He arrived the venue of the interview dressed simply in a fitting brown T-shirt, a brown pair of pants and a beige-coloured panama hat. One thing you couldn’t ignore about him was his drop-dead movie star look.
OC Ukeje is definitely among the younger generation of actors taking over Nollywood like a bush fire in the harmattan. He has featured in a dozen stage plays and acted alongside Joke Silva, Rita Dominic, Bimbo Akintola and Chiwetel Ejiofor. Though, he hit the limelight in 2006 after winning that year’s edition of Amstel Malta Box Office (AMBO), it would take a couple of years before Ukeje would break into mainstream Nollywood.
In this exclusive chat with TS Weekend, the graduate of Marine Science from the Univeristy of Lagos opens up on his childhood, career and love life among other issues. Excerpts:
Aside being a popular TV face, you’re also a handsome dude. How are the ladies warming up to you?
It’s an everyday business. We just know that it’s part of the business. You wake up and they warm up to you. You chat with the ones you can and the ones you feel you can’t handle you run away from.
I guess I try to give a lot of attention to the moneymaker who is the persona I have created on TV because I do understand that in our business, these things matter. Before they hear you, they see you and so you’ve got to give your best.
A guy like you doesn’t need to chase women, women will pursue you…
(Laughter) Yea…it’s something I pretty much understood even before I got into the business. But right now, it has a lot to do with the business in the volume that it comes. But beyond that, if you’re an ‘okay’ and a good looking guy, you will get that kind of attention.
Do you have a girlfriend?
Yes.
How is she coping?
Let me just say that she knows and understands my job. My girlfriend is equally attractive so the truth is that whatever I am going through, she is also going through because she gets a lot of attention from men as well. So, we are both fighting the same battle.
Let’s go back to 2006 when you won AMBO. Did you believe you were going to win?
Well, I felt like I stood a good chance. By the time we got into the house and every one had started going about their tasks, I kind of began to weigh everybody. I knew the people I felt could give me a run for my money but I knew I stood a good chance. But I wasn’t sure I was going to win.
Could you recount your experience in the house?
Yeah… it was sleep starved and difficult. We had a lot of tasks and we had this celebrities who came in every week to spend some time with us and talk to us and that was a lot of fun because I met people like Dakore whom I had always wanted to meet. We had these assignments we did for three weeks and we had this house judges who would come and check and see how we were faring. But all in all it was really nice. But it was strange to live with nine people that I did not know. But I found a way to avoid issues; it was pretty interesting.
2006 is a long time ago. One would expect that after AMBO you would just blow. What happened? Why did it take you so long to find your groove?
The interesting thing about winning a reality TV show is that the organisers dictate the tune. After winning you have a one-year contract and in that year you shoot their movie. After that what ever happens is all up to you. So, the interesting bit of it was that you shoot a movie and the movie wins an award and then you start looking for how to get into the business mainstream. I thought that everything was going to be rosy and dandy but it really wasn’t.
I guess the truth is that winning a reality show does not guarantee you acceptance into the industry. I did not choose to go underground. I was looking for work. And the people who wanted to work with me initially were the ones with me when I was tied to the contract. After one year, I started working but they were few and far in between and they were from people who were independent producers who kind of knew what I could do. But as far as huge commercial releases were concerned nothing serious was happening.
How did you handle it? Everybody felt you had a lot of cash?
I think that the discipline my parents inculcated in me helped a lot. I come from a family where for a season everything was good and there was a season when things took a deep and the goings-on were really bad. But even when things were good, with the kind of mother I had, it was not just possible for you to be lazy.
Tell us about the pressure from your friends and hangers-on after you won AMBO?
The pressure was really bad. With N2.5 million and a contractual agreement, it wasn’t easy since I was not working and I was supposed to live on N2.5 million for one year. The pressure was very high. An average Nigerian definitely spends more than N2.5 million a year. It was a difficult time and then I had people making phone calls and asking me, ‘my wife is pregnant, my son is sick, how can you assist?’ I needed to stay alive so I invested a chunk of the money aside what I did for my family. And guess what? Most of the investments went down the drain!
Really, what did you invest in?
I did some oil investments that crashed eventually. It was so bad that by the middle of the contractual year, I was stark broke!
What project are you working on right now?
I have a couple of scripts that I have been reading since last year. A couple of people met me and talked to me about stuff they want to shoot for February but what we are trying to tidy up now is the date. There is a Tanzanian who is working on the project who sent me the script while I was working in the UK. There is a stage play, a musical. We are working very hard on that right now.
Tell us about Hoodrush?
