New Telegraph

As with Blood Sisters, I look forward to stretching myself more

Delectable, talented, witty and classy are some of the words Kehinde Bankole had been described with. Looking at her career and the growth she has achieved, it is not a surprise her career continues to grow in leaps and bounds. She spoke to Adedayo Odulaja in this interview on the back of her widely-lauded role in the Netflix limited series, Blood Sisters. Excerpts…

How do you do something so outstanding and you’re able to keep quiet for almost two years when it’s not out as we have seen with Blood Sisters show during the pandemic as we have come to learn?

How we keep quiet would be that we don’t want to jettison the good result. We don’t want to jeopardize all the hard work that you described. So, if silence is what we know to preserve the safety of that intellectual property, then we better be quiet and keep ourselves busy with other things. You’d find us on TikTok to distract ourselves and to dissipate our energy. Also because of piracy, then because you want the clout and news to come out juicy and beautiful and because you want it compressed so that when it comes out, it sort of explodes. Hence, you manage it until it’s time. That’s what we did. We just tell ourselves that the gratification later will be nice so let’s hold on.

At the point of getting involved with the project, what was the clincher for you that made you realize you needed to be a part of the project?

The first thing is, you want a project that would be seen by the world. You don’t want anything that you’d sense that when it is finished, it would get hidden under the bed. So, once you see the prospects that all the right energy around the series, you could tell that this would go far. Also, look at the company one is dealing with, what they are doing with the other projects. They are passionate about it, they push it, they are legit into art for art and I think it’s a key thing to look at the people you’re working with. Who are the people trying to hire me, what will they do with this material? After all the work like you said, some people will just tell you “we are not releasing this film”. How does an actor take that kind of news for instance? That’s the key thing. You just look at the people you’re working with and all the things surrounding the project, you see that the prospects are there, so you join in and put in your efforts and push.

You’ve been part of some big budget, headlining stuff especially when we are talking being directed by some of the best directors in the land but with Blood Sisters, a new one and especially on Netflix, what new vista are you looking forward to in your career from this?

I look forward to stretching myself more, my versatility, a little more, being a little more relaxed. I’ve built my work to a point where, it’s not enough or at where I want to be yet but I can breathe. I can sit back and just take a little break from taking highly emotional roles, very serious emotional roles. Sometimes, you want to get sensual a little and sometimes you want to do something different. Although, when I first saw the work there was sensuality in it, the usual me wanted to say no but then I looked at it and said, it’s art, it’s your work, explore, let’s go.

It must be new for you as it was for everyone because nobody even predicted the lockdown and COVID-19 pandemic. How did you take that part of shooting, working around that time with all the restrictions, the fear, the uncertainty across the globe?

Those were very weird days. You know we are huggers. Africans, we like to just hug, so we couldn’t hug, we couldn’t talk closely, we couldn’t stay in the car with friends and family, you couldn’t just grab someone and say “drop me off at this place” because you have to first think: “have you’ve washed your hands?” “Are you wearing your mask?” and hope nobody is sick at home. Then they were days it was really who you were when it comes to being in touch with friends and family. I learnt a lot about spending more time with my family and with myself. When you say self-care, it also includes your family, it includes the people in your immediate circle and extended circle as well. So that afforded me some time to do a lot of introspective thinking and you know the life of work will always be long and be forever but that unit called family especially when I was saw a lot of things that happened in this series to the family, to Uduak’s children, to Uduak, how they were together yet they were not together. There were a lot of deep things happening to that family and how Olayinka from the outside just came for her with selfish reasons of course, to worsen it. So, you have to keep your family really tight and close, COVID season actually showed me that not just by mouth, you have to spend time with your family. It wasn’t an easy time but here we are and we thank God that we were able to make it through by God’s grace.

So, with the series dealing with domestic violence as one of its main themes, do you find it exhilarating that it’s coming out especially at this time when there is so much focus on it?

It can never be enough, the noise can never be enough about it. Somebody painted an analogy to be that the people you find commenting the most under such publications or blogs, saying, ‘don’t let it happen, don’t take it are the ones probably still in such situations. They want to be heard. A lot of people are still in it. Why do you think the outcry is this loud, why do you think it has continued for this long if the subject is not so serous. So, if Blood Sisters series also comes to highlight such a societal ill, the better for us and we should make more noise about it.

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