Actress Etinosa Idemudia from Nollywood recently shared insights on handling criticism and comparisons, especially in the early stages of one’s career.
Speaking on Arise TV, she stressed the importance of being cautious when receiving advice and encouraged individuals to trust their own instincts.
Etinosa recounted an experience where she was advised to emulate the the personality of actress Adesua Etomi instead of being her own self.
She reflected on the journey she embarked on, the valuable lesson she learned, and the impact that advice had on her career trajectory.
In her words:
“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.”