Hoodrush was a very interesting project. I met the director when I was doing my acting workshop in Los Angeles. He was also doing a workshop then in film making so it’s like I knew this guy was a Nigerian. After we finished with that, we came back to Nigeria, had auditions and I landed a lead role. We talked about what he was trying to do and I was initially skeptical but when I got the CD and listened to the music, I knew they were serious. So, we started recording the songs and stuffs.
Do you mean you actually sang those songs?
Yes, but there was a music director who handled the entire music. We rehearsed and we moved to Iyana Ipaja where we shot. It was a tedious three weeks of hard work.
What was it like acting Bimbo Akintola’s toy boy?
Aside Rita Dominic, I think one of the advantages that I have had with the A-list female artistes I have worked with is that I knew them before now. With Bimbo Akintola, I had the opportunity of being around when she was doing some stage plays many years before so, she knew who I was and while we were in the AMBO house, she was one of the judges who came around and commended my acting and style. By the time work on Hoodrush began we were no longer strangers. It was good for me because Bimbo is the phenomenal actress. If you are not careful, she could consume you.
You acted that role in Hoodrush so well. Have you dated an older woman before?
No, I haven’t but I will not tell you that I have not hard advances from older women before that I really considered. Gone are the days when older women did not have appeal. Today, they have serious appeal. Many of the times you forget that she is older and they have a way of holding your attention too. Yes, they are women and are still wired the way women are but largely, they are more adult and more mature in their thinking.
Less possessive?
(Laughter) when they are possessive, they are possessive!
Tell us about growing up?
Growing up was interesting. It had its ups and downs. I know there was a season when it was all good and then there was a season when it was rough. I saw my dad over the weekend because he was already at work when I woke up in the morning. I would be sleeping when he came back from work. And then all was rosy and dandy. But then we had this season when we lost pretty much everything. We lost our house, my dad lost his job and then we had to move in with my cousins, my mum’s younger sister; it was that bad. There were 13 of us in a 2-bedroom flat. It was really hard, we did that for a bit before we finally found our own place; things were difficult. My dad tried to get another job. My mum was the bread winner at the time so ever body; myself and my siblings had to learn how to curtail our excesses and live within our means. My dad passed on in 1997 and things started turning around. We had our rough times but we decided we were going to make the best of our situation.
Were you close to your dad?
I would not exactly put it that way. I was the one who never had issues. My brother was like my dad so they always had issues. My sister was the only girl so she was the apple of my dad’s eye. I remember the day he died. It was December 20, 1997. We had gone to church for a Christmas programme and had just come back. I was discussing with my cousins when I decided to go into the house. I remembered that my dad was a bit feverish during the day. I came out of the kitchen and saw him sitting on the floor all by himself. It was surprising to think that it was fever that drove him to that point. But that was it; he was dead and gone. I ran out and called my aunty who confirmed it and then I went to get my brother.
How old were you then?
I was 16 when my dad passed on
How was it growing up without a father?
At the beginning it did not matter much to me because at 16, a lot of youth are still living life the way it comes. But the difficulty of growing up without a counsel or a father figure became much more obvious when I got into the university, when I was trying to make choices of what to study and what I’d want to do with my life. Interestingly, I don’t think my dad would have had a problem with what I am doing today because he was a caterer. That was his profession as opposed to being a lawyer or doctor. But there are times when you’re stuck and you kind of need someone to tell you the way forward so it was not easy.
Could your mum fill the vacuum?
At the time my mum had been moved to Abuja and I think she had done a lot for us at that point. There were conversations we had on issues. Sometimes, we agreed and sometimes we disagreed but my mum always allowed me to follow my heart which I feel was the coolest thing at that period. My mum realised that she needed to give all of us opportunity to do what we wanted to do as long as we stayed within certain boundaries.
At what point did you realise that you were headed for the silver screen?
In my third year (in the university) I knew that this was what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. The only issue was that by the time I was done with school I needed to figure how to go into film. But before then I had been doing stage plays since 2001. So, by the time I was done with schooling in 2005, the issue was how to cross over. But I already knew as a young man that acting was what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.
How did you mum take it?
My mum was very supportive with the stage plays. In my second year, we were going to take one of the plays I was involved in to the UK and it was smack in the middle of my semester exams, and there was talk of making arrangement for me to school in the UK by the organisation I was working for. It turned out my mum was going to let me defer my semester exams. Even though, at the end of the day it did not work out, it gave me a lot of leverage to do what ever I wanted to do.
How do you interpret your scripts?
