LowlaDee brings her rom-com Plan B to Showmax

When Nigerian filmmaker Omolola Adeleke (LowlaDee) took a leap of faith and moved to Kenya to collaborate on a social change film project with Sarah Hassan (How to Find a Husband), she had no idea that she would end up making a Valentine’s Day-themed romantic comedy about the consequences of a one-night stand instead.

Already racking up good reviews just from the trailer alone, Plan B follows Lisa (Hassan) who finds out she’s pregnant after a post-breakup one-night stand with a mysterious man who turns out to be a successful Nigerian CEO. Enter Joyce (Catherine Kamau, Sue na Jonnie), her unfiltered best friend who helps her come up with the perfect plan to get the father of the baby to pay his dues.

The perfect match

LowlaDee and Sarah Hassan’s collaboration is a match made in heaven, and the addition of co-star Catherine Kamau gives Plan B the trifecta it needs for success.

“These two [Sarah and Kate] are genuinely two of the best actresses in Kenya and they are so professional; they gave this movie their all,” LowlaDee says. “They had great chemistry on screen. It’s very refreshing to see central actresses not competing with each other but working together towards a common goal. I felt like that was one of the most beautiful things in the film.”

Even as Plan B explores the extent of female friendship and how far friends are willing to go to help each other out, LowlaDee reveals that the movie is ultimately a love story that is meant to make people feel good. “The movie is a simple love story and more of a feeling – something for people to escape to, for like an hour or so.”

“The movie is a simple love story and more of a feeling – something for people to escape to, for like an hour or so.”

LowlaDee is no stranger to the Kenyan audience; her award-winning series This Is It, featuring Nick Mutuma and Nigerian Chy Nwakanma has been enjoying some positive reviews from Kenya. It is this familiar fan base that she is now counting on with Plan B, a project she says was a spur-of-the-moment idea inspired by her culture shock when she first came to Kenya. Plan B is essentially a movie revolving around a “baby mama” – a reality for many women in Kenya, but one that is still stigmatised in LowlaDee’s home country, Nigeria.

“I couldn’t believe just how normal the idea of being a baby mama is here. People talk about it openly, and I have friends who are baby mamas. Nigeria is a bit more conservative when it comes to this issue. It was a trend that was very new to me, so I decided to explore it.”

Going by revenue and output alone, Nollywood is way ahead of Kenya’s film industry. It contributes immensely to Nigeria’s GDP with a US$12 million box office revenue in 2017, and even higher future projections. But such statistics don’t matter to LowlaDee. While she admits the Nigerian film industry is big, there’s more focus on quantity, not quality – unlike the film industry in Kenya which, even though very small, is respected in the international scene.

Even with its many challenges, the Kenyan film industry has over the years churned internationally acclaimed films like Nairobi Half Life, Kati Kati, Supa Modo and Watu Wote – a success that has been made possible by the industry’s willingness to work with foreign collaborators, such as Germany’s One Fine Day Films.

Big plans ahead

As she works on bigger, long-term projects, LowlaDee is now looking to tap into an even broader audience, with Kenya as her gateway.

“I am ready to start exporting content out of Africa and getting the right networks. Kenya has such an artistic society; it’s a vibrant and creative environment that’s open to international markets and that would make me grow even more.”

“Kenya has such an artistic society; it’s a vibrant and creative environment that’s open to international markets.”

But what does LowlaDee’s big picture mean for her loyal Nigerian fans back home? Will they still see their stories in her work? “I am a believer in Pan-African productions; I want to merge Nigerian and Kenyan stories together for both markets,” she says. She’s already making such collaborations possible: Nigerian actor Daniel Etim Effiong plays Dele Cocker in Plan B. He’s the mysterious man with whom Lisa (Sarah Hassan) has a one-night stand.

In his tenure as the CEO of the Kenya Film and Classification Board, Ezekiel Mutua has courted controversy by cracking the whip on filmmakers whose content he dims morally unfit for mass consumption. It’s such moral policing that LowlaDee now has to be cautious about, even in the making of Plan B.

“It’s not just about Ezekiel Mutua, it’s also about it being out there in the public where even high school students can stumble on it. We can’t just put out anything that would be too risqué.”

Plan B is now streaming on Showmax, something that Lowladee applaudes saying, “The future is digital, and I feel like Showmax gets it when it comes to content in Africa. Their vision is very clear; they take their content very seriously and they’ve made it affordable for the audience even for the premium content.”