Onajite Dede talks to Pulse about acting, ‘The House of Secrets’

Since joining the industry, she has carved a niche for herself as a versatile craftswoman capable of being an actor one minute, a director, writer, stage manager, choreographer, and even a dancer the next.

Her movie and television credits include The Upside Your Head Show, Prince of the Savannah, Bar Beach Blues, Ojo’s in D’ House, 30 Days (2006), Small Boy (2008), Ordinary People (2014) and The Governor (2016).

Regardless of what she does on stage or in film, Dede stands out for her ability to shapeshift, totally transform and beautifully interpret whatever role she is faced with.

She does exactly this in Niyi Akinmolayan‘s latest project. Ahead of the release, Pulse settled in for an enlightening conversation with the powerhouse. We dive into her impressive career, taking on her first lead role, dreams, regrets, and more. Enjoy!

I am an actor by accident. I trained as a director, and there was this place back in the day—a performance studio workshop with Chuck Mike—where you did your theatre IT more or less, and I was on the project as the stage manager. Then, one of the actors had to pull out; she had some personal issues and had to drop out of the project. The stage manager has to have everyone’s lines; he/she pretty much knows everybody’s lines, and Uncle Chuck, who was directing, was like, ‘Right, you are up. There’s nobody else who knows the lines at this short notice before performing so you are up.’ I was like, Sir, what?’ So, I went onstage and, inspite of myself, enjoyed myself and kept on acting from there.

Way before that, there was a show called Rage of Angels on television that piqued my interest in acting. There was this character; she was a lawyer. It was fascinating, and I ended up with a law degree because of that. But I never really wanted to be an actor per se; that just kind of happened.

I think sometimes people have quite a few different talents that may not match their dreams, and vice versa. If you watch any of the singing shows, you know that there are quite a few people whose ambitions don’t quite match, but I give it to them for their courage. I was fortunate that I had somebody who saw that. Chuck Mike was a talent spotter and nurturer. He was incredible at bringing out something you didn’t even know you could do. But you do have a lot of people who fall into something they were not planning at all or out of necessity, and then they find that, ‘Oh, I’m good at this and I enjoy this.’ The enjoyment factor, I think, is key.

One of the first projects that I directed was a play called Vagina Monologues, ages ago in the early 2000s. It was a power-packed cast of talented actors and people. The subject matter was so strong, and the impact it had on people. It got them talking, and I think someone was inspired to open a shelter for battered women after watching that show.

Back to present day, Mamma Mia was a high point for me. Musicals are not something I like very much, although I had done that one beforehand, but it was so much fun. It was gruelling work, as theatre work always is, but there were all these wonderful, talented people, from backstage to the actors, singers, and dancers. Everything just pulled together, and it was such a lovely thing. It had a lot of impact on me. The show was amazing, but the way it brought everyone together was a high point for me.

Yes, the same talent and level of skills are needed, but the technique for both is certainly different. With theatre acting, you have the volume up, all the expressions in your voice, everything. With film, the camera will catch that for you. So you have a different type of work to do, where you have to let the camera read your mind and read your face. So yes, theatre training has helped immensely, both in terms of the discipline of it and the technique of getting into character. We have the luxury of having time to break down the character with theatre. When you get to film, you may not have the time, but you know the things to do to quickly put it into place and get into character. So, yes, theatre has helped.

The director, Niyi, sent me the script. We had worked on something ages ago. I read it in 30 minutes. Apart from the fact that I’m a fast reader, it was riveting. From reading it on the page, I was like, ‘I definitely have to do this.’

Sarah is an incredibly complex person. She has serious mental health issues, but at the same time, her personality is not overshadowed by those issues. She has slipped into a dream world for most of it to deal with her trauma, but when the time comes, her strong character pulls through. One minute, she’s extremely vulnerable, and the next minute, you see the steel, and her will comes through. There’s that beautiful complexity. To bring her to life, it took a lot of imagination and experience. I remembered different women that I had come across who exhibited some of the things that Sarah had gone through. There are quite a few people whose privacy I won’t disrespect. I don’t even want them to know that they were the templates for this character.

We met on set and talked a little bit about it, but young Sarah is almost like a completely different person before she gets incarcerated and certain things happen to her. A lot can change you, so we didn’t want to go too heavy on physical mannerisms. Efe trusted me, and I trusted her to play that person in time because people change in many ways over time and experience.