I like to read a script through and through just to have an understanding of the entire story and where it is going before I begin concentrating on my character. And when I begin to do that, I begin to develop the character like he is real. I ask myself, what kind of mannerisms would I like him to have?
You have acted with Bimbo Akintola, Stella Damasus and Rita Dominic. Which of them would you say was the most challenging?
The truth is they all had their different elements. I was scared to work with Rita Dominic because that was the first time I was acting with her so, I was scared she could turn out to be a diva, you know, and we might have problems getting along. I’d heard a lot about her before I got into the business so I was worried. But it was nothing like that at all. With Stella Damnasus I had done a stage play. It is amazing how people lend their efforts to you when they think you’re good because Stella Damasus introduced a lot of the people that I know today in the industry to me; she took me to places. I have seen her work and experienced the potency of what she could do but like I said, because I had the advantage of meeting and working with them, they all added to the elements of what makes me who I am today.
What would you say has been your greatest challenge?
My greatest challenge as an actor is getting jobs. It’s one thing for people to know that you can do the job. It’s another thing for them to want to hire you based on many different reasons. I have heard it all the time that they think that I am small and diminutive and so they feel like I can’t handle certain roles. With Rita Dominic, people complained that she looked older than I did. With Stella Damasus, they said the same thing. I guess with Bimbo, they believed that since I was playing her toy boy it had to work. It’s not like they do not know that you can do it. It’s just how to pair you up with characters. It’s really difficult. The scope and limit of our writing in Nigeria makes it difficult for people like us.
Or don’t you think they should also groom some young beautiful ladies…?
I honestly think so. There are a lot of beautiful ladies out there who I would easily pair with as a couple and it would be nice to have some of these people come to the fore.
Could you mention some of them?
There are Ure Eke, Beverley Naya, Chelsea Eze, Lala Akindoju. It’s quite a huge list. We also have Iheoma Ejiofor, Damilola Adegbite, and Matilda to mention a few.
Would you date an actress?
Truth is I have no problem dating an actress. For me, the issue isn’t the work you do but who you are.
How has stardom impacted on your privacy?
It has taken quite a lot. Much as I know that I am a relational person, there are times when I don’t feel like talking to anyone. But sometimes, all that flies out the window because you’re always in the limelight and you have to be nice to people, you know, have a special smile for them irrespective of how you feel and that has taken quite a lot out of me. And then, you carry this skepticism with you everywhere you go. Whenever anyone approaches you, you’re already thinking ‘what do they want?’
What’s been the greatest decision you ever took?
I think that the greatest decision was probably date the woman I am dating now because after all said and done, if there is no money to be made and nothing to do, you have to fall back on something. And if you are falling back on someone who has your back, like someone who totally cares and is on your page, then you’re lucky. I think that’s the one thing any man can be happy about and ask God for. We’ve known each other for 11 years.
When are you planning to get married?
Next year, God willing; there is a lot of respect that comes from people knowing that you are responsible enough to run a family.
Was there any time you felt like quitting and doing something else?
2009 was the most difficult year for me because I was having the roughest time of my career and I did not know if I would be able to go through the entire process. I was in LA for a workshop so I had meetings with people I held in high esteem and there were discouragements here and there and I just said, ‘when I come back to Nigeria, if nothing happens, I am calling it quits with acting.’
What was the turning point?
I met Jetta Amata in LA. He was then casting for his new film, Black November. We talked and I was interested. He made a pitch and I accepted and we came back to Nigeria and the cameras rolled. And it wasn’t because I did anything exceptional; I guess it was just the time to move on.
What’s your greatest regret?
I have none.
What are your dreams?
I really would like to do a few big-budget Hollwyood flicks. I am talking about strong roles, proper roles. I am looking to lead roles but I am building gradually.
Are you planning to relocate like D’banj seems to be doing now?
I have always wanted to have more than one base. Nigeria is a good base. It will be good to have another working base elsewhere.
What was your happiest moment?
It would probably be winning the AMAA awards in 2009. Another happy moment was hosting AMAA and then being nominated for Africa Magic Viewers Choice Awards. It was also great acting alongside Chiwetel Ejiofor in Half of A Yellow Sun.
Who are your role models?
Ramsey Nuoah; I respect him so much. Leonardo DiCaprio and Denzel Washington do magic with their roles; they are just great!
What would you say was your most challenging movie role?
It’s White Waters. While other movies I have done had their fare share of challenges, White Waters was my first movie. I had been doing a lot of stage before that and there was a style for stage and a style for screen, and the character I played required conveying a lot of my thoughts without words so, it had to do more with expressions and it was difficult.
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