Treasure and Tracy Daniels are identical twins, who have so many things in common. In this interview with Yetunde Oladeinde, Treasure speaks about their world as actresses, producers, models as well as what they would miss about their father who died few months back
TELL us about your experience in Nollywood and how the experience influenced your life and career
I am one of the most fortunate people in Nollywood because, to me, right from the start, luck played a lot of role for me especially in places where other new and upcoming actresses struggled. So I had a smooth entry and honestly did so little for the kind of grace and success that followed. For instance, my first movie role, which came to me as a surprise, came when I wasn’t even looking but I believe it was because we were twins. At that point, my twin sister and I had gone for a photo shoot at Hotel Presidential, Enugu, and it also happened to be a venue for some ongoing movie auditioning.
We didn’t have any idea that it could take place in Enugu State because at those times, movies only happened in Lagos. During our photo shoot, we surprisingly started running into a lot of super star actors and actresses, people we had only been able to see on TV. Here they were, right before our faces in reality. I mean people like Eucharia Anunobi, Pete Edochie; who is popularly known as Okonkwo of Chinua Achebe’s ‘Things fall Apart”. We also had Tony Umez, Clem Ohameze, referred to as Pastor Weaver, Sam Loco etc. We were super excited; it was like seeing the gods among us. Little did we know that we were about to be starred in a movie with these people. The director of the auditioning movie, Lancelot Oduwa Imansuen, referred to as THE GOVERNOR, had sent for my twin and me. We went to the audition hall and we got auditioned as Eucharia Anunobi’s daughters. Whatever we had done, must have impressed the crowd and we received a round of applause from the audition crowd, and that was how we got our first movie roles in the Last Burial 2 as Eucharia’s kids. That was how we made our grand entry into Nollywood.
I must also admit that most of the success I had in Nollywood had been because I’m an identical twin. It was very fascinating to most people, including me, to watch two human beings looking like a split of one walking in two. I always say that if you are a twin, you already are a star and don’t really require to do so much to shine because you already stand out.
However, even though it took just one audition call to get me and my twin co-starring in many and more Nollywood movies, we didn’t really sustain the pursuit for a very long time because growth had happened to us and what used to be so good and appealing to us became not really so good and appealing to us anymore as responsibilities also encroached.
One of the challenges was the fact that Nollywood producers never paid or had a budget for roles played by the younger ones in those days. I guess they believed that kids didn’t pay bills and therefore would not require to be paid some artist fees. It is also believed that if you find pleasure in appearing on movies with all the superstars you admire, that alone should serve as a good enough reward for you.
Also, some producers who found it fit to pay us for movie roles considered my twin and me as one individual and therefore should be paid the fee of one individual. All these experiences weren’t encouraging to us at all, but we managed it as kids at entry level. However, when we became grown women with bills to pay, we did not accept it anymore. That was one of the reasons we didn’t get frequent on movies as we used to.
The other reason was that our parents’ church, Christ Apostolic Church, persecuted our parents for our sake and made them withdraw their support for us as young actresses.
What are some of the memorable moments in your life and career?
There are a lot and I will try to narrow them down to the most recent good and painful moments of my life and of my career. The good part was when our new YouTube channel reached the monetisation threshold and was finally monetised by Google. After so much work and efforts which seemed like squeezing out blood out of stone, we overcame it. The second of course was the death of our dearly beloved father. It was the lowest moment of our lives and we are gradually overcoming this.
So after we started turning down roles with little or no decent budget on artist fee, we realised that years went by without us being featured in any movie. We then told ourselves that we were not going to budge to appear in movies and be made famous unnecessarily with empty pockets.
We were considered arrogant and stubborn by producers, but who cares for fame that would expose you to so many fans who would only come back on the blogs to say how poor you are living after appearing so fancy on movies. So, we had to stop taking those movie roles and waited as long for a decent production to be featured in.
On the other hand, our fans started getting worried and they kept looking for us everywhere. We didn’t even realise that we already had so many fans, we didn’t even realise that we have been noticed enough to be missed by so many people.
So, when their questions of our whereabouts became intense, we decided to start a YouTube Channel. This time, not to publish Nollywood movies (since that’s mostly what YouTube is all about to Nigerians, besides music), but to publish updates about my twin and I to our fans and followers. That was how our YouTube channel was born. The challenge was how to get all the people sincerely looking for us to find our VLOGS and our channel.
It’s ongoing and anyone who knows my twin and I very well will tell you that we never back out on whatever we really set our minds to do. No matter how seemingly impossible it may appear or how long it takes.
So, we started this channel simply to update our seekers and thought we might as well get paid by Google. We also serve as content providers by our vlogs and other activities we put out there to entertain our community. The response became almost magical from the video we made after receiving the news about our father’s exit and became almost inconsolable. In fact, those were the two videos which shot us up into qualifying for monetisation.
