Sharing his early experience, Fatomilola said: “I started acting accidentally. I did not know I would be an actor. I started acting when I was in primary school. At our end of the year party, I performed as an actor. And I wrote a stage play that we performed during our end of the year party where parents and teachers were seated. Everybody loved my drama. But in the drama, people were telling my mother that they should stop me from acting. Because I acted dead in the drama. And they were like, you born only one child and your child is playing to be dead in the movie world. That she should stop me. But she told them that it was only a playing game. That they shouldn’t mind me.”
He explained that his passion for acting continued through secondary school and into college, where he represented his village in various stage competitions. According to him, his breakthrough came when he was noticed by renowned playwright, Professor Ola Rotimi. “Then one day, we went to a village where Professor Ola Rotimi, who just came back from London, was called in by OAU to be a research professor in the university. Then he was the chairman of the event who is going to escort the people that performed well. Then he saw me performing, even though we carried first in the program and in another program we carried second. Then he called me after the program that he taught me how to act. I told him nobody taught me, that I started acting from my parent’s house,” he narrated.
Fatomilola further revealed his background, saying his father was an Ifa priest while his mother was a Christian, which exposed him to diverse religious influences from childhood. He recalled that Ola Rotimi later became close to him, but tensions arose when the professor attempted to assert authority after returning from abroad.
“Then later he resigned from his work in the university and travelled back outside. He came back ten years later and he wanted to continue as the boss. Then we had an issue. He asked me to cut my pain to act in Lagos. But I have another work at Ekiti. Then I didn’t show up. Then it caused a disagreement which he reported me to the institute. The institute said there is nothing they can do. Since he has resigned, I am an artist. I am free to do what I want to do. Then he got angry and made a statement that he made me and he will destroy me. I told him you did not make me and you cannot destroy me, you can only destroy yourself. He destroyed himself because he didn’t survive that month. It was that month that with all his knowledge he died. Because nobody would talk to me like that and felt that he is going to survive,” Fatomilola recounted.
