My Experience With 'Sex for Role' in Nollywood - Mercy Aigbe Finally Speaks Out

The movie and entertainment industry all over the world, and also here in Nigeria, is always plagued with the nefarious story of "sex for roles" - that is the phenomenon where powerful people in industry expect sex in exchange for giving upcoming actors especially good roles.

One actress, who has had a first hand experience with this is Mercy Aigbe, and with a new interview with TVC, Mercy opens up about it for the first time. Here's what she said.

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Speaking about her experience with sex for roles, Mercy Aigbe said:

MERCY AIGBE: Let me briefly share my own experience. So we used to gather at Surulere then and I met this producer, and I was like "oh sir, I'm talented, I want to go into acting" blah blah blah, and then he said oh, he has an upcoming film, and that I should come to his office for audition. And then I went for audition first level, second one, third one, and then the last one that I went—I actually thought I did well because I gave it my all. I would go home, rehearse, read my lines, just to convince them that I had that talent. So that last one, he just called me into his office and just gave me one very tiny part, maybe just one line, when I was auditioning for the sub-lead. I was like "but sir, this is not the character I've been auditioning for, I've been coming here for days now, why am I getting this part?" He now said actually, the director said that he doesn't know you. And I was like is that not the essence of the audition? So he now said "he doesn't know you and that's why I said you should be close to me." Apparently he had been making passes at me before then but he didn't come out straight until that day. And then he stood up and was trying to touch me. I was just very upset! Just thinking back, I was livid. I was like you can't do this to me. I earned this role. So why are you now doing this? And then I told him I don't even want to be part of this production anymore. I was just so upset and that was a huge insult on my person. On my way home, I started crying because I left a good paying job to be an actress, and then, I was already a single mom. But guess what? Fast forward to today and that producer, nobody knows him anymore.

What do you think about what Mercy Aigbe said? Let me know your thoughts by leaving a comment either below or on my Jide Okonjo Facebook post.

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