Sharon Ooja calls bipolar role mentally draining after an Arise TV interview on shifting from tears to anger on set

Nollywood actress Sharon Ooja, 35, told Arise TV in an interview reported on Monday, 14 September 2026, that playing a character with bipolar disorder left her emotionally worn down and changed how she thinks about people who live with mental illness.

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Ms Ooja said the work was hard because the part demanded sudden swings of feeling while she stayed inside the character.

A director, she recalled, sometimes pulled her up when she drifted back to her ordinary register. “I think that because it was more mentally draining for me; when you’re a normal person playing a bipolar role, it’s a lot of work. This gave me so much empathy for people actually dealing with mental health issues because it was draining. My director would sometimes have to call me because he’s like, you’re not staying on tempo, you’re going back to normal, you can’t be normal. So, it was so draining having to be crying, laughing, angry so many emotions in one.”

That is an actor’s account of craft, not a clinical lecture. Bipolar disorder is a medical diagnosis. A film set can only approximate its pace.

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Ms Ooja was careful to separate the two: the exhaustion belonged to the performance, the sympathy to those who do not get to step off set.

Nollywood has leaned more often on mental distress as plot fuel than as a condition to be studied.

When a well known face describes the labour of holding tears, laughter and rage in one day’s call sheet, the remark travels because it is human.

It also risks flattening a spectrum of illness into a single draining role. The useful residue of her interview is the pause it asks of viewers who treat screen breakdowns as entertainment alone.

Ms Ooja did not name the film in the circulated extract, nor did she present herself as a spokesman for patients. She described a director keeping time and an actress trying not to look “normal.”

Also read: Olaiya Igwe says hospital clip was only acting

The Sharon Ooja calls bipolar role story ends there: a working note from a performer who found the tempo costly, and who left the interview with more feeling for people who cannot cut when the camera does.