this exclusive chat with OLAITAN GANIU, the thespian speaks on his contributions to the growth and development of industry, secret of staying relevant, expectations from the Tinubu-led government and others.
YOU are one of the foremost vanguards of the Nigerian movie industry, would it be appropriate to refer to you as a Nollywood actor?
You would be on point and correct if you address me as a Nollywood actor.
What is your view of the industry nowadays, compared to the days of VHS?
There have been three generational transitions in Nollywood since we conceptualised movie-making, using camcorders in 1988.
The first generation comprised Bayo Salamis, Jide Kosokos, Sam Loco Efes and the relevant and highly talented artists of that set. I belong to the second generation, while the present generation parades the Femi Adebayos, Funke Akindeles, Odunlade Adekolas, Bolanle Ninalowos, and many other young and dynamic hands in the field.
There is no doubt that there has been a great developmental change in the process of filmmaking over the years, as technology keeps playing a pivotal role. The work rate is higher today as against the beginning era. We have more avant-garde artists these days than there were in the past. A lot has metamorphosed and keeps doing so — virtually in every segment of the industry. It keeps getting better and more interesting.
You have stayed on top of your game for over four decades, what’s your secret?
I would submit that my professional conduct and ability to update and upgrade myself to fit into the dictates of the transitions that keep occurring in the field are my weaponry. I know I have limitless talent to act imbued in me naturally, and the quality of training I underwent manifests in my works. I don’t think these things I highlighted are any secret at all. These are simply the prerequisites one needs to ply the trade in Nollywood.
While growing up, did you imagine you would become an actor?
I did not have any inkling that I would end up in the field of acting. It was happenstantial. I had that love for performing arts as a toddler, and I ventured into dancing from my school days. That I would become an actor was never a thought or ever imagined.
Who are your mentors in the industry?
Professor Wole Soyinka, Professor Bayo Oduneye (late), Professor Femi Osofisan, Sam Loco Efe (late), Morgan Freeman, George Clooney, James Earl Jones and Redd Foxx.
You’re well known to be a promoter of tradition and culture, what’s your definition of culture?
Personally, I would define “Culture” as the cumulative deposit of knowledge, experience, beliefs, values, attitudes, meanings, hierarchies, religion, notions of time, roles, spatial relations, concepts of the universe, and material objects and possessions acquired by a group of people in the course of generations through individual and group striving.
Culture is the systems of knowledge shared by a relatively large group of people. Culture is communication, communication is culture. Culture in its broadest sense is cultivated behaviour; that is the totality of a person’s learned, accumulated experience which is socially transmitted, or more briefly, behaviour through social learning.
A culture is a way of life of a group of people–the behaviours, beliefs, values, and symbols that they accept, generally without thinking about them, and that are passed along by communication and imitation from one generation to the next.
Culture is symbolic communication. Some of its symbols include a group’s skills, knowledge, attitudes, values, and motives. The meanings of the symbols are learned and deliberately perpetuated in a society through its institutions.
Culture consists of patterns, explicit and implicit, of and for behaviour acquired and transmitted by symbols, constituting the distinctive achievement of human groups, including their embodiments in artifacts; the essential core of culture consists of traditional ideas and especially their attached values; culture systems may, on the one hand, be considered as products of action, on the other hand, as conditioning influences upon further action.
Culture is the sum of total of the learned behaviour of a group of people that are generally considered to be the tradition of that people and are transmitted from generation to generation.
Culture is a collective programming of the mind that distinguishes the members of one group or category of people from another.
But, Generation Z thinks the older generation’s ideologies and beliefs are outdated?
I would attempt to offer a preamble into the generational dichotomy and go ahead to drop a hypothesis that might lead us to an advisory position in the end.
There is plenty of debate about where Generation X begins and ends, and the millennials, and Generation Z. The truth is the definitions are always in flux because the boundaries themselves are continually being redefined. Some define millennials as being born beginning anywhere from 1978 to 1981. Similarly, the post-Millennial generation, known to most as Generation Z, begins with a birth-year roughly around 1997.
