Omotola To Launch Reality Series ... Reaffirms Loyalty To Nollywood

Omotola Jalade

Curtis Campbell, Gleaner Writer

Nollywood's highest paid actress Omotola Jalade Ekeinde is gearing up to launch her first reality series called 'The Real Me'. According to the Nigerian actress, her reality series will reflect her real-life issues and basically provide answers to misconceptions based on her regular activities.

"It's just about me. A lot of young people from Africa want to know how a celebrity and a female for that matter, and a married woman with children's life is from day to day. A lot of people think maybe I don't stay at home at all. All the busy questions you ask me in the interviews. So we are putting all of those in a visual format so then you can see for yourself and just have fun with it," she said.

Omotola disclosed that the reality series will not be scripted, expressing that the intention is to get the final product as truthful as possible.

"It's basically what I do every day, there is no scripting, none at all. These particular people, I told them that if I found out that they script some of the content, I will be very mad at them because you have cheated me," she laughed.

"Everything is very raw and what we are going with is the fact that they just believe in me and they are like, 'Relax, people are going to likeeverything," so I'm going with a hope that it's going to be fine," Omotola said.

'The Real Me' is expected to premiere this month. The actress alsodisclosed that her management is aiming to expand its audience leverage to other markets outside of Africa.

"It won't only be released in Nigeria, it will be the whole of Africa. It will also be in London, it's gonna be on SKY and I know they are working with some stations in America as well," she said.

Omotola also commented on the development of the Nollywood film industry and its infrastructure. She revealed that investors were now beginning to pump cash into their industry to improve its level of production.

"Right now, we don't really shoot in studios. We don't have studios like the big studios. But, right now, we are emerging into the new big budget Nollywood, and so I want to imagine that very soon we will have investors who will invest into the cinematic aspect of Nollywood, which is infrastructure and that stuff, We have more cinemas opening in Nigeria, we have about eight or nine opening," she said.

Nollywood is the second largest film industry in the world, only bettered by India's 'Bollywood' in terns of its production rate. However, despite the fact that both India and Nigeria produced more films than Hollywood, the commercial success of Hollywood remains unrivalled by both emerging industries.

Omotola being fully aware of the existing commercial disparity between Nollywood and Hollywood, revealed that Nigerian actors are quite comfortable with the success of Nollywood.

"The typical Nollywood actress does not want to go anywhere, we believe in ourselves and we believe in our industry. We have done collaborations with other countries and different artistes from other countries, and that is where we wanted to take it. In truth, I don't think any of us want to move to Hollywood. We don't think it's necessary, we actually feel like we are doing a good job and they will come to us. But I don't see any of us packing our bags and heading there