In celebration of International Women’s Month, one of the most outstanding women in comedy, Chioma Omeruah better known as Chigurl is the latest star on Accelerate TV‘s “The Cover“.
In her interview, she talks about being a female comedian in Nigeria, her different personalities, and dealing with body shaming.⠀
On being a female comedian in Nigeria
I realized last year that I had been doing this for 10 years, and first of all, there are people who have come before me and these women have sort of, in my opinion, paved the way for some of us to do what we do, Mandy, Princess, Helen Paul, Lepascious Bose… I knew all of these women and I used to watch them on TV and I just thought to myself that I don’t see too many of us and by that I mean women. So being in this space means more to me than anyone would ever know because I’m empowered every day and I’m just grateful to be doing something I love to do, something I’ve dreamt of doing.
On balancing different personalities
It’s sometimes difficult when jobs are coming and I have to put them in their place and figure out if I’m going to take a job or not. I’ve turned down many due to one reason or the other, so I have a calendar that I keep. My manager and assistant are on the calendar so when I put a date in, they also get those dates as well. Plus I have reminders, cause I try to be as professional as possible. I like to be on time, and I like to be ahead of the situation. I set reminders for the week before, the day before and two hours before, so my phone goes off to remind me of events so I don’t forget.
On body-shaming
We were at a function in Calabar and I was dressed and my hair was done, so I took a picture and posted on Instagram and this gentleman says “it is finally good to see Fiona from Shrek in person”. At the time, I didn’t know that people could be this horrible, so what I always try to do is counter bad with better, so what I did was put out a general post talking about how we need to be very careful about how we use our words but I realized then that this is what I’m going to be facing in this world.
Read the full interview on www.acceleratetv.com
