She made me venture in YouTube — Omotola

Omotola Jalade-Ekeinde

Veteran Nollywood actress, Omotola Jalade-Ekeinde, has disclosed how fellow filmmaker Ruth Kadiri encouraged her to embrace YouTube filmmaking.

While speaking on the Nollywood on Radio podcast, Omotola rehearsed how Kadiri persistently encouraged her to join the growing community of Nigerian filmmakers leveraging YouTube to showcase their works.

According to Omotola, the conversation took place while she was on vacation in 2023.

“I came on vacation in 2023, and Ruth called me. She said, ‘Mama, do you know what’s going on? There’s a whole revolution with YouTube.’ She showed me numbers and everything,” Omotola said.

The award-winning actress noted that Kadiri described YouTube as a “phenomenal platform” that allows creators to have total control over their content.

“She told me, ‘You can do what you want on YouTube, but I think you should get in on this. You would do very well.’ She didn’t let me rest,” she added.

Omotola revealed that after much persuasion, she decided to give it a try.

“That girl gave me no peace of mind. So I called my producer and said, ‘Let’s just try something.’ We shot the first project in four days and used the fifth day for cleanup. I surprised myself. I was thankful to her for giving me the courage to try.”

The success of her debut project on YouTube eventually inspired her to produce Mother’s Love, a feature film that later premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF).

“Mother’s Love came because I was under pressure. I just told my producer, ‘What if we did a feature film?’ and that was it. We started planning immediately and shot it in less than two weeks,” she shared.

Omotola admitted that she initially felt nervous about her comeback to the screen.

“It took long to release because I was scared people might laugh at me or say it wasn’t good enough,” she said.