'Obama’s first daughter, Malia, Lil Wayne’s family are all my fans'- 8-year-old Emmanuella talks about her fame and love for comedy

In an interview with Ademola Olonilua, Emmanuella Samuel the popular kid comedian talks about how she was able to achieve such stardom via social media within a short time.

                          

She has over 400,000 hits on YouTube channel and so many followers on her Facebook, Instagram and Twitter account which includes Obama's daughter Malia and some other top American stars.

On how discovered that you are good at making people laugh, she said, "I knew I could do comedy when I realised that I could make people laugh especially my classmates. Then my uncle started uploading our skits on social media in 2014; that should be about two years ago. I am one of the kids under the Mark Angel Comedy Corporation but I am the star kid right now. There are other kids in the company but I was told that I have more public appeal and the other kids are not that mature. We began posting comedy skits online because it was cheaper and we needed a voice.
Of all your posts, the ‘Not my real face’ joke is the most popular one.

On what inspired that particular skit, she said "It was just one of the materials we wrote and didn’t even see anything special about it. The skit was posted last year.
Holy Spirit that inspires my social media posts. We also draw inspiration through my upbringing and the environment that I live in."

On how many views‘Not my real face’ generated: "I have not checked it in recent times but we did not really promote that particular skit, it went viral on its own. We promoted it on Facebook but later on, we put it on our YouTube channel. The skit has been shared on so many other social media platforms. I saw it had 78 million views on a particular page.
It was also on Obama’s first daughter, Malia’s page and it had about 11 million views.

On how she felt when she saw her post on Obama's daughter wall- "I was very happy and it made me know that it is not only Africans that love what I do. It made me realise that people from other continents are interested in my material. Also, someone from American rapper, Lil Wayne’s family, also posted the skit on their platform. The post generated about 60 million views."

On how she has been coping with fame and school: "They don’t clash. I am still a kid and I am happy that my uncle is not treating me like an adult but a child that I am. I think things can only go wrong when they start treating me like an adult because I cannot become one overnight. Nothing has really changed about me since I became popular. The only difference is that I am not usually at home most weekends because there are several events I have to attend. When I am home, I live my normal life and I am not treated like a celebrity except occasionally when some people in my area see me and tell me they love my videos. I don’t have any issue with being popular.
It does not affect my school that much. During this holiday, I have started shooting for next season so when I resume school, I will just begin to release the videos. By doing this, it does not clash with my school work. It is only when I have an emergency shoot that I can be permitted to shoot when school resumes and it is usually on Fridays.

On how she cope with attending overnight events- "Most times when we go out, my uncle ensures that the organisers call me on stage early so that I can go home to sleep. There was a times we went for an event and I slept off; there was no show at the end of the day because I did not wake up. When I sleep, it is difficult to wake me up. I sleep a lot during the day especially when I have an event but I am still a child and I have to rest at night. I also drink a lot of water. I miss a lot of events and night activities because of sleep. If I tell my uncle that I would rather sleep than attend an event, we would not go.
I make sure I attend events that are child, friendly and I do not go anywhere without an adult especially my uncle. I will not go for an event that kids are not supposed to attend or places that they do bad things.

On parents’ reaction when she started: "At first, they were not so cool with the idea just like any other parent would be. But my uncle had several meetings with them and explained everything to them. He also told them that it would not affect my school. They were very worried about my education but my uncle told them that I would still be like every child and live like a normal child.

Right now, some people tell me that I don’t behave like a star. They say that I behave like a normal kid and I dress like one. They don’t know my background; we are normal people and not stars.

We did not start this project for me to become a star instead we needed a voice; we wanted people to know us. If my talent brought me to where I am today, I thank God but that was not the plan"