La Femme Anjola: How Brenda Fassie Helped my Role -Rita Dominic

Nollywood star, Rita Dominic, in an interview with media personality, Chude Jideonwu, revealed that late South African anti-apartheid singer, Brenda Fassie, helped her role in La Femme Anjola, her newly-released film.

When asked how she prepared for the role, Dominic said she researched a lot about female singers from the 60s to the 90s before choosing Fassie as a case study.

According to Dominic, Fassie was pertinent to her role in La Femme Anjola due to their similarities.

“I felt that there was similarities between her and Anjola because she was disturbed up until she died and this performer woman is also disturbed. So, I felt I could draw some similarities between these women so I studied her for a while and zoned out of everything including social media,” she stated.

The thespian further opened up on how she was able to bring life to the sinister character.

“Anjola is a very dark character, infact I remember when we were in the Basement shooting, it was so dark in there that it literally affected me, I wasn’t sleeping well. I’ll try to sleep and I’d wake up abruptly.

“I remember one night my assistant came in, no it was in the early hours of the morning, she was trying to get tea, wake me up and things like that and she was trying to be quiet because she knew I slept pretty late, so I just woke up abruptly and I remember her running to the bed and asked me ‘aunty what’s wrong,” Dominic added.