COVER STORY
OVIE SOKO
Colouring Outside THE LINES
Interview by Mika Abraham Story by Eniafe Momodu
W
hen Ovie arrived at the Glam Africa studio in central London, I wasn't too sure what to expect. On the one hand, I'd spent the better part of my summer holiday glued to my TV screen, shamelessly caught up in the Love Island media storm. On-screen, Ovie was a pure delight. You could hardly open your mouth to criticise him. But that was a little while ago now. Back then, he was just Ovie Soko, your average, 6 foot 7, unfairly good-looking basketball player. Now, he was Ovie, a national treasure with millions of fans across the UK and beyond, so could we really expect him to be the same person we'd seen on screen earlier on in the summer? Plus, there were some strange rumours circulating in the Twittersphere that the Love Island producers had done some creative editing to make Ovie appear slightly more pleasant than he always was. But none of that mattered now, because suddenly, Ovie, once a figment of my TV screen, had materialised at the top of the staircase, followed closely by Gemma, one of
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his managers. He made his way downstairs, lowering his head as he walked, to avoid hitting the ceiling. Welcoming him warmly, I offered to help him with his suitcase. He politely refused, determined to pull his own weight for those final few steps. Later, he would ask me where he could find a bin, and subsequently decline my offer to dispose of his trash for him and insist on doing it himself. It was admirable, if not supererogatory. After all, he was the star, the man of the hour, the guest of honour. But it quickly became clear that any form of special treatment was not on his agenda. A true gentleman, he took his time to greet everyone in the room, from the Glam Africa interns to the photographer and the stylist, charming them all along the way. He struck me as the kind of person who would be popular anywhere he went. He must have known going into the Love Island villa that he would become a viewer favourite. And yet I wondered if he could have ever really known just how much of a sensation he would become in the days and weeks that followed his entry. "I had no idea about the public response because I was in there for so long. I wasn’t expecting anything
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