“I am very privileged to have the kind of stories that come to me,” Onyinye Odokoro said in an interview with Zikoko.
She was talking about how she got the lead role in Baby Farm, the critically acclaimed film from Mo Abudu‘s EbonyLife Studio that recently began streaming on Netflix and has been hailed by Elle, Screen Rant and The New York Times for the similarities of its themes with the hit Hulu show, The Handmaid’s Tale.
In Baby Farm, Odokoro plays Adanna, a naïve young pregnant mother who is tricked into moving into a hospital where babies are stolen and given to wealthier Nigerians. Poor and with no means, Adanna is thrust into a life of seemingly luxury, where the mothers are pampered and cared for.
“I love Adanna’s story,” Odokoro said. “She is assertive. She is curious. She is resilient and determined, even though she is from a rural area. When she finds herself in this unfortunate place, she is determined to escape, to save her twins. I love the topic that the story makes a commentary on — about baby factories and the plight of mothers. Even today, if you just type ‘baby factories’ on Google, you will see a lot in the country.”
Adanna is only one of many juicy roles that Odokoro has played since she packed her bags, left her nursing training in university, and moved to Lagos in 2020 to pursue a career as an actor in Nollywood. In an industry that has faced heavy criticism for stereotypical storytelling, Odokoro has become one of the luckiest young actors working today in Nollywood.
Just a year after she moved to Lagos, she was whisked to Hollywood where she was part of the production of Unwanted, a Skye Original series directed by the Oscar-nominated German director, Oliver Hirschbiegel. A strange number had texted her about the role and she auditioned for it. After she got it, she realised it was Stephanie Linus.
When she left the University of Calabar, she came to Lagos — a move that helped her bypass the less glamorous part of Nollywood in Asaba and Enugu, where actors are paid only a fraction and work round the clock shooting low-budget movies in harsher conditions that, in an increasingly digitalised world, is looked askance.
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“I didn’t go to Asaba or Enugu. Lagos is the hub of Nollywood, and the kind of storytellers that I wanted to meet — they were here. So it was just fundamental for me,” Odokoro said.
With Baby Farm, Odokoro was contacted on WhatsApp and invited to a closed audition. In closed auditions, casting directors and producers only invite actors that they are more than certain they want in the film. The auditions will typically focus on chemistry and delivery. For instance, they might want to know if the actor will be able to speak a language well. It is less gratuitous than an open casting call, where actors present can be anything between 20 to 150 people.
“I 100% don’t take credit for that,” Odokoro said of her success in the industry. “I want to say this is God. When I say that, I don’t mean I don’t do my part — showing up to set, working hard, honing my skills. But then there are a million actors who are also doing that.”
But she added that professionalism and her conduct on set have been helpful. “People appreciate when talent is professional. Professionalism is a value for me. I know the value I bring to a set when I’m on set, and I can see the effect in the eyes of the producers, in the work that is being done,” she said.
Playing Adanna on Baby Farm, Odokoro said she was drawn to her courage. In the show, Adanna had to abandon all the luxury that she was thrust into at the hospital and fight for her twins.
“It’s very important to me that we learn to be courageous and to speak up,” she said. “I would love for people to take away the message of love. Anyone Adanna seems to come across does not mean well for her. If I mean well, I won’t collect money and hide. This is a behaviour that is not in tandem with love. If we love one another, there are things I wouldn’t do to harm you or dehumanise you.”
For Odokoro, the courage of Adanna will be very useful in tackling corruption in the country — a topic she doesn’t shy away from speaking about.
“I don’t think it’s a secret that where Nigeria is as a country, we have corruption deeply rooted in every sector,” she said. “And the few voices of reason you see — people are attacking them. There is this whole system that is oppressing people, and the people who are being oppressed are happy being oppressed. And this person stands out as the voice of reason, and everybody is shouting her down.”
When she thinks of Baby Farm, the experience of Adanna, and the state of the country, a quote from Martin Luther King Jr. comes to her mind: “Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.”
“At its core, Baby Farm is a microcosm of Nigeria at large, where there is corruption. We are hearing what is happening in Rivers State, we are hearing what is happening with Senator Natasha,” she said.
But for now, Odokoro just wants more people to watch the series. “Baby Farm is literally a story that sheds light on the activities of baby factories. I loved the theme of the series. I don’t know that I have ever seen anything like that done in the globe,” she said.
