Celebrated Ghanaian actress and producer, Akofa Edjeani, shared a troubling incident from her career, highlighting the prevalence of sexual harassment in the entertainment industry.
During the shooting of two consecutive movies, she agreed to lower her rates upon the executive producer’s request.
However, a Nigerian director, during a shoot in Kumasi, made inappropriate advances by inviting her to his room to “watch a movie.” Akofa firmly rejected the proposition, resulting in her exclusion from the second movie.
“I remember we were shooting somewhere after Kumasi, I think. Unfortunately, the producer was a Nigerian. We were going to shoot two movies back to back. So based on that, the executive producer had begged me to bring my rates down, that because we were doing two movies he would pay a certain amount, which reluctantly I agreed to.
“Now here is the director who asked me to come to his room. I said ‘come to your room and do what?’. He said ‘to watch a movie’. I said ‘watch what movie? I mean come on, whatever you want to tell me, I don’t need to come to your room’. Apparently, he wanted something else. I said ‘like seriously?’ Are you serious?
“I didn’t go to his room and guess what, that caused me the next movie. And when I asked the executive producer he said it was the director who was casting but I said ‘you were paying me this amount because we agreed on shooting two movies’. And he said there was nothing he could do about it because it was the director that did the casting,” she shared on Joy FM’s Showbiz A-Z.
Despite facing such challenges, she emphasized her commitment to refusing unwarranted advances throughout her career, encouraging young women entering the industry to believe in their talents and resist such pressures.
