Clarion Chukwura & Her True Best Friend, Clarence Peters

 

It is not often that the opportunity to interview or do a feature

on a celebrity mother and her celebrity son drops itself on your

laps. Sitting down to talk to the duo of Clarion Chukwura and

Clarence Peters, the son between herself and Afro-juju master,

Sir Shina Peters wasn’t only fun, it was revealing.

 

She is an award winning actress, producer and recently a designer of casual day clothes whose lengthy career has spanned over 30 years of playing several roles in theatre, TV and movies. She has had several opportunities to exhibit her acting skill in Nigeria and beyond. However, for this veteran actor, life has been a mix of roses and thorns. One that she has navigated successfully, not just as a professional, but also as a mother.

 

 

He is a film maker and boss of his own record label, Capital Hill Records and a production company, Capital Dream Pictures. Recognised by Hip Hop World Awards as best music video director, this creative genius is not only one of the most sought after video directors, his works have blown off the boundaries in video directing.

 

The Playful Photo shoot

We had spent the hours before the photo session with Clarion and Clarence working and multi-tasking in an effort to make our Christmas edition full and inclusive. That stress was quickly forgotten when this pair arrived and started with their playful gestures towards each other as they pose for the camera. It was evident to all, the closeness and bond between this mother and child. Hmmmm… Admirable!

 

Interview with Clarion Chukwura

Background

Clarion Chukwura, a native of Onitsha, was born Folashade Oluwatoyin Nneka Clara at the Lagos State Teaching Hospital (LUTH). “I attended nursery and primary schools in Lagos, my high school was at Onitsha. At the university level, I was at both the UNIVERSITY of IBADAN and UNIVERSITY of IFE DEPARTMENT of DRAMATIC ARTS.”

 

Who is Clarion in 3 words?

“Three words! Clarion is a woman with a strong character, a mother and an activist.”

 

The motherhood journey so far…

“It started out as a surprise and was a battle field, a war that I had to win. As a teenager, I had to grow up quickly to cope with being a mother and an undergraduate at the university, beginning my acting career, wanting to fulfil my dream which was to become a star actress, a force to be reckoned with and an authority in my chosen profession. This was a point where all I wanted was to become a success in my career and at the same time be a good mother, raising a child as a single mother against all expectations, a child who would become a monumental success.

And somewhere along the line, getting married, getting married with my child having to go into my matrimonial home with me and saying, ‘Well I can only get married if I am taking my own kid with me.’ I made another baby and lost that baby because that was the first time I would solely face the responsibilities of motherhood. My first experience of motherhood was with my mother helping out. This time, my mum was there but said, ‘Now that you are married, I am not going to do it for you.’ I lost my daughter at seven weeks old because I could not handle it. By the time I had another baby, my mum had died (through kidney problems), but this time I fought, I said, ‘I am not going to lose this one.’ Motherhood for me has been an interesting and an exciting surprise. It has been about proving the mettle of myself as a human being. It’s who I am, it has been about taking decisions as a single mother.”

 

I am a role model to my children, and I’m going to be a role model to so many other children who are going to say, ‘I want to be like Clarion Chukwura.’ At the beginning, nobody wanted to be like Clarion Chukwura. People were using me as a negative example to their children because I had a child at eighteen. I was a teenager whose mother didn’t take for a secret abortion, so I became a single mother. Before they knew at home, some of my friends had contributed some money for me to have an abortion. I could remember lying down on the abortion table at the St. Jude’s Clinic on Commercial Avenue,Lagos, the doctor came in and saw me crying. I told him I didn’t want to abort my baby. He asked, ‘Then why are you here?’ I said, ‘I am afraid of my mother.’ He said, ‘No, get off that table, the decision is yours.’”

 

How did you handle the stigma of being a single mum?

“I would be lying if I told you that I faced the stigma all alone. I had the support of my family. I had my mum and siblings who embraced my son as their younger brother.”

 

What do you think of motherhood in Nigeria today, is it the way it should be?

“Motherhood today is better than it was in the time of my mother. Even though, we still have mothers dumping their babies, mothers taking the economic situation in the home out on their children, and a society that is not correctly socially responsible for mothers as a whole and believes the responsibility of a wife is just to cook, have babies and take care of the house. All her beauty diminishes and she becomes a fixture with no self worth. By society in this context, I mean husbands, their friends, the woman’s relatives and everybody around her that feels that way.

