Nollywood actress Sharon Ooja has described ‘Ordinary People’ as one of the toughest projects she has worked on, saying portraying a bipolar character was particularly demanding because of its emotional intensity.
Speaking during an interview with Arise News on Thursday, Ooja said the role required her to move between several emotions while remaining fully immersed in the character, making the experience mentally exhausting.
“Definitely one of the toughest I’ve had to work on. And I think that’s because it was more mentally draining for me. When you’re a normal person playing a bipolar role, it’s it’s a lot of work,” she said.
Ooja said the experience also gave her greater empathy for people dealing with mental health conditions.
“This gave me so much empathy for people actually dealing with mental health issues because it was draining,” she said.
She explained that director Moses Inwang would sometimes stop a scene when she began slipping back into her normal mannerisms instead of maintaining the character.
“My director would sometimes have to cut because he’s like, you’re not staying on tempo. You’re going back to normal,” she said.
“You can’t be normal,” Ooja added.
The actress said the role required her to portray several emotions within a single performance, including crying, laughter and anger.
“So it was so draining having to be crying, laughing, angry and so many emotions in one,” she said.
Ooja described the experience as particularly challenging mentally, saying the psychological demands of the role could be more difficult than physical exhaustion.
“So absolutely was definitely one of the toughest I’ve had, especially mentally, which is even in my opinion, almost worse than physical,” she said.
The actress also spoke about the way mental health conditions are sometimes misunderstood, saying behaviours linked to conditions such as bipolar disorder and schizophrenia can be wrongly attributed to spiritual causes.
“I am absolutely a Christian, but everything is not going to be sorted in church,” Ooja said.
She stressed that some conditions require medical attention and that unusual behaviour can sometimes be linked to a medical condition rather than a spiritual problem.
“It’s not normal. It’s not spiritual. It’s medical,” she said.
‘Ordinary People’, directed by Moses Inwang, is an eight-part series now streaming globally on Netflix.
Ademide Adebayo
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