Nollywood actor Deyemi Okanlawon is currently sharing his experience navigating fame as a popular actor and dealing with his wife, who finds it challenging to handle the spotlight. Here’s what he had to say about this dynamic.
Speaking about how he deals with the fact that his wife finds it difficult to handle his life in the limelight as a popular actor, why she doesn’t follow him, and doesn’t watch his films, Deyemi said:
DEYEMI OKANLAWON: There was a time I took it for granted that my wife understood the nature of my job, until I started noticing a few things. She was a bit withdrawn, things were changing, and then I tried to have the conversation but even she didn’t realize that she was reacting. So it took a while of consistently trying to say what’s going on because you’re changing and there’s a difference, before she now finally even looked at it by herself and realized okay, there’s a problem, we need to sit down and we need to talk. And we had the conversation.
People look at her and say oh she’s quiet, she’s reserved, she can handle it. She can’t handle it. We had to handle it together.
So right now my wife does not follow me on Instagram, by her choice. She said she does not want to see. When my films started showing when I started out on things like DSTV and local channels, we decided that okay we’re no longer watching local channels, let us go and look for
international channels. Now I’m inside international channels, we’re looking at ourselves and we’re playing card games in the house. You have to do everything you can to protect and preserve your environment. I don’t take it for granted that it’s not easy for her, so I still have to check in once in a while.