Yemi Solade: How My Pastor Tried to End My Acting Career

Veteran Nollywood actor, Yemi Solade, has recounted a bitter fallout with his former church, revealing that a pastor once urged him to reject movie roles that clashed with Sunday services.

The 64-year-old actor shared the experience during a recent episode of the Honest Bunch podcast, describing how a 2013 incident ultimately drove him away from church attendance.

According to Solade, church leaders at the time demanded that his Sundays be devoted solely to worship, a directive he dismissed as unrealistic for someone in the entertainment industry.

He recalled, “Something happened in my church. I got into the service with my wife that year, 2013. I’d been told in the church that I should tell producers not to call me for work on Sundays. And I cursed the pastor.”

The actor argued that the instruction amounted to interference with his livelihood.

“It is from that thing that you said I shouldn’t do on Sunday that I put hand in my pocket and I drop here. So when will I have time to work? There’s no way in the Bible that Sunday in the Greco-Roman calendar is set aside for people to assemble and shout God and Jesus. And you’re telling me not to leave my house and go to where my chop is. You want to ruin my career?” Solade said.

He noted that leaving the church eventually brought him more peace, contrary to the belief that skipping regular worship hinders one’s spiritual wellbeing.

“The notion that if you don’t attend church, once life we must die, probably I’ve not seen anything change. Rather, I have peace. I do well. Because every day of my life, when I was going to church, I got messages or sort of disturbances,” he explained.

The actor also criticised what he described as misplaced priorities among many worshippers, citing an encounter with a technician who used money meant for repairs to fund his church.

“I had this Baba who fixed my AC, and I gave him money to buy some things one day. I was calling him, and he didn’t pick the call. Later, he told me he was in church. I said, Baba, you’re in your seventies. Do you know that you took my money to that church? You gave part of it. That blessing is mine now. It’s my money you went to drop there. If the prayer there is efficacious, it will come to me,” Solade said.

Beyond religion, Solade weighed in on Nollywood’s origins, challenging the popular belief that the industry began with the 1992 Igbo blockbuster Living in Bondage.

According to him, home video production and TV dramas predated the film.

“One very popular account was that Nollywood started with Living in Bondage. The first movie that you call home video was actually produced by a man who is still alive, Ade Ajiboye, we call him Big Abbas. Shosho Meji, as produced by Ade Ajiboye, Big Abbas, was around 1988. Things fall apart on television was in the mid-80s,” he recalled.

Solade, who studied Theatre Arts at Obafemi Awolowo University, further argued that the South-East, despite its later contributions, did not initially embrace theatre studies as much as other regions.

“You cannot find to date any actor my age, or slightly younger, who will tell you he studied theatres in the East, because theatres never existed in the East. When I was a student in Ife, we had something we called NUTAF, Nigerian University Theatres Festival. Only six universities at that time, none existed in the East,” he claimed.

For him, Nollywood’s foundation has been oversimplified over the years, with insufficient credit given to other parts of the country.

Known for his outspoken views, Solade has featured in both Yoruba and English-language films for over four decades and remains one of Nollywood’s most controversial voices, often challenging what he sees as hypocrisy in society and the entertainment industry.