Toni Tones Reveals how she Lost her Voice and Added Weight to Act as Young Sola Sobowale in King of Boys’

Nollywood actress, Toni Tones who acted as the younger version of Sola Sobowales character, Eniola Salami has revealed how she was able to play the role which has earned her wide acclaim.

According to her, she had to strain her voice and dd weight to enable her play the role. Many thought her voice was digitized but it wasn’t, she said.

This was in an interview with Aura Magazine where she revealed that she didn’t audition for the role she played. She had earlier auditioned as Kemi Salami, the role played by Adesua Etomi, she said.

Here is what Toni Tones had to say:

Playing the ‘Young Eniola Salami’ (Young Sola Sobowale) in ‘King of Boys’ was quite challenging for me. It’s easier to create a character from scratch; you get to make it your own. But when you’re playing the younger version of someone, there’s already a blueprint set out for you that you have to follow. You have to move, look and sound like the person.

“You have to convince that you really are the younger version of who you are playing. I made the decision to put on weight for the role for two reasons, I knew it would help me look more like Sola Sobowale. I knew it would make people see less of ‘Toni Tones’ because they are used to me being slim and I needed them to as little of Toni Tones in this character as possible.

More excerpts from the interview below;

Aunty Sola was much slimmer as a young girl, but we don’t know that ‘Sola Sobowale.’ We know the Sola Sobowale of today, so it was my job to convince the audience that I was the younger version of the Sola Sobowale we all know today.

“So putting on weight was one of the steps I took. Not exactly the same size as Aunty Sola, but a size that makes her more easily recognizable and more easily conceivable that I could have morphed into her present size at her current age.

“I also strained and lost my voice on purpose so I could have the same husky tone to my voice that Aunty Sola has. A lot of people thought my voice was digitized to make me sound like her, but it was wasn’t, I just trained my voice to sound like hers.”

She however, revealed that she spent two months ”doing nothing else but studying Sola Sobowale”.

“I refused other work so I wouldn’t have to go out of character and stay focused”