From humble beginnings, comedian, entrepreneur, actress and happily mother of three, Helen Paul has risen to be one of Nigeria’s most sought after comediennes.
As I drove to her office located in Ogba, Lagos, that cloudy morning, I kept wondering what it would be like interviewing a comedienne. As I pulled up outside her office, I was excited and looking forward to chatting with the comedienne who has held Nigerians spell bound with her comic baby voice; I couldn’t wait to pounce on her.
She’s wearing a pair of trainers and a short dress which terminates just above her knees. Looking all sporty, she’s flanked by her publicist, Bayo Adetu as the pair meet me at the gate of her institute, Helen Paul Theatre & Film Academy. I follow behind casually as we ascend a staircase and I’m ushered into tastefully furnished office.
As soon we as we settle in she goes down memory lane, recalling how she met and married her husband of five years.
“I met him through my boss where I was formerly working,” Tatafo as she is popularly begins, a look of nostalgia in her eyes. A smile plays around her lips as she recalls how she met her husband of five years and the father of her kids.
“He was a friend to my boss. While he always saw me as too playful and jumpy, I saw him as too stingy,” she continues as laughter reverberates, bouncing of the walls.
Tatafo says the reason she thought he was stingy was because whenever he came to the office, he never bothered to buy anything for her and colleagues unlike her boss’s other colleagues who were always generous.
Stingy lawyer
Recalling the experience, Tatafo continues: “Those days when my boss’s colleagues came to our office on visits, they always reached out to us when they were living. They gave us money which we used to buy doughnuts and minerals but my husband never gave us anything.
“He would just wave his hand and say ‘guys take care of yourselves, bye bye,’ she says, mimicking a stern and unfriendly male voice. “So we always saw him as a selfish lawyer,” she adds amid guffaws.
Belling the cat
However, one day, Tatafo says she and her colleagues were up to the hilt and so she summoned all the courage she could and decided to bell the cat.
“On that fateful day I summoned courage and as he was living I told him, ‘sir, you don’t buy us anything but we really like you sir. If you can be buying us doughnuts and minerals we would be very grateful.’
He started laughing so I quickly added, ‘sir, it’s not only me-o. My colleagues are also involved so please; don’t tell our boss-o.’”
Pay-off
Indeed Tatafo’s move paid off as her future husband laughed it off after which he reached into his pockets and gave them ‘something’ for lunch.
“We were so happy I asked for his number and he gave me. And then I gave his number to my friends and we all started calling him to thank him. And he realized that we really desired the doughnuts and soft drinks so whenever he came by he gave us money for doughnuts and soft drinks and he never failed to deliver whenever he showed up and we never stopped thanking him. And then one day he took a good look at me and said ‘baby, I love you’ and the rest is history.”
By 2009 it finally dawned on them that they wanted to spend the rest of their lives together and that same year the couple had their traditional wedding and finally in 2010, they had their church marriage and today, the union is blessed with three kids.
Five years after
Five years after, what is that thing she would want to do differently if she had a second chance marriage wise? “I would have loved to give birth to triplets instead of having to visit the labor room thrice. If I was doing triplets I would have nine kids now, I love children so much,” she says laughing.
Is she done having kids? “I really don’t know-o,” she responds waving her hands expansively, “you see, my body is still very soft.”
Helen Paul Theatre & Film Academy
Are your dreaming of becoming a comedian, actor or actress? If that’s your dream then the place to be is Helen Paul Theatre & Film Academy.
“The love for impacting people, connecting with people, making people feel impeccable and building or boosting their ego is what inspired me to start this school. Helen Paul Theater & Film Academy is all about raising impeccable stars,” Tatafo says opening up on what inspired her creative academy located in Ogba, Lagos.
“While I was at the University of Lagos, I discovered that most people just wanted to come to UNILAG but not everybody could make it to UNILAG. That ignited in me the passion to want to create an opportunity for those who cannot make it to UNILAG and today the rest is history.
“There was this guy who came to our academy who couldn’t speak English but Yoruba. We took him on and let him know that theatre did not start from the English speaking part of Nollywood in Nigeria. It started with the likes of the Ogundes' and the Ogunmolas’ and I told him that in fact, I prefer Yoruba films and I told him he could be like them and he confessed to me that he has always wanted to act Yoruba films and by the time we started following him up, we realized he had so much potential.
“We took the English thing gradually and today he speaks very well, in less than six months and he’s doing well. These days when he talks in class, people no longer make jest of him because we have built his confidence. The school is barely a year-old.”
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