Veteran actor, Sunny McDon W, has been in the Nigerian movie industry for over three decades and has played several roles in the course of his career. However, in the early stage of his career, he was known to feature mostly in movies that bordered on voodoo, a part he played well. Soon enough he carved a niche for himself playing such roles.
While some people might believe that he is diabolical, the ace actor was quick to emphasise that he is a born-again Christian.
“I am not diabolical, I’m a born-again Christian. I was born a Christian at Assemblies of God’s church. As a child, I was a bit radical and I pulled some pranks when I was in school and all that experience has helped me define my vision because experience helps you in anything you do. Unfortunately, I was being typecast as such a person in the early stage of my career because the jobs were few. The harvest was also few so if you say no, it would be to your own detriment.
“It is better you stick with the roles they give you and establish yourself in that domain so that when you feel like you have reached your climax in that area, you can branch out. It would be well understood by people because they will admit that you actually established yourself in a space before taking on another challenge.
“The reason they kept typecasting me as someone who does such things in the early days is because they felt I could play the role. There were only few of us that could play that role and they saw it as a thing of pride to identify me with their script because if you did not give me the role, other people in the industry would query you as they all know that I play such roles very well. That was how it started but at a point, I had to say no to those roles. That was when people saw that I could play other characters aside from a diabolical one,” he said.
The thespian told Saturday Beats that it got to a stage in his life that elders in his church began to frown upon the roles that he played. “In church particularly, they were frowning and sometimes they would ask me why I was always exalting the devil every time. But I always told them that they did not understand what we were doing. They were only viewing what I was doing from a religious angle. One day, I called my cell leader and reminded him that even in the church, we have plays and people play the role of the devil in the plays as well.
“I had to tell him that whenever they wrote such plays, did they ever consider the same thing he was telling me? That shut him up. I had to let him know that it was what I was using to earn a living and they should understand the value of the profession. Today, the story is different,” he said.
..so u can shut the fuck up” She wrote.
