Nini Wacera: I have nothing to show for my years of acting

After two decades plus, deeply entrenched in her beloved craft, Nini Wacera speaks with severe regrets.

Wacera speaks in very long-legged remorseful paragraphs, her hands gesturing in dismay, her face cringing with disappointment.

What you pick is anger and rage. 

“Acting is all I have done my whole life but I have nothing to show for it other than regrets,” Wacera tells Sunday Nation over a Taco’s a la carte.

To the 45-year-old, the Kenyan film industry keeps getting worse by the day. It was better when she first began her acting voyage in the early 2000s as part of Phoenix Players under the tutelage of the late James Falkland — the doyen of Kenyan theatre.

The industry mess improved in the next decade, multiplying several-fold in the next to come.

In her world, there is hardly anything to smile about.

“What is it that is there to smile about now? Tell me. When I started in the 2000s the pay was way better than it is today. That’s a fact,” she says.

Her tone is partly a reflection of the life she leads now, picky on productions.

“I’m at a point where I’m so selective with the shows that I do and that’s why people might think I have disappeared. I’d rather sit home broke than go out and work for some of these producers who have greatly messed up the industry.”

She has been so frustrated that over the years she has attempted to walk away only for the new path to circle her right back to the same spot.

Read: The making of ‘Country Queen’, Kenya’s first ever series on Netflix

“In my life struggles as an actor I have given up so many times. I went to Nigeria because I had given up in the industry. I studied permaculture which is about rehabilitating ecosystems, because I had given up. But let me tell you. where your heart is, there is where you will die, there is your home,” she says.

Last year after being absent from the screens for a while, Nini made a cameo last year in the Netflix series “Country Queen”, which had several media outlets describe her casting as a comeback.

She laughs.

“People are just ridiculous. Where did I go? I was right there; I never went anywhere. I worked on “Sense 8” and “Rafiki” as a casting director and acted in both,” Nini says.

For starters, right from Phoenix Players, loquacious Nini was thrust into the limelight in 2003 playing Susan on the one-time popular TV soap Opera Wingu La Moto which aired for three years on NTV.

Nini’s protagonist character gained her a legion of fans, her elegance and astute mannerism became the talk of town, a household name, and now an old stager of the same.

From Wingu La Moto, she would go on to add caps of leading roles in several local productions, got into radio as a Late Night Capital show presenter, and even an Oprah Winfrey-esque hosting television talk shows. Remember “Dad’s Can Cook’’ or “Destination Kenya?”

After starring in the Kona telenovela released in 2013, Nini would take a break from the Kenyan screens.

“After Kona, I spent two years on and off in Lagos doing “Desperate Housewives Africa” and movies on Africa Magic, I came back and have been a casting director, that’s what I still do,” she says.

But what exactly has changed, I probe again.

Nini takes a moment to catch the fresh air from the garden we are sitting in, sips her beer then goes.

“A lot has, professionally, the quality of productions have improved because of the cameras getting better. The experience and exposure too, have improved. But shockingly the quality of the welfare and the salaries for actors have drastically dropped,” she says.

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Nini poses again and travels back to 2000.

“When I was doing Wingu La Moto I was getting paid Sh170,000 for every season which rose to Sh190,000, that was a long time. Now a lot of actors are earning Sh50,000, Sh80,000 per month, and around Sh200,000 if you are this big star. Which means there has been no increase of wages for actors from 2002 when I started to now,” she says.

Nini notes the rain started beating the industry when a lot of producers became mischievous and greedy and they still are, she maintains.

“Back in the day, producers were keen on welfare to ensure quality productions. Little things like the quality of food on set, the quality of hygiene and sanitary conditions, quality of the crew, all that was maintained because we were trying to achieve a certain standard. Now a lot of producers that I know try to cut corners to pocket money. I know of a producer who doesn’t hire professionals, overworks them, doesn’t give them days off, and still underpays them,” she says.

It is this misdemeanor that is heavily replicated amongst many producers that Nini says has soiled the industry’s once stunning fabric.

