Displaying items by tag: Seyi Omooba

West End star Seyi Omooba is appealing against key decisions in her court case at an employment tribunal in London. She was removed from a lead role in a musical production and dropped by her agents after another actor dug up an old Facebook post where Seyi quoted the Bible and said she believed in real marriage between a man and a woman. The judges decided not to hear expert evidence from a theatre critic and theologian, and then made decisions which that evidence directly contradicted. The appeal was to be heard during the first lockdown, but an online hearing was refused, delaying the case to 2021, even though many other cases have been conducted online. The delay makes it harder for her to be vindicated.

Seyi Omooba had been given the lead role in the award-winning musical The Colour Purple, based on Alice Walker’s classic American novel. The casting was announced on the same day that Seyi went to Buckingham Palace with her father, Pastor Ade Omooba (Christian Concern’s co-founder), to receive his MBE. After the cast was announced, Seyi was criticised by another West End actor because she had cited the Bible in a Facebook post over four years earlier. As a result, she lost her leading role and was dropped from her agency. With help from the Christian Legal Centre, she is now launching a legal challenge against the theatre and the agency. The case raises the question of whether Christians can hold and express Biblical mainstream views in public - whether we can freely express opinions and interpretations of art, literature, and drama that are contrary to LGBT ideology.