Nollywood veteran actress Stella Damasus shared her thoughts on why Nigerian actors find it hard to land Hollywood roles.
Having spent much of the past 15 years living abroad, she notes that Nigerian actors often struggle to land Hollywood roles due to not fitting the industry’s stereotypical image of Africans, highlighting skin tones and accent differences.
During a conversation with Arrow House, the veteran actress claims Hollywood often stereotypes all Africans as having East African accents and very dark skin, similar to Lupita Nyong’o, which doesn’t reflect the diversity of Nigerian actors.
She said: Hollywood filmmakers insist that there is a particular accent that Africans who want to act in their industry must have, that’s why they forced our people to put it on.
“I’m like, we (Nigerians) don’t sound like that, maybe one or two small countries in East Africa. I’m Nigerian, they are Ghanaians. We are different people, and we all sound different. We (Nigerians) don’t sound like this. That’s what Hollywood wants. That’s what they are used to.”
She added, “Most of the Nigerians who have done big screen movies in Hollywood are people who were raised in England. Most of them have a different type of accent. And they (Hollywood filmmakers) said to me, “We want an African to be very dark. That’s the kind of African that we are used to. We are not used to your kind of African. We want Lupita dark. You are not dark enough and you are not white enough to be half-caste, so it would be hard to place you. You are not mixed race. Then, your accent, you don’t sound American or British, nor do you sound African.”
And I’m like, “How do you think Africans sound? Because Africa is home to a multitude of countries. And inside those countries, we have different dialects and different accents,”
