NEWS

Friday 24 August 2012

Mercy Aigbe: I did ‘Osas’ to connect with my root

Mercy Aigbe is not Yoruba. In fact she has no trace of Yoruba blood in her genes. But when it comes to Yoruba films and the top names making waves these days, you can hardly count up to ten names before her name comes up.

Global Leadership Awards for Excellence (GLADE) organised by a Lagos soft-sell magazine which held on July 22nd of this year recognised her as the Best Yoruba Actress of the year 2011.

She has starred in over 50 Yoruba films and has  come off as one of the most sought-after names in the Yoruba genre. By not speaking English she has won the hearts of Yoruba movie lovers by going all the way, fitting in perfectly for both modern and traditional scenes.

In a recent chat with HVP the petite and pretty actress who is married to a hotelier, Lanre Gentry, as second wife and reportedly pregnant with second child, said she did her wave-making film “Osas” to reconnect with her Benin root and to give herself the opportunity to speak her own language.

“Osas” is a comedy film and Mercy has this to say on what inspired her to the movie “ I was on the set of Papa Ajasco when I saw everybody laughing behind the camera and I thought oh, this is funny and that actually started me off to want to do a comedy film” she narrated.

But then comedy doesn’t come in Mercy’s bag of tricks “Then I was faced with what kind of comedy I should do, I decided to bring in my own language. You know I am not Yoruba, I am Benin. So  I decided to shoot a comedy that would take me back to my roots in  Benin. I wanted a comedy where I could actually speak my language”.

And since the movie hit the market there hasn’t been a moment of regret for Mercy  “ The movie did very well in the cinemas and it is doing very well with the DVD sales. People are actually asking me to do a part 2 of the movie.

“Very soon I am going on location to start shooting the part 2”, enthused the beautiful actress who has since released two other movies, ‘Hajia Jemila’ and ‘Gucci Girls’ in the market after ‘Osas’. Before now she had produced two  films, ‘Abimbola’ and ‘Afe Aye’.

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