On the latest episode of #WithChude, media mogul and founder of EbonyLife Group, Mo Abudu shares with the host of #WithChude and co-founder of Joy, Inc., Chude Jideonwo about her background, her family, the controversy she had overcome, and her upcoming work on the life of Hushpuppi, a Nigerian Instagram influencer facing criminal charges.

“I was born in England into a working-class family. I lost my father when I was 11. So, very early on, I’ve had to be strong. I’ve worked all kinds of jobs. I worked as a waiter because my Mom was left with not very much. I was the first daughter, it was left for me to step up”

On the different stories that have spread around about her, Mo shared that “Over the years, I have learned to be harder. People throw shades, but I shared a quotation recently by Winston Churchill that I’ll paraphrase as, if you throw stones at every dog that barks at you on the street, you will never get to your destination. Yes, it can be painful, and one of the reasons it can be really painful is because of the young girls that look up to me. I don’t want them thinking that is what I have done. And if they think that, then I worry for them, because  how will we do the work we have done, by supposedly doing all sorts of things they say I have done?”

She also highlighted the reasons why she was part of the team that have secured the right to produce the movie on the internet fraudster, Ramon Abbas known as Hushpuppi.  “Somebody is going to tell that story, if it is not me, it would have been another international body because it was not only us that was bidding for it. It is just important that the story is told by someone who understands the challenges he went through, the opportunity he must have had. We are not justifying what he did, but we are just saying that there are many lessons to be learned (good and bad) from our youth about the ‘Hushpuppi story.”

Watch video excerpt of the conversation here: