Celebrated Nigerian Actor Kanayo O. Kanayo has pushed back against attempts to downplay the foundations of Nollywood, insisting that the industry’s early formats should not be dismissed as irrelevant, while cautioning younger creatives against limiting their growth.
In an interview on ‘Curiosity Made Me Ask’ show, Kanayo addressed questions about platforms, experience, and how Nollywood’s origins should be understood.
“Right now, this may be your first platform,” he said, reacting to the line of questioning. When asked about his body of work, the actor was emphatic. “I’ve done about almost 400 [movies] in between 1992 and to date.”
Kanayo rejected suggestions that earlier productions should be trivialised because they were distributed on cassette.
“You’re counting all those cassettes as movie,” he said, before challenging the framing of Nollywood’s history.
“Where do you situate what happened that was called Nollywood?”
He explained that while the industry did not emerge directly from earlier state theatre traditions, those foundations still mattered.
“We’re not situating it from Hubert Ogunde because it was state play. We’re very proud of what foundation they laid,” he said. According to him, Nollywood should be assessed based on what gave relevance to the industry as it exists today.
