Ghanaian actor, Mr Beautiful, has revealed that his former colleague, Agya Koo, once harboured a deep-seated dislike for him.
According to Mr Beautiful, Agya Koo saw him as a threat to his dominance in the Kumawood film industry at the time.
“Truth is that, Agya Koo made local movies popular because of his soaring popularity at the time. When Santo died, Agya Koo filled the void. I love Agya Koo but truth is that when Agya Koo became popular, he wanted to be the only one in the limelight.
“To the extent that, Agya Koo could put a production on hold when he is travelling outside the country. When you ignore the directive, he will blacklist that producer. They were gravely concerned about the attitude he was putting up, so fortunately, Miracle films came for me and paired me with him for my first movie.
“Besides, Agya Koo and I had known ourselves during concert party days and at the time, he was happy to see me on set of Sika Nibre featuring McBrown and Agya Koo. That movie was a hit.
“We had about three or four movies to shoot together, but he refused to shoot and only agreed on condition that I was dropped from the cast. We even had to change a storyline for one movie. Some of the producers were even concerned about his attitude, but it went on and on and on.
According to Mr Beautiful, Agya Koo deliberately avoided being cast alongside him as a lead character due to fears of being overshadowed.
“ Agya Koo didn’t want to be cast alongside me as lead character because he knew I would ride on his wings, and that was a smart move because he didn’t want me to become big like himself to reduce his influence and monopoly at the time.
“The producers told me that Agya Koo had refused to shoot with me because he felt threatened by me.
“So to avoid Agya Koo meting out the same treatment to Akrobeto when he later joined Kumawood when he came back from Belgium, Miracle Films had to adopt the strategy of making Akrobeto wash Agya Koo’s cars so they two could build a strong bond.
“ There’s no doubt Agya Koo is a very talented but this particular character of his forced the producers to devise a strategy to take him out so it got to a point that nobody wanted to use him,” he said.
