Nolllywood actor Yemi Adeyemi a.k.a Suara in a new interview, recounted how far he has come in the Nigerian movie Industry and his relationship with his father.
In the interview with Ademola Olonilua, Suara who recently turned 70 disclosed that his father opposed his acting career at first, but pulled back after he got his first car and apartment. Here are excerpts from the interview with Suara below;
We learnt that some herbalists came to pray for you during the week. Don’t you think that it would contradict the fact that you are a Christian?
It would not contradict anything. There is a difference between religion and culture; in the same way, there is a difference between ambition and intention. I do not have problems but I have faced challenges in life.
What are some of the challenges you faced?
One of them is that I never had the intention of marrying more than one wife even though I have never kept more than one wife in my house. However, I have three women who have children for me.
When I was younger, an old CAC pastor who is from Ilesha, Osun State, told my father that I was going to marry more than one wife and I would be a ladies’ man. I did not want to have more than one woman in my life; neither did I capitalise on what the pastor said but every other thing the man said came to pass.
When things were very tough for me, there was a pastor I went to meet and he told me that the answer to my problem was in the roof of my father’s house. I went there and saw my father’s oracle and it had been there for decades.
How come you fell in love with acting when you were as young as six years old at a time when there were barely television sets in Nigeria and only travelling theatre groups entertained the public?
My father wanted me to be a policeman because of their daily routine but I loved drumming. We used to have a teacher who taught us home lesson and the only reason I always attended the home lesson was because of entertainment.
If we had a drama in December, we would have begun rehearsals since January. When I had my first stage performance, I did so well that people told me I was a genius on stage.
They all appreciated me but my father was very angry with me. His maternal grandfather was the Aromolaran of Ilesha. My father vowed that none of his children would become a beggar as that was what he called entertainers. He knew that I loved drumming but he refused to allow me to follow my passion.
The ironic thing is that he was the one that made me fall in love with drumming because every Sunday, drummers would come to our house to beat the drums for him and he would interpret what the talking drums said to me. Later, he said he did not want me to become a drummer.