My Church Pastor almost ruined my career – Popular Nollywood Actor opens up
My Church Pastor almost ruined my career – Nollywood Actor open up
Nollywood actor Yemi Solade has voiced his displeasure over the belief that actors should place church attendance above their professional duties on Sundays.
Speaking on the Honest Bunch podcast, Solade recalled a 2013 incident when he was advised to tell producers not to schedule him for work on Sundays because of church commitments.
He rejected the idea, arguing that prioritising church attendance over one’s career was illogical. Solade further criticised the church for setting expectations that, in his view, can interfere with people’s ability to earn a living.
Solade said: “If you see me in the church, it’s either we are filming. Something happened in my church. I got into the service with my wife that year, 2013.
“I’ve been told in the church that I should tell producers not to call me for work on Sundays. And I cursed those pastors. It is from that thing that you said I shouldn’t do on Sunday that I put hand in my pocket and I drop here. The notion that if you don’t attend church once life will die, probably I’ve not seen anything change.
“Rather, I have peace, I do well. Because every day of my life, when I was going to church, I got messages or sort of disturbances. If you are not invited to one committee, so when will I have time to work?
“There’s no where in the Bible that Sunday in the Greco-Roman calendar that I set aside for people to go and assemble and shout God and Jesus. And you’re telling me not to leave my house and go to where my chop is.
“You are here to chop on Sunday. Who are you telling me that I should tell? You want to ruin my career? Let me tell you, I had this Baba who fixed my AC and I gave him money to buy some things one day and I was calling him and he didn’t pick the call. Later he now told me he was in church.
“I said, Baba, you’re in your 70s, see me at my age. If I say these things to you, you’ll cry. Do you know that you took my money to that church? You gave part of it, that blessing is mine now. It’s my money you went to drop there. If the prayer there is efficacious, it will come to me. But it’s my own money, my sweat. And then you left your own business. You went to attend to another man’s business.”
Beyond religion, the actor also revisited Nollywood’s origins, disputing the popular belief that the industry began with the 1992 Igbo blockbuster Living in Bondage.
He argued that home video production and television dramas were already thriving in the 1980s. “The first movie you call home video was actually produced around 1988 by Ade Ajiboye, Big Abbas. Shosho Meji came before Living in Bondage,” he said, noting that classics like Things Fall Apart aired on television in the mid-80s.
Solade further maintained that while the South-East made major contributions to Nollywood, it was relatively late in embracing theatre arts as a formal academic discipline compared to other regions.
“When I was a student in Ife, we had the Nigerian University Theatres Festival. Only six universities participated then, and none was in the East,” he recalled.
