Nigeria’s Basketmouth reveals plan to leave the comedy industry
Nigerian comedy legend, Basketmouth, has announced a five-year plan to exit the comedy industry and pursue other interests, especially in filmmaking and music. He explained that since he first dumped his music career for comedy in the 1990s, he’s always known he would return to it. His success with My Flatmates, a popular sitcom he produces and stars in, further cemented his belief. The comedian expressed plans to get involved in every sector of the entertainment industry and build his own empire.
“I’ll be 50 in five years, I’d have moved on to something else that’d be taking a lot of my time, and I don’t want to cheat comedy. I want to give it a 100%. I know that in five years, I can blend all the interests and go fully into movies, TV and music concerts. It’s going to be hard to do all these things and still give 100% to comedy,” he said
The veteran comedian also expressed his desire to provide new comedians with global exposure before his exit in five years. Basketmouth further complained about the challenges of the comedy industry in Nigeria, noting that comedians don’t have the structure to succeed. He said music and films have streaming platforms exposing them to a global audience, but the same has not happened for comedy.
The Brotherhood star said the culture of standup comedy is dying because comedians don’t have the structures to practice and refine their work, a problem he believes impacts the quality of their craft. He said, “The system is not built to support comedy. Many of the newbies don’t have the platforms like we had. With social media, a lot of people started mistaking skit makers with standup comedians — they’re two different sets of people. Some skit makers now tried to do standup comedy and most of them bombed. When there are a lot of comedians bombing because there’s no space for them to grow, they’re not well refined and people start thinking, ‘Do we really need comedians?'”
Basketmouth who also doubles as an actor hinted in his statement, that he was working with “one or two streaming platforms” to give room for new comics to be seen and heard across the world. The show he’s planning to do to achieve this would be named One Night Stand. Basketmouth says he’s created a slate of comedy shows to entertain his fans for the next five years
“As a comedian, you can’t stop writing materials so I’ll keep writing, and maybe in another 10 or 15 years after now, I might come back. We have a 15-year plan,” he said. Alongside My Flatmates, Basketmouth is also the creator of Papa Benji, a web series, and producer of three critically-acclaimed music albums: Yabasi, Horoscopes and Uburu.
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