On Thursday, Maduagwu swung his searchlight on the activities of female Nollywood practitioners and came up with the conclusion that more of the so-called star actresses in the industry are increasingly desperate to sleep with producers in return for lead roles in movies.
Expressing his views in a disapproving tone on Instagram, the actor wrote, “Some things are just so unbelievable and irritating. Someone told me how she had the shock of her life on a movie set in Enugu. According to her, a particular up-and-coming actress was supposed to take a role in the movie. She had rehearsed her lines and was ready for the shooting.
“Suddenly a popular Nollywood actress just walked in and ordered the budding actress to drop the script, claiming that she had been given the role. That was how she forcefully collected the script from the emerging actress. Imagine. I felt bad when I heard this story. Imagine the shame and the psychological pain that the younger actress must have experienced just because one fake celebrity and star actress went through the back door to get the lead role.”
Maduagwu said that, much later, he learnt that the actress was given the role because she had been sleeping with the producer of the movie.
Describing the sex-for-movie-role syndrome as an ugly trend that is slowly killing the film industry in Nigeria, he continued, “The other day, I was on a movie set in Lekki, Lagos when a director stopped shooting simply because a star actress, who had gone behind to get the lead role, failed to deliver her lines accurately. The director told her to hand give the script to another actress who was better in delivering the lines. When she refused, the director walked out of the set. That was a good director who knows his job. If we had more directors like him in Nollywood, I tell you that things would be better.
“I know that there are some producers who don’t tolerate all the nonsense that these actresses do on movie sets. Also, some producers are quite focused and they know what it means to invest so much in a film project. They are the kind of people that we need in Nollywood.”