By Eddah Waithaka
She packed her bags in the dead of night, slipped out of her parents’ home in Kabuku village, Limuru, and boarded a matatu to Nairobi with nothing but a pipe dream and a stubborn heart.
Rose K. Njoroge was 18 years old. Her parents had just enrolled her in a software engineering course. They told her art did not pay. They called it nimchezo—a child’s game.
She did not listen.
Fifteen years later, Njoroge sits across from us with a Kalasha Award on her résumé, a string of writing credits that include the acclaimed series Monica, and a breakout role as Tasha in Showmax’s gender-flip comedy Adam to Eve. Her journey from a church play in Limuru to the heart of Kenyan cinema reads like the kind of script she now writes for a living.
“I remember the Sunday school teachers telling me, ‘We feel like you’re very talented,’” Njoroge recalls. Her first role? A false prophetess in an inter-church competition. She walked away with best lead actress. “I don’t know what they saw in me. But I guess they were right.”
That early taste of the stage ignited a dream that refused to die. But after high school, her parents had other plans.
“They believed art does not pay. They got me into software engineering. But I never finished school,” she says. “I felt like this wasn’t where I was supposed to be. Someone else chose it for me. So I packed my bags in the middle of the night and I ran.”
Her plan sounded audacious even to her: audition at the Kenya National Theatre, land a role, and return to Limuru within a year in her own car with an apartment to match. “I wanted to tell my parents, ‘You see? You were wrong.’”
Instead, the first five years humbled her.
“My parents were right. Art is not easy.”
She survived on travelling theatre and set book performances. After two years, she pivoted to film. When she auditioned for a feature film, she deliberately aimed for a minor role to improve her odds.
“I walked into the audition room and said I am auditioning for Ann—a small character. Director Gilbert Lukalia asked me, ‘What’s your strength in acting?’ I said my ability to cry easily. He said, ‘Let’s see it.’ I was so nervous that as soon as he said it, the floodgates opened. It was so bad people asked if I was okay.”
A few days later, she got the call. She had the role—but not as Ann. She would play Julie, the lead. That film, Strength of a Woman, went on to the 2014 Kalasha Awards, where Njoroge won Best Lead Actress in a Feature Film.
She thought the award would change everything.
“It didn’t do for me what I thought it would,” she admits. “Sometimes these awards work against you. Producers think, ‘She’s an A-list star now. I can’t afford her.’ It took me three years to get my next role—a short film. I have an award sitting at home to show I’m a good actress. But no one’s hiring you because they think you’re too up there.”
The drought pushed her back to writing—a craft she had cultivated since childhood. As an only child in Kabuku, she spent hours building worlds in her head and pouring them into compositions that scored 30 out of 30. Later, she turned to Facebook, posting short stories that gathered a following.
Then a Canadian filmmaker named Neil Schell slid into her DMs.
“Neil said, ‘I think you’d be great for our TV series.’ Mind you, I had never written anything professionally before. That was a big deal.”
That series was Monica, starring Brenda Wairimu and Raymond Ofula. Njoroge came on board in late 2017. Suddenly, the calls shifted.
“As soon as people saw I could write Monica, that’s when the calls came in. People stopped associating me with acting. I became a full-time scriptwriter. From 2017 to 2022, I did not act in anything.”
Her return to the screen came through the same door she entered as a writer. After working with Lizz Njagah and Alex Konstantaras on Village Vendetta, they approached her with a concept for a new show. They asked her to write the pilot.
“You write an episode, you’re paid, and you move on with your life. You don’t know that two years later you’ll get another call and be told someone believes in the project.”
That project became Adam to Eve. But Njoroge got more than a writing credit. A call came from Gerald Langiri: Alex wanted her to play Tasha.
“I had no idea I was going to play her,” she says. “So I wrote her unbiased. Usually, when you know you’re playing a character, you tailor it to your strengths. For Tasha, I didn’t.”
The result is a character she adores: an introverted nerd who pushes herself into uncomfortable territory and finds one of her best relationships on the other side. “Blessing Lung’aho played a beautiful Makori. I feel like I did her justice.”
Looking back at the 18-year-old who ran away in the middle of the night, Njoroge has no regrets—but she does have a different perspective.
“Keep that fire. When I was 18, I was very determined. Everyone around me said it was the foolishness of youth, that I’d get to 25 and regret it. The journey has been hard, but it has been totally worthwhile.”
What would she do differently?
“I would be less comfortable. I kept waiting for things to happen to me. I kept waiting for the calls to come. But the truth is, people forget you. In cinema, if I don’t see you in six months, I forget you. Instead of waiting, I would have reached out more. I would have been more active.”
Today, she is both the writer and the face on screen—a dual threat who refuses to sit still. Her story, she says, is still being written.
“I am many things. I am a scriptwriter. I am an actress.”
And she is still proving that art was never a child’s game.