No matter which specific definition you use, we can all agree Gen Zers were tiny children on September 11, 2001. They were about a decade old at the end of the deepest and most protracted global recession since the Great Depression, in 2008. And they began entering high school, pursuing post-secondary education, or entering the workforce during the disruptions of the Global Pandemic in 2020.
Today’s young professionals in Nollywood are beginning their careers in a post-Pandemic ‘new normal’ of remote and hybrid work, permanently constrained resources, increased requirements placed on workers, and fewer promised rewards for nearly everyone. From day one, they find themselves bumping up against a crowded field of career-delayed millennials, not to mention plenty of even older practitioners who themselves may have faced career setbacks.
Of course, there are some things about being young and new in Nollywood that do remain much the same from generation to generation. Every new generation has its own unique formative history and comes into the industry challenging—often inadvertently—the current status quo in new and unexpected ways that are largely determined by the accidents of history shaping each new era. However, there are clear trend lines from my generation (Generation X) to (Millennials) and (Generation Z).
As a whole, Generation Z represents a continuation and perhaps the culmination of much larger historical forces driving transformations in the industry that will redefine the experience of practitioners of all ages.
My Advice: Generation Z should tap as much as they can from the millennials and as much as they can from my generation so that we all can continue the evolutionary cause and effects of Nollywood on the global space.
Two of the projects you featured in, Itura and The Trade, earned nomination at the just-concluded Africa Magic Viewers Choice Awards (AMVCA). How do you feel about this?
I felt good and elated to see those works getting nominations. Interestingly, I am yet to attend AMVCA, (Laughs). Do not let the organisers read this part.
As a former president of TAMPAN, what do you think the Yoruba movie sector lacks compared to the English sector?
As the Pioneer President of the Theatre Arts and Motion Pictures Practitioners Association of Nigeria (TAMPAN), I would iterate that the entry point into the field is made stringent and jealously protected. All manners of faces flood the business, and this trend drops the desired quality of production. I have never subscribed to that school of thought that divides Nollywood along ethnic stratification. I do not see an English setting in Nollywood. All I see is Nollywood, composed of Nigerian movie makers. The English actors I know are Roger Moore, Rowan Atkinson etc., etc. There are no English actors in Nollywood.
It’s becoming a norm for touts to demand money from actors at events and movie locations, as an industry leader how do you handle them?
Miscreants have become so idiotic and powerful in our society that they are celebrated here and there and Nollywood has embraced a number of them. So, when they accost practitioners for money, they see it as parading a sense of entitlement. It is obvious that Nollywood accommodates their class, hence the attraction the industry holds for them. For me, I let them know that I do not have that kind of money to throw away and they should rather gift me such funds.
You are one of the actors who don’t flaunt their wealth on social media, what’s your reason for this?
Maybe I don’t have material acquisitions to flaunt (Smile). At my age, I would not delve into such a vain venture.
How do you respond to criticism?
I go into it head-on or ignore it, depending on my mood or quality of critics or the critiquing.
As an educator, how were you able to combine teaching and acting together?
Teaching is fun. I embraced it during my NYSC Orientation year in Maiduguri, Borno State. It was about the most familiar terrain I could delve into while in the North East because of the highly conservative hemisphere. I did quite well-combining teaching and performing arts because of the amount of energy and time at my disposal. I was young and agile.
Acting or lecturing, which of the jobs is more profitable?
Both are lucrative. I would think that acting attracts more profitability in Nigeria. You know what I mean.
What are your expectations from the new government?
I expect President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to be people’s president. I expect his administration to place smiles on the faces of Nigeria, irrespective of their political affiliations or religious leanings.
I expect the President to encourage Theatre Arts and Filmmaking more than what the past leaders have done. In all, I expect him to take Nigeria to the zenith in all ramifications.
