Nigerian Actress, Sola Sobowale, also known as Eniola Salami, recently sat with Chude Jideonwo, host of #WithChude and founder of Joy, Inc. to discuss her role in King of Boys, and why she left Nigeria for over 10 years.
“I keep telling people, “I don’t see myself, you are my mirror”. To me, I think a particular project is fantastic and others think it is not. It can’t be the same. I have never done anything as big as that. You know you can want to do something, and that opportunity never came, and out of nowhere someone somewhere gave you the opportunity. Not only that someone met me and said they have opportunity for me, but she also said she wrote it for me. I was like, “so you believe in me?”, because when I met the one and only Kemi Adetiba and she said, “this is what you are going to do,” I looked at her, and my first question to her was, “Are you a gambler?” because what she brought to me was huge, massive. “This is a woman you haven’t met before asides from meeting her during The Wedding Party. You have this much belief in me?” and I said, “Okay, give me the baton and let’s run”. For me not to disappoint her, throughout, I wasn’t myself until the movie came out and I saw the review and the way people now embraced it. That was when I said, “All glory be to the father,” she said.
On why she was off the acting scene for over 12 years, she said, “the moment you decide to have children, then you must be ready to take full responsibility for them. You don’t bring them to this world to suffer. If you bring them to this world, then stay with them and do the work.
“The reason I left Nigeria was to guide my children, to give them a legacy in life, to nurture and take care of them, that was why I left.”
She also spoke about the odd jobs she did to get by while she was away. “I cooked, I swept, I cleaned offices, washed plates,” she said
“To God be the glory, they are all successful now and they say to me, “Mum, thank you for sacrificing for us, it is now time to go back to what you do best”. So, I came back to Nigeria. Coming back to Nigeria and meeting the opportunity was what made me share this happiness. I didn’t do it, God did it. You don’t have to leave before you are forgotten. You don’t have to step out before they forget you”, she added.
