How I want Nollywood to be – Kalu Ikeagwu

Weekend Magazine: Tell us about your growing up years?Kalu Ikeagwu: My growing up years were very formative. My father, an academic believed that investing in my education was the best heritage he could bestow on me and so from the age four inundated me with literatures of English and my native Igbo.  I didn’t have […]

Weekend Magazine: Tell us about your growing up years?
Kalu Ikeagwu: My growing up years were very formative. My father, an academic believed that investing in my education was the best heritage he could bestow on me and so from the age four inundated me with literatures of English and my native Igbo.  I didn’t have much time to play as my contemporaries did; I was always in the library reading. It was a habit I was soon to form and enjoy. I would divide my growing up years into three parts. My childhood where I discovered what I loved to do, my adolescence where I discovered what I did not want to do and my adulthood when I decided what I was going to do.
WM: Your dad passed on some few years back, how has it been since then for you, your mum and your siblings?
 Kalu: It hasn’t been easy on the emotional front. I for one did not get to enjoy my father in his old age or have him play with his unborn grandchildren. We don’t miss him economically as we were all financially independent of him when he passed on.
WM: How was your mum able to cope with the Igbo tradition of widowhood practices and how were you also able to cope?
Kalu: Her experiences during my father’s burial rites were nothing compared to what widows in other communities go through but it was no less shocking and traumatic. We, her children managed to shield her from much of them but the experience of having to fight off the very people who benefited a lot from my father when he was alive served to colour our perception of our relationship with some of our kinsmen. Only four of my relatives argued and fought on our behalf and we scaled through it all. It [the experience] was so unnecessary.
WM: Going by your experience, if given the chance what would you do to alleviate the pains widows and orphans go through in the society?
Kalu: Were I to have a chance to make things right, I would strive to make government laws protecting widows and orphans supersede any traditional funeral practices that may be the norm in any part of the country. I would also make it imperative that patriarchs of homes be educated on the importance of making wills – while dispelling the superstition that making a will portends an impending death – and a judicial will to enforce them.
WM: What’s the real story behind your chieftaincy title as some say you were denied the title because you are not married?
 Kalu: Why does everyone say that? I was given the title by the Ezeukwu of Ngwaukwu in Abia State. I was given the staff of office and told that whenever I got married I was to let the Eze know so that I could have the title conferred upon me ceremoniously. In His Highness’ words, if a chief walked past me without acknowledging me as a chief, I was not to be offended but if I was ever barred from entering a meeting of chiefs on account of my title being called to question, I was to refer whoever it was to him.
WM: Domino was one soap opera that caught the attention of both Nigerian and international audience; most people think the soap opera ended rather abruptly, what is your take on this?
Kalu: I would say that is untrue. True, it had enough material to take it through years and years of production and the producer did a great job with carrying it through to end. Like every good story, it ended at the right time with all the key characters going through a full learning curve thereby bringing it to a conclusive end. If you doubt me, follow the rerun series currently going on in one of the major television stations and see if it doesn’t, as some claim, end conclusively.
WM: What were the challenges you faced while on the set of Domino?
Kalu: It is very hard to name any challenges I faced on a set I loved so much. There was so much harmony and team spirit among the cast and crew. Everyone was committed to doing a good job and I think the evidence speaks for itself.
WM: Is Kalu the same patient, caring and loving person as Jerry in ‘Domino’?
Kalu Ikeagwu: I think it would be fair to say that Jerry is one man I envy because he is everything I aspire to be.
WM: How many movies have you featured in locally and internationally?
 Kalu: I’m not sure of the number of movies I’ve done but it should be in the region of 20s.
WM: Are you a soap opera kind of person because that is how most people see you?
Kalu: Definitely not! I do not limit myself to any genre. I pick interest in any quality work. It doesn’t matter if it’s stage, movie, TV series or even comedy, I have an aptitude for every one of them. That’s why I’m an actor.
WM: ‘Rapt in Erie’, what were the challenges you faced acting that movie coming from an entertainment industry that believed in quantity rather than quality?
Kalu: In some Nollywood movies, actors are able to get away with ‘switching on’ emotional taps – It’s a quick fix technique of gauging what emotion is needed for the scene and switching it on rather than immersing oneself in the character being played. Over there I couldn’t do it, things are little more subtle and you really understand your character in order to convey the right emotions. I was almost caught napping in one scene and caught myself on time. I had to represent my beloved country you know!
WM: How has the movie fared since its release?
Kalu: It hasn’t been released yet. It’s still going through the final stages of editing and laying of the soundtrack as we speak. A rough cut however, was screened at two Irish film festivals last year.
WM: Having stayed in England, how would you compare acting in Nigerian and in England?
Kalu: Acting in England is a lot more subtle than it is in Nigeria. That is because in England more emphasis is put on internalization than externalization. There the actor asks questions about the background, setting, and motivation that influence the character he or she is playing and how they ultimately lead him/her to the final destination.
