Ivie Okujaye was eating noodles and eggs when her phone rang. On the other end was James Omokwe, calling to offer her the lead role in his Benin epic, ‘Osamede’.
“It was the happiest call of my career,” she says. “I didn’t even see it coming. I hadn’t heard a thing about the project, and even though it was the kind of role I’d always dreamed of, I wasn’t expecting the call. That made it even sweeter.”
For the actress, who broke out over a decade ago and has since built a career across Nollywood and international productions, ‘Osamede’ feels like destiny.
But before that call with Omokwe, it felt like the industry’s attention toward her had drifted and she wondered if the acting dream she had fought her medical family to pursue was slipping away.
Okujaye had chosen to marry young and have children at the beginning of her rising career against advice. A senior producer warned her bluntly that motherhood could stall everything she was building. She went ahead anyway.
She got married, had three daughters, and built a life around them. What she didn’t anticipate was how quickly the industry would move on without her.
The years that followed were tough. The calls slowed. Her body changed. The momentum she had worked so hard to build slipped away. There were moments she considered walking away from Nollywood altogether, choosing instead to give all of herself to raising her three daughters.
But sacrifice, she says, doesn’t always mean surrender. “I really want to raise kids who one day would say, ‘No. I saw my mom work. I saw my mom struggle. I saw my mom not give up on her dreams while still being able to be there for us completely,'” Okujaye explains.
“I want them to say that I was able to find a balance between my dreams and the family God has blessed me with. That’s why I haven’t given up till now.”
It’s this tension between motherhood and ambition, sacrifice and persistence, that makes ‘Osamede’ feel almost written for her. Omokwe’s screen adaptation of the play from executive producer Lilian Olubi tells the story of a woman who gave everything so that her child could step into destiny.
“That sacrifice is something many African women understand,” Okujaye says. “So many have given up potential greatness to raise their children. That’s a power of its own.”
The role arrived at the perfect time and it was also the homecoming she hadn’t realised she needed.
Filming in Edo State, the city she left as a child, reawakened old memories. “The smell of the air, the food, the roads. It felt like I had been away too long. It made me start teaching my daughters our language. I wanted them to feel what I was feeling.”
READ MORE ON HOW THE CAST IMMERSED THEMSELVES IN BENIN FOR 14 DAYS OF FILMING.
Even the action, the stunts, and the physical demands felt like they had been waiting for her. Years of dance, sports, and martial arts roles had prepared her for this, almost without her noticing. “I was literally preparing my whole career for this role. The timing was perfect. If it had come five years later, I don’t know if I’d have been ready.”
But what she loves most about Osamede isn’t her superpowers. “Her real strength is her voice. She’s brave enough to speak first, to choose dialogue before destruction. That’s the kind of heroine I always wanted to play.”
The story’s mystical roots also shine visually in the trailer’s glimpse into Benin’s past.
On set, surrounded by actors who pushed her to her limits and conversations that felt “almost spiritual”, Okujaye realised what ‘Osamede’ really meant to her: a reminder that the sacrifices she made for family hadn’t closed the door on her career; they had only reshaped the path.
SEE ALSO: WILLIAM BENSON ON FEELING OVERLOOKED UNTIL ‘OSAMEDE’ GAVE HIM HIS MOMENT.
“I needed this film,” she says. “As a mom. As an actor. As someone who never wants to lose connection to where she comes from.”
‘Osamede’ has drawn attention from financiers like MBO Capital and will arrive in cinemas on October 17. Be the first to get early tickets here.
