Appearing Nude In Movies & My Lesbian Story — Yvonne Nelson

Ghanaian actress, model, film producer and former Miss Ghana contestant, Yvonne Nelson, shot to fame after a big-screen role in Princess Tyra and Playboy. She has quickly gone ahead to become a household name on the African continent. In this exclusive interview with Vanguard's Ekerete Udoh, Yvonne Nelson talks about her alleged secret lesbian lifestyle, career and many more. Read excerpts below:

Bad girl roles & Nudity in movies:
I am nothing close to the roles I play in movies. People should understand that I am an actresses and I get scripts that expect me to act in a certain manner. As a consummate professional, I am not going to turn down those scripts because. I was expected to act in a certain manner, I am aware that some people took exception to the role I played in the movie “Heart of Men” where there appeared to be some form of frontal nudity, but the truth of the matter is that there was no such overt display of nudity. But let’s even for the sake of argument say there was some nudity, why are we so judgemental and somewhat hypocritical?

I am not an advocate of nudity or sexually graphic images in our movies. I have actually spoken against some of those tendencies; I will never appear frontally nude in any movie no matter the fees promised. I have morals and my morals are held closely to my chest. If you have been following the industry, which I believe you do, overt resort to nudity has been greatly reduced. It was a phase-one that was experimented by some producers and realizing that it ran counter to the values that Nollywood or Ghollywood espoused, the producers went back to doing stories that are heavy on family values.”

Lesbian story that went viral last year:
Look at me….what do you think? Of course, I am not a lesbian. Lesbianism is against my religious beliefs, it’s against my cultural norms and I think it was very mischievous for people to insinuate such about someone they hardly knew. The rumor was started by a notorious website in Ghana last year when they reported that they had never seen me with a man. In their warped and twisted calculation, I was thus a lesbian. Can you imagine such crass reasoning?

That they had not seen me with a man, and may have seen me with my girlfriends going out to have fun, and then automatically I was a lesbian. It was a hatchet job – an attempt to discredit me, but they all failed. I am heterosexual and would remain one till the end. When you are in the public light as I have been blessed and privileged to being, your life becomes a public property and some mischievous people will say all manner of things about you. It comes with the territory, so I forgive them.”