“All they do (producers) is try to beat deadlines for the clients and that has resulted in us losing the industry. The industry has a culture, we don’t, an industry has codes of conduct and standards, an industry has wage standards and welfare for its people we don’t, an industry has a union to support its people we don’t,” she says.

For Nini, producers became greedy with the entry of service providers such as M-Net and MultiChoice.

“They came in with good budgets and the money bestowed on producers. Most producers began misappropriating these budgets. And so these service providers lost trust in the majority of Kenyan producers and decided to quarter the budgets. This greatly affected the industry. That is how we started getting paid from South Africa and not by the producers,” she says.

Before the entry of these service providers, it was broadcasters NTV, KTN, Citizen and KBC who majorly funded productions.

Nini also blames the government for the lack of support even though there have been some efforts made by the Kenya Film Commission (KFC) to fund local productions.

‘I never know where this money goes that we are told KFC gets for film funding. Some of us are never told when the funding is open for application, it’s like there is a clique that gets to know and if you are not in one then you miss,” she says.

Read: Film board seeks to grow number of women in the industry

Wrinkles form on Nini’s cranium with the mention of the Kenyan Actors’ Guild (KAG) that caused stares online months ago, when a rate card of what actors should charge was leaked.

“We have a body that functions like a disease; it doesn’t work, doesn’t uphold the actor’s standards. If you are fired KAG won’t help. It doesn’t help either with bad contracts. They can’t help you get artistic fund or even health insurance It’s a waste paying the premium membership to KAG,” she says.

The more Nini vents, the angrier she gets.

It is crystal clear, she is fed up but she is not quitting. In her words, she is “hanging on in there” expecting nothing or something to change.

Should those changes ever occur in this life or the next or any other, then the actors’ welfare should come first. 

“Being paid well is an actor getting a daily rate (fee) for coming to the set. Since the programme is going to be sold outside Kenya, an actor must be paid an additional usage fee for the use of their face elsewhere. Usage fee should be calculated by 80 to 400 percent of the total of what the daily fee was depending on the demographic of where the film is sold,” she says.

This is the kind of direction Nini hopes producers will pursue.

“We did this for our actors in ‘Sense 8’. We paid a daily rate and a usage fee. Producers need to pay for fitting and rehearsals. Nobody does that in Kenya,” Nini says.

Hiring professional actors is another checkpoint Nini wishes to see producers do, but they won’t because then that means they will not have much left for their greedy pockets.

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“Most professionals will never allow the current rates paid by producers. I’m a professional. Will I work for some of the shows that are currently on Showmax, Africa Magic, and Netflix? The answer is no. Look at the credits on these many Kenyan shows on those platforms. Those aren’t professionals, but babies out of school with titles, but no experience or idea of what is a professional set. But this is good for producers, the cheaper the cast the more profit they make. Then you wonder why we still have poor-quality productions,” she says.

For the umpteenth time, Nini says the culture that exists at the moment is an insult, but that is not to mean there were no shortcomings then.

She says there were shortcomings, but they are more loud now. Whereas the pay was fair in the 2000s and some decency in systems and structure, as a “hottie” in her 20s, and one of the promising actors, one of the main challenges she had to deal with was sexual exploitation situations.

“In this industry, it’s almost like beauty, sexiness and or femininity is a curse. I remember when I was young, I got hit on by the CEOs of all the broadcasters who wanted to put me on TV,” she says.

“You are working with producers and directors who try to get you drunk just to seduce you. Sexual harassment is rife in this industry and now is even worse because men too have become a target. Any girl who talks has to go,” she says.

Nini says these frustrations have contributed to a good number of mental health cases in the industry. 

“If you don’t know how to handle it, you end up going through depression, panic attacks, anxiety, and many others. So you have many people who grow up in this industry going through mental health challenges and are most likely to abuse alcohol and drugs. There is no place to seek help or a welfare office where you can go and complain,” she says.

“The way our systems are structured is almost like you have to be raped violently for it to be taken seriously. When I was a young actor, a producer got me drunk and raped me. I had no place to take the complaint. So how many people do you think that has happened to and they suffer in silence because there is no place to go?” she asks.

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