As a country, we’re getting better. We now have more therapists available and more conversations about mental health, whether it’s just lip service or going deeper. We are realising that it’s an important aspect of being human. We are body, mind, and spirit, so taking care of the mind is as important as the body, and the spirit, as religious as we are. I think this film does so many things, from looking at our recent history as a country and then down to our relationships and the individual. It’s such good, detailed work. I am proud to be on this project.

It was good work. I didn’t think of it in terms of, ‘Oh, this is a lead role, blah blah blah.’ It was like this was the work, this was the character, and this was what needed to be done. You think of all the buzz about lead roles after the film is done. Yes, she was the vehicle for the story, and we needed her for the rest to come together, and that was that. After the film was done, I was like, ‘Oh, my lead role. Oh wow.’ Yes, it’s been a while. I’ve been doing this. I’ve been doing this for a while. Yeah, it’s great. It’s exciting. Is it overdue? I don’t know. The thing is that everything happens when it’s supposed to.

As a director on stage, there are lots and lots of stories to tell. As an actor, I have been tweeting it; somebody cast me as a villain. I would love to play an absolute nasty piece of work. Someone evil, not one-dimensional evil, because the villains are more fun to play because you have to make that person sellable. You have to relate to them because nobody just wakes up one morning and goes, ‘Haha, I’m evil and I want to destroy things and destroy people.’ No, they have a story of how they got somewhere. There is a saying, ‘No child is born bad; they become bad. So that’s the thing for me—to play a character that is bad and given a story that hopefully shows how they have become bad, or even with what you’ve got to show that this is still a human being even though they are doing horrendous things, so that’s the attraction for me.

I think any kind of art should be viewed in whatever form it can be enjoyed, and as many people as possible should have access to it. This is the new way to get access. At some point in time, they thought that television was going to kill the cinema; it didn’t, and it hasn’t. At one point in time, you found big cinema stars doing television because television has its platform and allows creativity in its own way. The same thing with the cinema, the same thing with the theatre. They thought cinema would kill theatre, but it hasn’t. It’s a life performance, what you get from a life performance is different from what you get from a recorded performance. They all have their place, and it is for more and more audiences to enjoy, so I say, there’s enough sky for all the stars, for television, film, theater, and streaming. So, yeah, more power to everyone.

First and foremost, out of all this stuff, I’m a dancer. I’m a frustrated dancer. So, the only thing I can think of is just expressing regret that I never danced more. That was what I wanted to do, but life and different things just happened, so I never did. So, that’s one thing that I am still hoping that I’m going to do to perform as a dancer on stage one day soon. Casting me as a villain who dances would be the culmination of all my dreams into one thing.

I had gotten training beforehand when I lived in different countries with different styles of dancing. By the time I was thinking of getting into university, going to school to learn dance back then was something else. It wasn’t because I didn’t have parental support or anything like that; I just caved in at that point in time. It just didn’t seem like one could have a proper career in it, so I opted for law, which didn’t work out either. Yeah, that’s my dream career, my childhood dream of becoming a professional dancer. So, before the legs give out, directors out there, I can dance o.

I hope the movie makes us much more curious about our recent past because one of the things we do here is actively forget. Forgetting is an action that we take here, and with the number of things that have happened in the country recently and in the recent past, we now have to change that from actively forgetting to actively remember—looking for our histories and finding out what has been driving us as a nation. Individuals also do that thing of actually forgetting, especially when we have traumatic things happen to us, and part of healing for the individual and the collective is remembering; coming face to face with things. To do that, you have to remember.

I hope the movie forces people to look at mental health issues and people with disabilities more kindly. Just because you are able or unable to move or be in the same way as everybody else doesn’t make you any less human. We tend to dehumanise those with mental health issues. We tend to humanise people who are disabled, which I find quite offensive. Everybody has the right to exist and be cared for, and if you can care for someone regardless of what state they are in, then do so. You would be surprised at what you will experience—the good experience you will have with human beings regardless of their ability or lack thereof.

So, it’s looking at collective and individual histories and just a different take on our humanities. It’s a fun film aside from that. It’s a fun mix of comic books, action, romance, thriller, and drama. If a movie were a pizza, this would be it: a pretty good, delicious pizza.

The House of Secrets is currently streaming on Prime Video.