In Nigeria the reverse is the case – and it is not entirely our fault, due to limited funds at our disposal, we rarely have the time to delve deeply into the characters we play let alone do research. There, they are paid for the time they spend doing research, learning their characters’ craft and getting used to the setting etc.
WM: Nollywood churns out movies daily; do you think it speaks well for the industry?
Kalu: I think the movie industry is going through a rebirth… I believe there’s an increasing pressure on the industry to begin to build structure and quality material if it plans on surviving in the next five years and I think those lessons are fast being learnt.
WM: Many people say Nollywood producers and actors go for quantity and not quality, how true is this?
Kalu: Well like I said earlier, we have made some mistakes and we have begun learning from them.
WM: What do you think are the main challenges of Nollywood and do you think the industry still has a lot to offer?
 Kalu: I’d love to see a decisive change for the better in structure. This covers distribution, marketing, insurance, taxation and better training for actors, writers, producers and directors. That way we can have much better quality movies, be taken more seriously by the international community and invariably, make more money! Ha ha!
 WM: Which movie has been your most challenging?
Kalu: Again, I would say the characters I played in the movie The Triangle seconded by, Stranger’s Arms to be released this summer, where I play an assassin alongside Desmond Elliot.
In Stranger’s Arms my character was villain, and it wasn’t so much his evil but his duplicity that I found challenging. I had to find a way to understand the motives behind his actions and be able to communicate those feelings to the audience.
WM: Asides acting what other thing do you do?
Kalu: I have some different business ventures I’m working on at the moment in entertainment and other fields.
WM: There are speculations that you were about floating a production company, how true is this?
Kalu: Well it is true. It is still in its budding stage and is eating up a lot of brain space owing to planning so I can’t talk much about it but something should be coming out of the stables before long.
WM: Would you say your success in the entertainment industry in Nigeria can be attributed to your stay abroad?
Kalu: Definitely not! My stay abroad among other things only serve to broaden my scope and horizon and maybe a little else… the majority of it is due to God, self belief, work and talent.
WM: Who are your role models in the industry?
Kalu: In the Nigerian movie industry I would have to say Kate Henshaw-Nuttal because of her proven integrity and dedication to work and her genuine consideration for others however placed in society. I see how it pays off because I see her grow from strength to strength
WM: How do you handle your female fans?
Kalu: I love to be appreciated by the ladies! I know because there was once a time during my teenage years when I absolutely  craved female attention. So you can imagine how I feel with all the adulation. I feel like, “All this for me?” I love it and at the same time try not to let it get to my head; I, at the end of the day, am just someone God chose to bless.
 WM: Have you had any embarrassing moment from a fans?
Kalu: Almost getting me run down. I walked out to buy newspapers from a nearby vendor when a big car swerved from across the road and almost knocked me down, had I not jumped out of the way in the nick of time. There were four ladies in the car dressed for a wedding. The driver, seemingly oblivious of what she almost did, and not minding my stunned expression, demanded to know why I chose to be an armed robber in the movie she’d just watched, that I was too handsome to be an armed robber and should never try it again. Before I could ask her what my chances were of playing any character at all were I to be crippled, she reversed her car and zoomed off.
 WM: As an actor what do you think your responsibilities are to the audience?
Kalu: My responsibility as an actor, in my opinion, is to cut out a piece of life so real and convincing as to make the audience willing to forget it is watching a story unfold and instead adopt the story as a real life drama taking place in its personal life.
WM: Are you married and if not how soon are the bells going to ring?
Kalu: No I am not married, at least not yet. When? You will be one of the first to know when it happens.
WM: Coming back to your educational background, you once said you attended five different secondary schools, why?
 Kalu: Where do you guys dig up these things from? Well yes I was a rather errant child in my adolescence. I came back from Zambia and immediately put in boarding school, in Methodist College Uzuakoli where my father was an old boy. I think he did it out of nostalgia – it used to be one of the greats in the 50s. It was hell on earth. I went through every punishment imaginable – picking pins, angle 90s, walking on my knees till they were peeled raw, filling buckets with water with a spoon – and that’s just a few. I couldn’t cope and complained to my father. I was moved to two other schools but fared no better – he insisted that I stayed a boarder. I rebelled and became a chronic truant throughout my secondary school days spending most of my days in the state library. It was only after I was kicked out by my fourth school that my father relented and put me in the fifth and let me go from home. I cleared my university qualification exams in one sitting. See? Protest does get you everywhere!
WM: Really, you feel protests get you anywhere?
Kalu: Yes, at least it worked for me and positively too!
WM:  Any last words for your fans?
Kalu: Thanks for your support; I do not take it lightly. You give me a lot of confidence to forge ahead and let me know that I still have enough relevance to move forward.