Georgia Arnold is the Executive Director of the MTV Staying Alive Foundation as well as the Executive Producer of the educational MTV Shuga series which started in Kenya and starred Oscar award winner Lupita Nyong’o. In this interview with Daily Trust Arts and Ideas, Georgia spoke about the series season six, the auditioning for cast as well as what to expect.
Could you give us an overview of the MTV Shuga Series and how its relates with MTV Staying Alive?
At MTV Staying Alive Foundation, one of the things we do is we produce MTV Shuga. and MTV Shuga is a TV series and a mass media behaviour change campaign, that aims to get good, accurate information about sexual and reproductive health to young people across Africa.
We are back here in Nigeria. We started the first series in 2009 in Kenya, we did two series there and then two series here in Nigeria and one series in South Africa, so we are very excited to be back here for the next two series.
How has the show fared over the years?
MTV Shuga over the years has grown bigger and bigger and every single series seems to be better than the previous ones. So we really set the bar high now with the last one (South African).
One of the things we are proud of is that we know that it works, because of a study that the World Bank did on us. We know that young people are more likely to go and get tested for HIV and when they did an evaluation it showed that among people who watched MTV Shuga, double the number got tested compared to those that didn’t. And among young women, amongst young girls, chlamydia dropped about 60 percent and that’s because of watching MTV Shuga, so we know it does have impact in the right ways.
Why did you come back to Nigeria?
We brought MTV Shuga back to Nigeria because you know Nigeria is the most populous country in Africa and it has an increasingly large young population. And amongst the young population, there are some real issues in sexual and reproductive health that we need to tackle. So this time we are not just looking at HIV prevention but really looking at family planning, misconceptions around contraception, encouraging, young girls and young women’s to go and ask for information at the right places and also birth spacing as well.
How would the show contribute to Nigeria’s entertainment industry?
I absolutely think that MTV Shuga does contribute to Nigeria’s entertainment industry because it is produced entirely in the country that we are filming it, so everyone from producers, directors, scriptwriters and actors are Nigerians, unless we call on someone out of the country. It has also aid to discover a lot of Nigerian talents like Emmanuel Ikubese who went on to become Mr. Nigeria. He started in MTV Shuga.
In the music industry we worked in the last series with Seyi Shay, Wizkid and Tiwa Savage, so we are really trying to encourage not just artistes but the music industry here in Nigeria.
How do you go about public Auditions?
So I’m here in Nigeria for the auditions, In Lagos we had public auditions which was the most amazing day, we were expecting like a hundred people to turn up, I think we had seventeen hundred people turn up and we auditioned every single one of them.
The number one guy that came in at 1:45a.m and waited till he was seen by 8am. We had people coming from Abuja, Port Harcourt, Benin. They came from all over the country.
I sat on the judge’s panel and I think we might have discovered some new stars, so we are not just looking for young people in public auditions who will work on roles, We also hope we find some new casts.
What is the aim of season six?
The messages are focused strongly on adolescent girls, contraception and family planning as well as HIV. We want young girls and boys to understand exactly what contraception is and when they have questions they know who they could go and talk to and where they could go for more information
You have plans to go to Egypty by 2020 to get the Arab audience and then to India as MTV Nishedhi. Why the change of name?
So one of the really exciting thing about the show is how it is growing and we have just announced two new season in Nigeria and that’s the first time we are tuning it back to back. We are going to north Africa so in 2018 we are going to be seeing a new show in Egypt basically in Arabic for the first time. We are going to be tackling female genital mutilation alongside, family planning, contraception and gender-based violence.
We are taking Shuga out of the continent and going to India and for both India and Egypt, they would be given their own names because we need to make sure as we have always done moving from Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa that we are culturally relevant. So in India, it’s going to be MTV Nishedh which means ‘Taboo’ all the things they don’t want to talk about.
Any plans for a French version?
One question I do gets askd a lot is when are we going to produce in French, At the moment the current series have French subtitles and also Portuguese. But I do get asked a lot if we are ever going to bring it to francophone countries. Not yet but never say never.
What goes into cast selection for the show?
I guess we are looking for a little bit of magic. It is really hard to quantify. We are looking for someone who is definitely full of confidence that are able to put themselves in front of the camera but we are also looking for someone who can take direction. On the judging panel we had all three directors. We discovered Lupita Nyong’o before she went to Hollywood to win an Oscar, I hope that we can find another Oscar winner.
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