Growing up in the early 90s, Nigerian actress and theatre practitioner, Jessica Gabriel’s Ujah, moved around a lot due to her civil servant parents’ jobs. Young Jessica was just a Nigerian teenager who had to occasionally uproot her life and say reluctant goodbye to old friends, familiar spots and environments, and comfort activities while jostling with the illusory comfort of a new friendship, adventure, and place. Thus, in her formative years, Jessica lived in Ilorin, Ibadan, Akure, and Abeokuta – four cities that share cultural and historical connections to Yorubaland.
Jessica, who is the eponymous lead of Olive Nwosu’s Lady which debuted at Sundance and Berlin Film Festival, pleasantly recounted her childhood experience during our virtual conversation, it reminded me of the Biblical Abraham. In Genesis, the Christian God commanded him to leave his country, his people, and his father’s household to go to an unknown land. Abraham, in deference to God’s Word, packed his wife, nephew, and earthly possessions and left for Canaan. But, unlike Abraham, young Jessica wasn’t aware of the “promise” that moving from state to state held until she started acting in Nollywood. “I strongly believe that growing up in different cities has influenced and impacted the kind of person and artist I have become. That I was exposed to multiple cultures means I can speak multiple languages and understand the cultural and traditional nuances of different Nigerian societies,” she said.
unlike Abraham, young Jessica wasn’t aware of the “promise” that moving from state to state held until she started acting in Nollywood.
While stationed in Ilorin, Kwara state, Jessica’s mother had a rental shop which introduced her to the world of storytelling and moving images. This rental house boasted Nigerian and foreign titles, which Jessica learned to watch to fill up her alone time. She recalled watching Gina Prince-Bythewood’s Love and Basketball, one of her all-time favorite films, Robert Allan Ackerman’s Double Platinum, and other Nigerian titles. This cinematic engagement exposed her to cinema’s ability to sow the seed of a dream. “I didn’t grow up rich, but those films filled me up with dreams of possibilities if I pursue storytelling.” Additionally, she realized how powerful individual actors and storytelling can be in driving social change. “What the world needs now is cinema, sweet cinema,” she jokingly added.
Jessica might have joked about the world needing cinema, but it was a conscious acknowledgement of cinema’s potency for social change. It also speaks to the films she’s drawn to as a performer. Cinema in third-world countries has the potential for political education and development of a critical mass. Nigerians, courtesy of a failing and unconcerned government, are figuratively and literally bleeding. Multi-dimensional poverty and avoidable death keep surging. Nigerian and African filmmakers have been addressing these socio-political issues while indirectly nudging viewers to engage in private and public conversations around them. The pioneering African filmmakers were aware of cinema’s potential for political education. Filmmakers like Ousmane Sembène, Djibril Diop Mambéty, Haile Gerima, Souleymane Cissé, Tunde Kelani, Abderrahmane Sissako, and others exploited and explored cinema’s role as a tool for political education. Their films ensured that Africans are aware of political issues that directly and indirectly affect their existence.
Cinema and the stories it tells translate and transcend human experiences and can travel into inaccessible cities. Jessica’s interest in filmmaking began as a quiet desire to use her unrestricted imagination to tell “stories that matter.” Thus, from the onset, she knew she wanted to make a change by getting into herself and exploring characters and experiences.
Her debut acting experience was at a branch of The Evangelical Church Winning All (ECWA) in Ilorin. One of her neighbors, who attended the church, was hosting the church drama rehearsal. Prompted by curiosity, she joined them and landed her unofficial first acting gig. After this experience, the interest in storytelling, not acting, piqued. She read obsessively, losing sleep and meals in the process. These books further introduced her to distant and unfamiliar worlds, which drew her further into storytelling.
It wasn’t strange for nerdy students to be advised against attending art class in secondary school. Jessica’s mother encouraged her to pursue a career in science because of its attractive career path. But one of her secondary school teachers in Akure asked why she was interested in science classes. The teacher, aware of her interest in art subjects, discussed her dreams. That discussion encouraged her to pivot to art class. When she switched, she didn’t inform her mother until the switch was irreversible. She struggled with this because Law or Mass Communication attracted public commendation, whereas Performing Arts, which she eventually studied at the University of Ibadan, did not.
Ibadan gave Jessica’s artistry and dream a recognisable shape. After being admitted to study Performing Arts, she fell in love with acting and decided to pursue it full time. She was enamored with the spirituality and connection she feels towards acting. “I wanted to explore what it means to walk in another person’s shoes and observe them naked. Characters and the world they inhabit are layered onions that need to be carefully peeled off, and I was interested in that.”
Acting turned out to be a fitting career pathway for someone whose childhood had involved having imaginary friends and creating stories. By stepping into different characters and worlds, she can translate the world into digestible language. Her multi-cultural upbringing also meant she can pick references and elements from the various communities, people, and places she has interacted with. Studying in Nigeria is incredibly tasking. But studying Theatre or Performing Arts is incredibly exhausting. It’s a regimented course that requires both physical and mental activities. As demanding as it was, Jessica was enjoying it. “It was stressful, but I was thrilled because I signed up for it. Thus, experiencing the endless, physically demanding rehearsals was akin to an adventure. “The lecturers, practicals, realisation that there’s a history of performers who have given their life to theatre, and course work made me realize that there was a future in my childhood passion.”