We also have societal demands that make the motherhood struggle for a career mother a great one. Government, corporate bodies and multinationals that have the right economic power owe the society the responsibility of setting up care homes for babies in each neighbourhood. Ones that will house a playground, sport and entertainment centre, a theatre with all kinds of recreational and intellect improving facilities. There should be at least one in every community.”

 

If there’s something you could change about mothers or motherhood in our society today, what will it be?

“The number one thing I would change is the mentality that when you have a couple of babies you’re done, and that a mum shouldn’t be hip any more. There are many extra-marital affairs because of this issue. Some husbands no longer find their wives attractive and opt for younger girls out there.”

 

Tell us about your relationship with your son, Clarence.

“Well, Clarence is my friend and has been my friend for a long time, he has been my confidant since four. He’s truly my best friend.”

 

Your son, Clarence has been widely accepted as the best music video director in Nigeria with many of his works receiving awards. How do you feel about his accomplishments?

“I’m not particularly wowed by that because that is not really what he is. Compared to where he is going, the music video thing is just a tip of the ice berg. This is the beginning because he has a recording company and a movie production company, but the trend with his generation is music. Clarence is a cinematographer, he studied film making. When he begins to make films and his films begin to run in cinemas across the country and different parts of the world, you can ask me that question again and I would be able to answer.”

 

What are your major milestones in life?

“When I went with my son to South Africa to complete the due process of his admission into the film school… that was a monumental milestone. People said, ‘Do you think it is kobo kobo to go to a school like that? Your mum can’t afford it.’ In 1998, his friend left for school in England and he wept. He said, ‘Mum, he’s gone and I’m still here’, and I told him, ‘Just believe you will be going to study your cinematography outside this country.’ I remember when we got to Cape Town and he collected some Rands from me to call his father. When he told him that he’s in school in Cape Town, his father said he was calling him with a Thuraya phone, that it was impossible that Clarence was in Cape Town.”

My high point as an actress was when I first stood on the stage of the Royal Court Theatre in West End, where one of my role models, Laurence Olivia, had played. When I first stood on that stage, something in me flipped. Another milestone for me was when I played the lead role in Yemoja, in a film festival in Mexico, in the city of Guatamala. I acted before a live audience of about five thousand people, and when my director announced that we had won gold in the competition, I couldn’t stop crying.”

 

Apart from being a mother and an actress, what else do you do?

“I have a production company where we do various things ranging from sourcing performance for communication companies like musicals, and corporate gifts. I also have Clarence Chukwura Clothing Line and movie production. I am also a mass mother under my charity organization, the Clarence Chukwura Helpline, which is 10 years now.”

 

With your clothing line, how would you describe your style?

“My style is trendy and sexy with a touch of elegance. I determine what you see in whatever I wear because I make the clothes, they don’t make me.”

 

How do people react to you when you are seen in public?

“There is respect, people say, ‘She is the one, not the one; she is younger and prettier than we think.’”

 

What are your lessons on love and relationship?

“I would say that love, the romantic love as written by Shakespeare, is alien to this society. The concept of love in this society is founded on commercialization, food, needs and ethnicity. My experience of love in this society is that love is equated with need. When the need is met, then a man is in love and a woman is in love.”

 

What is the greatest lesson you have learnt in life?

“The greatest lesson I have learnt is that what goes around comes around.”

 

What advice do you have for younger women?

“Follow your heart. You have only failed when that child you raised turns out a monumental failure.”

 

Interview with Clarence Peters

Who is Clarence Peters?

“I am first and foremost the combination of many things. I guess I’m primarily a film maker and pretty much of every other thing adds to the fact that I love my family.”

 

What was growing up like for you being the offspring of two celebrities in Nigeria?

