"Rebecca" The last time Shirley Frimpong-Manso was nervous about tackling a subject

Shirley Frimpong-Manso almost binned "Rebecca," the best African two-cast, one-location movie you have probably ever seen.

During an interview with Pulse Nigeria, the Ghanaian filmmaker revealed that the last time she was nervous about tackling a subject was "Rebecca."

"It was a two-cast movie and I know that the film audience in Africa gravitate more towards light subjects. I have done films long enough to know this," Frimpong-Manso said.

"I think also, people come into the cinema to try to escape. They want fun, exciting stuffs so they can escape. That’s not to say that the script [Rebecca] wasn’t fun, but this is like two characters, and I thought: ‘how is this going to be received?’"

play Shirley Frimpong Manso

 Despite her nervousness, Shirley was also really excited about the movie because it was different and a new territory for her as a filmmaker.

"Till today, “Rebecca” is actually very close to my heart because I had to do a lot of writing. This is just two people, there’s nobody else, you know.

"And the entire movie is driven by conversation, it is driven by dialogue, and it needed to be right."

Everytime the filmmaker comes across anyone who loves the movie, it makes her day.

"It makes my day because this is a project that I went through a lot making. So yes, it was done and I think it was done very well, and people loved it. There’s an audience for it, even if it is unique."

play Location of Shirley Frimpong-Manso's "Rebecca"

About the movie "Rebbecca"

Abandoned and lost in the middle of a deserted road, an egotistic proper city guy (Clifford) gets a rude awakening when he begins to realize that his only companion, a timid looking village girl (Rebecca) who he had been forced to marry only a few hours earlier, is anything but ordinary.

That's the plot for "Rebecca," a movie that features Yvonne Okoro and Joseph Benjamin.

Shirley was very scared about the reactions she was going to get from people, and while it has been more of positive reviews, some of the reactions haven’t been great.

"And I’m not surprised," she said. "I guess the surprises come from the fact that a lot more people have loved it than I thought they would."

play

The filmmaker was nervous about having to depend on just two actors to bring it home: if they failed to deliver, then she really won't have a movie.

"I remember there were many times during the shoot that I wasn’t even sure I was getting the best out of my cast. And I have to be very honest, after “Rebecca,” I didn’t go start post-production immediately."

play Shirley Frimpong-Manso at Pulse Nigeria to talk about Potato Potahto

Frimpong-Manso described the shoot as a very exhausting and challenging one.

"We shot in the middle of nowhere, we had to travel three hours a day to get to the place, and we would have to carry generators to the place and the generators wouldn’t work. It would rain, and we were just left bare.

"There were so many days when we couldn’t shoot, and we began to think that perhaps, the movie was actually jinxed.

So I was really nervous, afterwards I left it. For several months I didn’t touch it. I kept feeling afraid that what if I went to the editing bed and I didn’t like it, and I was ready to bin it.

But when she eventually started editing, it started coming together. "And it was beautiful," she said.

play Potato Potahto movie.
(Bella Naija)

Frimpong-Manso is popular for "Love or Something Like That," "Potomanto," "Devil in the Detail" and "A Sting in the Tale."

She is set to debut her latest movie "Potato Potahto" - a humorous take on divorce - on November 24, 2017, in cinemas nationwide.