Well-known Nigerian actor and filmmaker, Adetola Abdullateef Adedimeji, became famous for his significant role in the 2013 movie ‘Kudi Klepto’ by Yewande Adekoya.
Lateef Adedemeji rose to fame thanks to his important part in Yewande Adekoya’s 2013 film “Kudi Klepto.”
He has starred in over 100 Nigerian films in the last 15 years.
The casting was done by Mo Bimpe, myself and then Niyi Akinmolayan the director. From the outset when we thought about Olori Ilari from the writing of the story, we knew and we were certain that he was going to be Ibrahim Chatta because I know he is the one who can pull that character for me. It’s just about him. So from the outset, I knew he was going to be Ibrahim. Me and Debo, we have a very close relationship. If you go back to ‘Ayinla,’ you will see that it is the same line of friendship, we just flow naturally.
How does it feel knowing the movie isn’t part of the global stage?
I think that is what we’re still working on. I have sent a series of emails to Netflix because it’s supposed to be a global release. So why they released it in Africa and not in the global world yet is what we don’t know. I’m sure from our mails and from a lot of people that have mailed them and asked them questions, I’m sure they should be able to give a reply to whatever. People are very angry, and I wrote to them and told them “this movie is not just for Africa. It’s our story. The global world needs to see the story. And we have a lot of Nigerians in the diaspora that really want the story.” People were even swearing for me and I was like, “I’m not a streaming platform.”
Are you saying the audience took it to heart?
My mail is full of “What nonsense are you doing?” It’s just normal. I know that’s because there’s been a lot of excellent reviews. And then it’s painful to them that they are seeing this review and they can’t get to watch. So it’s just normal for that to happen, which is fine, so it’s not a problem. I’m sure they’ll work on it, and then they will do the needful.
How did you make sure the cast spoke Egba dialect even though not everyone is from Abeokuta?
Yeah, we had like two people who were always on ground for every major character. It was going to be a problem if you cannot speak Egba and we now have to force you to speak it. You get to be speaking the wrong thing. But there are some certain words that once you say it people can tell that it’s Egba. So we made sure that all of those keywords, people get it correctly. So we had coaches on set all the way down before each scene. They will listen to you. They will tell you okay “Okay, ti o ba le so eleyi legba ti o ba le so eleyi, so eleyi legba (If you cannot say this, say this in Egba) like that because it’s an Egba story. It won’t make sense for us to be telling an Egba backstory and we are speaking another dialect. Yeah, you know, so we have to pay attention to these things to bring it to life.