A British actress has been making waves on the Nollywood scene. Claire Edun speaks fluent pidgin – the unique Nigerian mix of local languages and English.
Edun’s fluency in pidgin, learned through years of watching Nigerian films, landed her a role in a major Nollywood film, ATM (Authentic Tentative Marriage), which premieres in Nigerian cinemas on Friday.
She is a sensation in Nigeria, where she has built up a following on social media. Many of her YouTube videos have been watched more than 30,000 times, even the ones she films herself on a wobbly mobile phone in her living room.
In England, where she lives, Edun performs at Nigerian comedy shows, and the Nigerian diaspora hire her to do skits for their events. It all started, she said, because she wanted to show people another side to Nigeria – one far from the stereotypes of it being a “fantastically corrupt” country, as David Cameron put it, full of criminals and where Boko Haram runs rampage.
CCTV’s Kelechi Emekalam sat down with the actress, and filed this report.
