Delay hits back at Actors Guild over ‘Afia Schwarzenegger’ auditions

Samuel Nii Odoi Mensah, President of the Ghana Actors Guild (GAG), has started an open and rather nasty fight with Delores ‘Delay’ Frimpong Manso over her upcoming auditions to find an actress to play lead role in the phase three of her ‘Afia Schwarzenegger’ television series.

After some two weeks of radio and television adverts in search of an actress to play the lead role, Nii Odoi Mensah last Thursday said on PEACE FM that Delay has no right to hold auditions to search for an actress to play the role because she is neither a member of the Ghana Actors Guild nor the Film Producers Association of Ghana (FIPAG).

He accused Delay of fraudulently charging for her audition forms and said she was only exploiting the public.

In what appeared to be a rather sexist statement, the GAG president noted: “This time, she will not get it easy. If she thinks she knows big men and so she can find her way through, we would also tell her that we are the Ghana Actors Guild. We have been quiet for some time now because we want sleeping dogs to lie but this time if you want to touch us, we would touch you because it is becoming too much…You see, when people come to small limelight, then they want to use it against others. It is not right. It is not right at all.”

But Delay, sounding very confident, told News-One she would go ahead with her auditions and dared Nii Odoi Mensah to go ahead with his threats.

“There is no law in Ghana that states I must be a member of the Ghana Actors Guild or FIPAG before I hold auditions to pick actresses for a TV series for which I write the script, direct the production, select the cast, pay for airtime, pay the cast and crew and even decide which TV station I air it on…

“Mr. Odoi Mensah is an adult and should know that when he says ‘I think I know big men so I can have my way through’, it is an insult not only to me, but to the female members of his Actors Guild as well. Who said a woman must know big men before she becomes a success story? If that is his mentality, I wonder why he thinks I must belong to his group…

“In any case, the Ghana Actors Guild is not a statutory body that gives license to actors or actresses. He can ask his members not to come for my auditions but he cannot ban any Ghanaian from acting for my series and I wonder how to select a cast without holding auditions.

So you see? Instead of keeping quiet and pretending he is focusing on the welfare of his members so we continue to respect him, he is embarrassing himself with a battle he cannot win; a battle that at the end of the day, would push us all to test the laws of Ghana on whether or not the Actors Guild is a statutory body established by a legislative instrument or a parliamentary act.

“Any group of actresses can easily come together tomorrow morning to form another group. So let him secretly go for his interlocutory injunction to stop us. Then we take it from there and see what the law says about freedoms of association. I’m not a film producer to belong to FIPAG,” Delay explained.