Nollywood filmmaker Mildred Okwo talks about her process in casting her upcoming movie La Femme Anjola.
Okwo’s film features Rita Dominic as the titular character Anjola and newcomer Nonso Bassey as her lover.
On casting the character Anjola, the director said, “I was looking for a vehicle for Rita Dominic, I wanted to work with her so I had been looking for a script to do justice to her talent so casting her was easy. Before then, we had done The Meeting and although she did not play the lead, she killed that role.”
But things were not as easy for the director when it came to casting a male lead. Okwo said, “I have had this script for over five years, looking for the money to do it. At the time, I had someone else in mind for the role too but I hadn’t worked with him before. I had to host open auditions and hope to find someone who had good chemistry with Rita. It’s not something you can fake”.
“In general, I don’t work with people who don’t know how to act and the two leads need to have great chemistry so that was my priority. To cast the leading man, I had to weigh so many things, which I will talk about when people have watched it.”
However, nothing came of the readings and auditions…
Okwo had a hard time casting the leading man until she found Nonso Bassey from a film snippet on Twitter! Okwo said, “I searched for a leading man for a while. I even had to pray about it. And there he was on Twitter. He had the look I was going for,” Okwo said in her interview.
The filmmaker decided to take a chance on him and not only did he have the look; the chemistry was also a match! La Femme Anjola is coming to theatres on March 19 and we can’t wait to experience this sizzling story of star-crossed lovers.
