For Nollywood actor, Raymond Okafor, who was recently appointed a member of Actors Guild of Nigeria’s National Task Force, nudity will continue to recur in films, especially Nollywood movies, despite the much touted high moral standard.
According to the thespian, some stories cannot be truly and professionally depicted without including nudity for proper impact and effect.
“If we are going to be honest with ourselves, nudity in our movies is not something we can avoid as filmmakers, for you to tell a story, if you have to play it the way it is. When I say nudity, I don’t mean going completely naked. It’s like a gynecologist would go into a theater and open up a married woman’s body to do his job. What could be worse than that? Every job has its dictates. We are professionals; we do our job, we do what we are asked to do. But if you read the script and it’s something you can’t do, you let it go.
“The crust of the idea is not in the nudity itself but the message in it. Besides, I don’t think nudity really sells a movie, because if your interest is nudity, there are sites you can go for that, like porn sites. I don’t agree with the notion that nudity sells. Yes, sex sells, but that is for the porn stars. We don’t do that in Nollywood. Even when our movies involve nude scenes, we keep it as clean and professional as possible and still try to pass the message. We don’t do dirty scenes, that is not AGN or Nollywood, maybe some quacks hiding under our name. The big idea is to pass a message and if it involves nudity, so be it,” he said.
Okafor, who is 6.8ft tall and presumably Nollywood’s tallest man, also speaks about his appointment by the president of Actors Guild of Nigeria, Emeka Rollas, even as he’s excited that the new bylaws made by the association would be game changer in the movie industry.
“It is going to favour the producers, the marketers, the directors and the actors too. It is going to affect us positively. It will completely change the narrative so everyone will go home happy. As bad as it may sound, this industry is really messed up. The up and coming people don’t get to make money in the industry. Although, these are some of the things we treated in our new bylaws. Now, we are making sure that everybody gets paid, even if you are only an extra or waka-pass. Everybody gets paid, everybody gets insurance; everybody gets attention, no matter how small the role is. It is part of our new scheme, our new bylaws that we are trying to enforce. Also, we have put a stop to shooting of movies on Sundays. The situation in the industry is depressing, so we feel everyone should take Sundays off; gone is the era of working ourselves to death,” the actor stressed.