This made her want to give herself in total submission to the craft of becoming a performer and telling stories that can stand the test of time and cause social change. The intelligent senior colleagues and master students like Chukwu Martin, Biodun Akinshku, Chris Anyaya, Moses Ipadeola, and others who stage and direct experimental plays. For Jessica, these are young directors trying to get into the heart and soul of each story they intend to tell. According to Jessica, much of her self-discovery as an actor happened on their projects. When Martin, known for his rough and informal plays, directed Hamlet, it taught her the importance of understanding characters’ mindsets and how to bring certain emotions alive.
Another defining moment was working with Akinsiku, a Master’s student at the time, on his Master’s project. Jessica described working on the project as life changing for a specific reason: Akinsiku’s preference for an unorthodox method for eliciting emotions and performance from actors. “He stripped away the glamour of what acting is and presented it as something that would take your soul and mind, depending on how far you’re willing to go for the story and character.”
This obsessive need to understand a character’s interiority is palpable in her performance in Martin’s We Danced and Danced, where she played Zina and Nwosu’s Lady, where she played the titular character. Three experiences were important in creating Lady’s backstory and understanding her. To step into Lady’s shoes, she had to find her or a fragment of her in the real world. During a random commute in Lagos, she happened upon a female commercial driver around the Island. Her trip was supposed to end at Jakande, but, enamored by the female commercial driver’s ability to carry herself with minimal fear, she ended up riding all the way to Lekki and back to Ajah. “I watched how she refused to be intimidated by the road or the agberos she encountered, and how she balanced her femininity with an absolute lack of fear. She had to be fearless to do what she did, and that became one of the foundational pillars for my performance.”
After getting the role, she took unassisted trips to the riverine communities of Ajegunle and Makoko (with the director), searching for elements that mirrored the character’s upbringing. Thirdly, during a random trip, she encountered a young boat conductor who, amidst the chaos of collecting fares and weaving through the lagoon, was playing beats through his speaker and rapping in Yoruba. “The image of him on the blackened lagoon water, swaying as the boat rocked, his voice piercing through the quiet creek with talent and a dream is one that stays in my mind constantly.” Her performance alongside other cast members won the coveted World Cinema Dramatic Special Jury Award for Acting Ensemble at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival.
Nwosu’s Lady is one of Jessica’s career-defining projects. She has contemplated quitting acting when the role came knocking. She was tired of constantly auditioning. Believing she wasn’t adding much value to the industry, doubts and questions began to creep in. Lady came as an answered prayer. The film renewed her interest in storytelling, and its women-focused direction convinced her further. Lady partly tells the story of Nigerian sex workers. To authentically portray these Nigerian female sex workers, the female actors had to wear revealing clothes. There were instances in which certain men thought that because these female actors were dressed in revealing clothes, they could be spoken to disrespectfully. When Nwosu notices, she quickly takes the male actors away from the set and ends their contracts. That was how protective the set was of the female cast members. “We coordinated on set, where in collaboration with the actors and director, agreed on physical boundaries during intimate scenes. This was to ensure an accurate portrayal that doesn’t compromise personal boundaries,”she told me.
This experience leads Jessica to believe that there should be ethical standards on Nigerian sets, regardless of gender. Actors tell the stories of different people, that shouldn’t mean that the rights and humanity of an actor should cease to exist because of their role in a project. She firmly believes that fellow actors shouldn’t talk about the bodies of other actors with whom they have shared intimate scenes with regardless of gender. “The set is a workplace that should have safety systems for actors. The set should be a space where actors are concerned about physical or sexual harassment and assault.”
For this sense of safety to exist, Nigerian filmmakers must put systems in place to ensure consequences for offenders and protection for victims. “For us to have a harassment-free industry, it needs to move beyond individual efforts and projects to a collective one.” In African Society, women are sometimes encouraged to compete with each other. There’s that unwritten rule about outpacing and outshining your friends. On Lady’s set that wasn’t encouraged. Each female actor, crew member, and extras was treated with equal respect and protection. “Olive Nwosu is deeply emotionally intelligent to each and every one of our needs in a way that we felt seen.”
Jessica thinks in pictures. Thus, whenever she’s working on a character, she seeks to see them in her head and play a moving image of the character’s life: their bedroom, routine, friendships, and other traits. As an actor, she has learned that humans are unique. It’s this uniqueness that she’s concerned about capturing in each character she plays. The writer and director each have their interpretation of a character. As an actor, she keys into that vision while also layering it with these unique elements.
As our conversation winds down, Jessica mentions being grateful for where she’s now. From that nerdish teenager to a Sundance-award-winning actor, she has surely grown. Jessica’s film screened and won at Sundance and the Berlin Film Festival after she had decided to quit acting. For now, she’s focused on living vicariously through characters and exploring human emotions, connections, stories, and the communities that make us humans. “I am also concerned with how we can then tell better stories in ways that matter and make people see them.”
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