“We had ups and downs; I’ve had a normal Nigerian childhood as far as I am concerned. I was not used to twenty-four hour electricity supply. This is one of the highlights of a normal Nigerian childhood. However, in a few times that it has come to play, I keep myself grounded to the fact that I am not above anyone else because of who my parents are. I’ve always resolved within myself to carve my own niche and not to ride on the back of my parents. For a very long time, I was very conscious about it until I got old enough to just say, ‘Look, this is the only time I’ve got to do what I really like. So, I’ve had to go carve my own niche and do my own thing.’ Like most people would think, I did get the knowledge of art through my parent’s influence, but with the connections, with who I connect with here and there, it’s still not been easy. I’ve paid my dues and I’ve done everything everyone else could do in the business.”

 

You’ve been classified as one of the best music video directors in Nigeria, how does that make you feel?

“I haven’t seen any official rating and even if there were, everything is time and season and so, I try to be consistent with my work and do it with intelligence. I don’t think I’ve ever thought to myself that I’m considered to be the best or I am the best. I just do my best. In fact, I’ve never shot any film I liked. Maybe when I shoot the one that I get to like, I’ll tell you this is good but I can’t classify myself as the best. Of course, we always have flaws, as far as I am concerned, I always see the flaws.”

 

What are your dreams, what do you want to see happen in the next five years?

“I want to have a real estate and have businesses enough for me to decide not to want to work, have a passport that could make me fly anywhere around the world and shoot a feature film once in two years.”

 

Are you going to be doing films as well?

“I’m a film maker. I’m not a music video director, I’m originally a film maker. Music videos are grounds that I use to experiment. I do movies, TV and music as well. I have a formal training in film making. I attended the City Versity Film and Television Academy in Cape Town, South Africa. And I’ve worked with my mother, BDC documentaries, Tajudeen Adepoju. I’ve done some acting as well in Shola Shobowale’s first movie which was my third movie, family circle as a movie not as the TV show, and a few others I can’t recollect. I have been a P.A., a re-runner, an assistant director, continuity person, I have played every role in film making.”

 

Describe your relationship with your mother

“We fight a lot, it reduced as I grew older, but we also play a lot. I know I have a young mum, and that’s why we fight a lot, but we play and get along more than we fight which is important.”

 

Tell us about your father

“I can’t, sorry no comments on that.”

 

Do you have a girl friend?

“Eh… no. It’s complicated but no. Let’s just leave it at it being complicated for now.”

 

What celebrity would you like to do a movie with?

“I’ve been spoilt as a child, so I don’t get carried away by celebrities. But if it is talented people to work with, I think the most talented are actors, so I will work with anyone that has character and is smart. I would like to work with a few trained people and a lot of untrained people, with fresh people who are ready to listen and I can communicate with. I think I fall in love with people’s personalities than anything else. So if I can connect with their personalities then I can connect with them.”

 

Who are your icons?

“I don’t have role models and I don’t have icons but I have people I respect.  For the past two years basically speaking, Kelechi Amadi-Obi and Body Lawson, because I have been persuaded a lot by their pictures. I pick from everything around, but their pictures in the past two years have informed me a lot about how I want pictures to look like.”

 

How do you relax?

“I edit and watch films. Another way for me to relax is with a big flat screen in my room and lots of ice cream. I’m a hotel person, I like room service and I like hotel rooms. I just like being by myself in the room at the hotel. I can just run away with a lot of DVDs in my ruck sac and enough ice cream.”

 

But you don’t look like you do fast food and a lot of ice cream

“Actually I do, but I don’t eat much. If I’m going to relax it’s usually in my room with lots of films.”

 

Do you often use the gym?

“My work is enough gym.”

 

Do you travel to relax some times?

“I haven’t travelled to relax in five years. That’s a dream. Travel, at will? I haven’t just travelled. I am supposed to have gone to Italy lately in disguise of work, but it’s actually for holiday. I always defer it telling myself, ‘Clarence, why, why, why… there’s work, you’re supposed to be working right now.”’

 

When you finally want to relax, what places would you like to travel to?

“I want to go back to Cape Town where I went to school. I think I’ll like to go to Atlanta, I have been to New York, and I would like to go to China because my mother who went to China came back gloating.  Then I would also like to go to Malta and the Caribbean Island. I’ve many places I would love to visit.”

 

You’ll love to go to the Caribbean, alone?

“Alone, I’m actually weird like that, I’m happy travelling alone. If you ask my mum she’ll say I never did things with the family, she doesn’t like it but…”