- David Oyelowo has shared a funny boarding school experience, revealing that he pretended not to understand Yoruba while attending school in Nigeria.
- The actor said the misconception allowed him to overhear conversations about himself, including romantic discussions that eventually led to him dating twin sisters at the same time before finally revealing the truth on his last day.
Award-winning British-Nigerian actor David Oyelowo has shared a humorous story from his teenage years in a Nigerian boarding school, revealing how pretending not to understand Yoruba gave him an unexpected advantage among his classmates.
Speaking during a recent interview, Oyelowo said he grew up speaking Yoruba fluently but deliberately kept that fact hidden after enrolling in a boarding school in Nigeria.
According to the actor, his foreign accent led many students to assume he could not understand the language. Rather than correct them, he decided to play along and quietly listen to conversations happening around him.
“It was like being the invisible man,” he recalled.
The actor explained that classmates would openly discuss him in Yoruba, believing he had no idea what they were saying. He said he often overheard students gossiping about him, including girls who publicly acted uninterested but privately expressed admiration for him in conversations with friends.
Oyelowo said the situation occasionally worked in his favour, jokingly revealing that he once dated twin sisters simultaneously after learning information through conversations they assumed he could not understand.
The confession left the interviewer laughing, while the actor admitted that keeping the secret required considerable discipline throughout his two years at the school.
Beyond the romantic side of the story, Oyelowo said he also heard classmates speak negatively about him from time to time. Despite this, he resisted the temptation to reveal that he understood every word being said.
According to him, the biggest shock came on his final day at the school when he suddenly began speaking Yoruba fluently to everyone around him.
The revelation stunned his classmates, who only then discovered that he had understood their conversations throughout his entire stay.
