Crazitive African Magazine Issue 9: Body Shaming | Page 7

THE INTERVIEW
Crazitive African Magazine: Can we meet you?
Olayode Juliana: I'm Olayode Juliana. I'm a Christian. I love God. I'm Yoruba, yes
for some people they think I'm not Yoruba, they think I'm Igbo so I'm Yoruba from
Ogun state and I'm the last girl of the family of six (6) and basically that's all.
CAM: So how did you get into Acting?
OJ: I went for auditions. My first audition, I was on my way to church that evening
for choir rehearsals and then I got a call from my friend she said 'Hey Juliana come,
there's an audition somewhere' and I'm like 'no no no, I need to go for choir
rehearsals' and she said 'come come come I've told the director' blah blah blah so I
said ok then I didn't want to go and then she gave someone the phone to speak
with me so I said ok let me just check out the place and see what it looks like.
When I got there, I was shocked at the crowd, she didn't tell me there was crowd, if
she had told me, I wouldn't have gone because I don't like crowd so she told me
'ehnnn nobody dey here, just come'. So when I got there and saw the crowd, I
wanted to just run back, first of all I was tying my hair, I was wearing skirt, I was
looking aarrrggghhh, I didn't know how an audition looked like so I saw people
dressing as if they were going for fashion competition, makeup and stuff so
somehow I was like no no no I'm going back, I can't wait for this audition then she
talked me into staying so I went to hide in the restroom until it was my turn and I
later came out when it was my turn,I got there. I saw the judges, I became a
stammerer, could not read my scripts, I was just stammering and then they were
nice so they told me 'calm down, we think you're nervous' so I went back to read
the script and then I did it and they said 'ok , we'll get back to you'. I knew they
wouldn't get back to me because I did rubbish so months after they called and
then that was my first movie. It was a series 'me, myself and my diary' so that was
the first time I did, I ever featured in any movie.
CAM: What
are the challenges in pursuing your career and
how have you overcome them?
OJ: There are lots of challenges but the thing is we learn that in life, there will
always be challenges but you just face your challenge and know that life would
throw bricks at you but make sure you return it with a big building. So yeah, lots of
challenges, there are some roles that I can’t do, there are some things I can’t do