In Conversation with Rita Dominic – #WWTS

Q: You are one of the few ‘original Nollywood actresses’ who are still relevant today, and by ‘original Nollywood actress’, I mean you’ve been in the industry for a very long time and you’ve acquired quite a huge body of work. However, post-2008/9 thereabouts it seemed like you were doing less and less movies except the occasional Tchidi Chikere movie here and there. Then came “the meeting” and then came The Audrey Silva Company around 2011.

So what exactly was your driving force, I mean the thing that pushed you to decide that “you know what, it’s time I started making my own movies”. And on your association with Mildred Okwo for TASC, what made you decide that she was the one that you wanted to start this company with?

First I thank GOD for relevance. I’ve been acting in Nollywood since 1998 so exactly 13 years now. If I recall correctly, I started mid year. It is only by his power that I am still here. This is a very tough industry and was even tougher back then.

I am quite surprised you mentioned those years. You never think anybody notices. The scripts were not motivating anymore, no challenges. It was like a chore and I felt after all these years we were all not getting better collectively. I don’t know if I am making sense.

I had always fancied the idea of producing my own films & Mildred said to me “if you don’t like what you see, shoot your own but do it better”. It took a while but it always takes time if you really want to do it right.

What you see now took a lot of sacrifice, discipline & hard work. We cut down on a lot just to achieve this dream. That is why I was so happy when we finally premiered.. it was so magical for me.

I think we decided on the script in 2010. We had to raise funds, script rewrites, auditions and more auditions. We shot a few weeks after “Shattered” which was shot in Nairobi.