Actress Etinosa Idemudia of Nollywood has provided some advice on accepting criticism and making comparisons, especially when one’s career is just getting started.
The actress underlined the importance of being cautious when listening to other people’s advice and instead focusing on one’s own voice.
Etinosa Idemudia provided the information during an appearance on Arise Television. She described how she was told to assume a more “serious” approach and copy actress Adesua Etomi, rather than imitate her “razz, Benin” accent.
This is what she stated about her trip, the lesson she learnt, and how counsel affected her.
According to Etinosa Idemudia:
“See, my people, in life, just listen to your spirit. Too many advice can cause problems for you in life. When I was getting a lot of attention in Nollywood, some filmmakers were telling me things like ‘why are you doing comedy?’, ‘why are you doing skits?’, ‘you look like Adesua, be doing roles like Adesua. You need to be packaged, you need to behave well.’ That time, I was doing that my Benin accent, and they were like why are you doing razz things? You’re too fine to do comedy. Then they mentioned some female comedy people that it fits them, but me, I need to start doing photoshoot and packaging, that I should not ‘mumu’ myself.
So that caused a lot of confusion and conflict in my head back then, trying to figure out should I package and speak English? Or should I keep on doing my razz accent? So I stopped for a while. I said I was not going to do skits again. I’m just going to be doing serious Nollywood. I would even have some of my colleagues at that time who I’d want to put in my skits that would tell me ‘no, I want to be a serious actor. I’m not doing skit. I don’t want any producer to think I’m not serious in life.’
But look at 2024, look at those same people. All those ones that adviced me against it are now doing skits. Hypocrisy! So when you’re growing, don’t listen to any person o! Just follow your God given destiny and pray to God for your own ideas. Now, I’m doing my skits, I’m doing my serious films, and I’m doing everything I want to do. I’m telling my stories my own way with no distractions.”
