My experience being married to a celeb - Toyosi Etim-effiong

Wr i te r and Producer, Toyosi EtimEffiong who is married to popular actor, Daniel EtimEffiong, has said it has been very excting being married to a celebrity.

Sharing her almost three years marriage experience with Bliss recently, Toyosi said she was smitten when she saw her husband the first time.

“It has been very interesting. When we got married, he was not as popular. Now, the popularity has grown.

“We met on set the first time. Before then, I had seen him on Gidi Up, an Ndani production. I wondered who he was. He played the bad guy role in the series. I said to myself that we must meet and then, we eventually met. I was smitten the first time I saw him.”

Toyosi revealed that the female admiration her husband gets is too much.

“It has not been so easy coping with the girls who admire him. He enters a place and the ladies scream!

They send him messages and some of them send their nude pictures. Some even want to have children for him.

“We go to places and people want to take pictures and they totally ignore me. In fact, some even turn me to the photographer.”

But in all these, she said she doesn’t feel insecure.

“I knew he was an actor before I got married to him. it didn’t catch me by surprise. I was also in the limelight. I had a talk show. I was equally good on my own. The insecurity started when he became big, when brands started coming and asking him to be brand ambassador. The major thing for me then was the fact that I was in the industry before him and nobody had noticed me. I honestly had to deal with that state of mind personally. This kind of thing breaks marriages. I eventually understood that we are one. My success is his and his is mine.

Talking about how she copes watching her husband play sensual roles she said, “I know that two jobs that kissing is part of their duties is Medical profession and acting. I had to accept that. sometimes when I am on set with him and he has to play such roles, I would leave because the actresses usually get embarrassed. I am respectful of the craft. I am good with his job.

“There was one of his movies that I had to ask him about the kissing scene. The scene looked quiet real. But one good thing about him, he always tried to allay my fears. He would tell me it is a job.”

And as a seasoned writer, Toyosi has come out with a new book, Now You Know me Better.

According to her, the global pandemic pushed her to revisit her old hobbies.

She said, “I started writing during the lockdown. For me, that period was a time I revisited old hobbies. I realised I had time on my hands and I had to go back to things I enjoyed doing and writing was one of them.”

Talking about the book, Toyosi said it is a book about identy and how to come to terms with one’s identity.

“Now you Know me Better is about me growing up in a dual situation. During the week, I would go to school in VI. I was living at Bode Thomas. I had rich friends whose parents were ambassador and bank MDS. The weekends, I would spend with my grandma who lived at Amukoko near Ajegunle.

“During the week, I talk with friends who went to vacation abroad but in the weekends, I relate with the lower class people. I was like a misfit.”

Toyosi said her major aim of writing the book if for people to acknowledge who they really are.

“The major intention is for people to read this and embrace their own stories. this is a book on identity. I a situation where people would come to terms with who they really are and deal with the identity crisis.”

Toyosi, who also wroked in a bank at some time, said she doesn’t have any regret leaving.

She said, “I didn’t like the department I was working. it was internal audit department. it was not my space. if I were in a different department, I may have stayed back.”

Married to a non Yoruba man, Toyosi said she has never been into Yoruba speaking guys before she got married. I like the Calabar culture in fact. It seems very exotic to me. My mother inlaw is a wonderful woman and she cooks so well. My inlaws have embraced me. the are very nice people. Above all, my husband is a good man.”