Bob-Manuel Udokwu has challenged the widely held notion that Pete Edochie is the oldest figure in Nollywood……CONTINUE FULL READING>>>>>
While acknowledging, in an interview with Gbam, that Edochie is his senior in age, Udokwu argued that his own acting career began earlier.
The 58-year-old film star pointed to his role in the groundbreaking 1992 film ‘Living in Bondage’ as the foundation of the modern Nollywood industry, describing it as the project that “started the business”.
He argued that while Edochie, 78, was a celebrated star of television series, he was not part of the pioneering film projects that shaped the industry’s birth.
“Pete Edochie is not the oldest in Nollywood. I started before Pete. He is older than me but he didn’t do the first Living in Bondage with us,” he said.
“It’s ‘Living in Bondage’ that started the business. You are not the one to say, you are not the one to choose that you are the oldest.
“You that is saying that you are the oldest, where is your own? Who watched them? As we are talking now, some people are planning to remake ‘Things Fall Apart’ to be a movie.
“What Pete did was TV series. Both those that bring the money and those that act the movies didn’t study theatre art in the university. When I see these things, I laugh.”
This marks the second time in recent weeks that a veteran actor has made such a claim.
In July, Solade had argued that he is Edochie’s “industry senior”.
He also maintained that the Yoruba film industry existed before Nollywood but was overlooked due to poor media coverage and documentation.
In 2023, Edochie revealed his acting debut was in the 1985 adaptation of Chinua Achebe’s best-selling novel ‘Things Fall Apart’……CONTINUE FULL READING>>>>>