Our dad was seriously injured in a road accident which occurred on the 29th of October, just eight days after our birthday. He died four days later, precisely on the 3rd of November 2019 on the church altar during Sunday service. He was a priest of the most high God and he died in active service. It can rightly be said that my dad prepared his exit and chose all the events and places that aligned with his wishes. He chose the month, the day, the time and place to breathe his last. It was more than a coincidence and I began to have a turnaround from that single event of his exit and how it all happened. So, I concluded that life in itself is a big mystery and should be paid more attention than I am doing. His funeral arrangement is for the 6th and 7th of February 2020 at his hometown in Ogwudu Ngbo Ohaukwu local government area, Ebonyi State.
That is when his remains would be given up by men, but as for his real self, he left this world already, even death couldn’t dictate for him. He arranged his own exit and crossed over into a better place, with a superior body which cannot be destroyed.
I can boldly say I have my own personal guardian angel now and I am one of his legacies. It pains me that most of you reading did not get the chance to personally interact with my dad, The Rev. Daniel Nwokike Idenyi, to see what an angel he was, but I am consoled that you can always see him through me and my siblings and I promise to always represent him well. He was a man of integrity.
Who or what inspired you to go into Nollywood?
I would say the super stars who I used to see as mini gods, for example Eucharia Anunobi and Hilda Dokubo. They were so beautiful and spoke good English as well as had such a fanciful life in the movies. I admired them so much and just wanted to be just like them when I grew up. I didn’t know my dream was going to come knocking on my door almost immediately as kids.
Tell us about the current and future projects that you are working on
Okay, after we stopped taking non paying movie roles, one of the things we did was producing a couple of our own movies. They were funded by our family and friends and a pool of our little savings.
Most of these movies haven’t really been seen by our fans because we didn’t have the resources to circulate them successfully without being exploited by pirates and shylocks. Few times we attempted distribution, we spent so much in making more than half a million CDs and DVDs which almost never left the ware houses and those distributed were almost never accounted for by distributors.
We then called back some of the works and started our strategy on distributing and selling through online. This is one of our main focus for 2020 as well as getting these movies published online. This way people can get them instantly without hassles from any part of the world and each streaming properly accounted for. This would include ‘Unknown Caller’ which was our last personal production and a lot of people are waiting to see it.
What are the challenges you have encountered in your career?
The challenges that I am about to state out here are not so unique to me, or my career industry. It affects any young girl growing up from a third world country with nothing else to help but a dream would also be familiar to these challenges. It includes finance, in the third world especially. No one would care what dreams you have or how good they are until you break even. How can you break even without a financial support especially starting from point zero, doing what nobody else in your entire lineage has ever done, carving a niche for yourself in a very competitive industry where even children of the affluent with so much of their parents support still find it difficult to break even? We were able to carve out a name Tracy and Treasure Daniels
from that industry. You may have good movies or ideas that could give you further breakthroughs or bring in more money, but if no funding comes for it, you are as good as someone who hasn’t done something. So that’s the case, but we refuse to accept that as our reality. Instead, we always push ahead and make plans as though we have fundings, and that has been the magic which brought us this far. Most of these projects surprise even us on how we pulled through.
How do you relax?
I love to relax with a book when I’m not working, it could be a hard copy but it’s mostly an audio book. For me, lately as that allows me to multi task too while I learn.
Who are your role models?
It used to be many other people but now I see no better person to inspire me than the future and ideal me.
What advice do you have for the young ones?
The younger me is that little girl that has nobody, no handed down advantages, no inspiration and just a modest livelihood while growing up. But in spite of all these, she still lived her dreams anyway. If you are in anyway close or relate to this or similar background, then here is a word for you. It doesn’t matter what others are doing, do yours anyway; it doesn’t matter who has gone ahead of you, run your own race anyway; it doesn’t matter how loud other voices ahead of you are, make your own voice heard; oppositions are nothing, fear is nothing. Also remember that excuses are nothing, only your determination is something; the only thing that gets you far.
You just lost your father. What would you miss most about him?
I have this penchant for quality people. I admire them like women would admire a rare piece of gem. And my dad happens to be one of such people. He was such an admirable person. I’ll miss having a lover of mankind take my calls. I liked to talk to him on phone. He has this calming effect that makes you see life so easy. He also had a deep sense of humour which demands a lot of intelligence to grab. I’ll miss that, I’ll miss how he accepted everybody the way they are. He loved humanity, he saw no wrong in anyone, he helped people when he needed help the most. I feel so honoured to be born and raised by my dad, Rev. Daniel Nwokike Idenyi; a man of integrity. Shine on, my dad.
How would you assess the performance of women in the sector you are operating in?
I love the recent development of women in Nollywood stepping up to be and do more things that weren’t considered for women earlier in Nollywood. There was a time when the Nollywood icons were mostly men and it seemed like whatever was done those days had to be anchored around the males. Then there had to be male lead starring above everyone else for a movie to be considered proper. Now it is no longer the case; women, especially young girls, star above all features and the movie is still considered successful.
In addition, women head the camera crew, women sponsor and co sponsor movies, women produce movies and more. I would rate women as trail blazers and I am so proud to be a woman.
