Self-styled entertainer and activist, Charles Oputa aka Charly Boy has been many things in his life but not ‘Odudubariba’ – at least to fans and the general public.
The 70-year-old actor and singer took a new role of the sequel to Kemi Adetiba’s blockbuster King Of Boys berths on Netflix.
In an uncommon session, Charly Boy revealed how his character in the sequel was christened Odudubariba after rejecting an initial name from producer and writer, Kemi Adetiba.
Going back memory land, he said he instantly took the offer from Adetiba because he had always admired her works. “The fact she (Kemi Adetiba) called me, you know when you admire someone from afar and then the fact she wants to talk to you, so I was excited when she now said there was this part she wrote with me in mind so I jokingly told her not to call me to come and mess her movie, I am not really an actor and then she laughed real hard.”
Continuing, Charly Boy said as the phone conversation progressed, he inquired about his character as well as the name and was told a name that he instantly rejected because it didn’t match his publicly perceived personality. He said the phone banter continued but neither Kemi nor himself were able to arrive at an agreed name until after the second phone conversation and Odudubariba was born.
“When she called me if I had come up with something and I said yes and she said what was the name I came up with I said ‘Odudubariba, she didn’t even ask me what it meant initially, na when we don enter the matter as we were shooting, she now asked what it meant then I told her,” he enthused.
Explaining his seeming rebirth with the character, ‘Odudubariba,’ Charly Boy described the character as a spiritual butterfly that remains his guide as a warrior. “In my dialect, ‘Odudubariba meant a butterfly, but a spiritual butterfly because this butterfly swallowed what swallowed the elephant and ‘Odudubariba’ is my spiritual guide as a spiritual warrior.”
For Charly ‘Odudubariba’ Boy, it was a pleasure working with the fastidious Adetiba whom he simply described as a slave driver on the film set. “And then on set she was a slave driver, there was a shoot we started around 5 pm we did not end till 7 am the next day, but you know I enjoyed every minute of it because why she is somebody I respect so seeing her so fussy about what she really wants, I know the feeling because that is the way I work too fortunately or unfortunately. So I could relate to that and I was happy that I was part of that whole thing.”
