Sharon Ooja Says The Bipolar Role Took Something Out Of Her
Lagos · Sunday 13 September 2026
Sharon Ooja has spoken about the difficulty of playing a character with bipolar disorder, describing the emotional cost of the role and the effort it demanded. She called it a lot of work, which is a mild way to describe what she went on to detail.
The thing being asked for has a name
Sustained emotional labour, performed to schedule, on a set where the shooting order is decided by location costs rather than by the arc of the character. An actor filming a breakdown scene in the morning and a comic scene after lunch is being asked to move between states faster than the states are designed to move.
Nollywood's version
| The support an actor might expect | Availability here |
|---|---|
| Clinical advice on portraying a condition | Occasionally, if the director insists |
| On-set support during heavy scenes | Rare |
| Anything after the shoot ends | Essentially nothing |
The contract ends when the filming does.
An actor is hired to go somewhere difficult and is left to find her own way back.
The other half of it
Bipolar disorder is one of the most frequently misrepresented conditions on screen anywhere, and Nigerian film has generally used mental illness as a plot device rather than a subject. An actress taking the portrayal seriously enough to be affected by it is a sign of a production trying to get it right, and that is worth saying alongside the cost she has described.
Reporting: LEADERSHIP, The Nation, QED.NG and TheCable Lifestyle.
Read next
- Streams Of Joy Gave Back The 1.6 Million Naira Sent By Mistake
- A Researcher Is Asking Nollywood To Take Its Own Health Seriously
- Three Years After Mohbad, Bella Shmurda Is Still Writing To Him
Gist is basically a national sport. The Gist Has Entered The Chat tee says it out loud, and the rest of the store is here. Naira pricing.
