Carlos Scola Pliego: His Film Career and Marriage to Sade

Carlos Scola Pliego was working behind the camera before he married Sade in 1989. His credits include assistant-directing work on international productions, a short film about a gorilla documentary shoot, and a feature documentary set in Africa.

His marriage connected him with one of music’s most recognisable voices. But while Sade’s songs reached audiences around the world, Carlos’s work appeared mainly in film credits under the shorter name Carlos Scola.

The two were married during a period when both had established creative careers. Sade’s official biography confirms their wedding year and identifies him as a Spanish film director. His professional history, meanwhile, can be traced through film catalogues and production records.

Carlos Was Working in Film Before Their Marriage

By the early 1980s, Carlos was taking assistant-director jobs on film productions. His listed credits include Dos y dos, cinco, Hundra and G’olé!, followed by work on the 1985 television miniseries Christopher Columbus. The latter lists him under his full name, Carlos Scola Pliego.

Another credit appears in the American Film Institute’s catalogue for Eleni, released in 1985. It identifies Carlos Scola as an assistant director with the Spanish crew.

That was a crew position rather than the film’s directing role. It places him among the people working on the production several years before his marriage to Sade brought his name into celebrity coverage.

He Went On to Direct His Own Projects

Sade, who married Carlos Scola Pliego in 1989, performing in Brasília in 2011. Photo: Julio Lopes / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY 2.0.

By 1988, Carlos was directing films himself. One of his early projects followed the filming of a documentary about gorillas.

Spain’s official film catalogue also credits him as a producer and names Javier Aguirresarobe as the cinematographer. Its synopsis describes incidents during the filming of a documentary about gorilla behaviour.

There is an interesting detail in that record: although the title is often described online as a wildlife documentary, the catalogue classifies it as fiction. Its stated subject is the documentary shoot itself. That makes “a short film about filming gorillas” a more careful description than simply calling it a nature documentary.

The following year brought Donde termina el corazón. Carlos is credited as both director and writer of the approximately 95-minute documentary.

The film travels through different African settings, including the Ituri Forest and the outskirts of Nairobi. It gave him a feature-length directing credit in the same year he married Sade.

His Relationship With Sade Began Around Her Music Videos

Sade performing at SAP Arena in Mannheim, Germany, in November 2011. Photo: Thilo Parg / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0.

Their professional worlds had crossed before the wedding.

Reporting on Sade’s years in Spain describes Carlos working as an assistant director on videos associated with her 1985 album Promise. The same account says he later accompanied her during recording sessions in France for Stronger Than Pride, released in 1988.

By then, their connection extended beyond the work that had brought them together. They married in 1989.

Sade was already an international star. Her first three albums had sold millions of copies, and touring had occupied much of the decade. Her marriage came after those busy early years, when her private life was attracting attention alongside her music.

The Relationship Ended Before Their Divorce Was Finalised

The couple spent part of their relationship in Madrid, but the marriage did not last.

A March 1993 newspaper report described Sade marrying Carlos in 1989 and separating from him about a year later. A later interview profile placed the end of their six-year marriage in 1995. These accounts distinguish their earlier separation from the subsequent divorce.

Most published accounts of the breakup come through reporting about Sade. They offer less insight into Carlos’s own experience, and there is no reason to turn that gap into a detailed account of arguments or private events.

Sade later had a child with Jamaican music producer Bob Morgan. A 2000 interview identifies Morgan as the child’s father, a useful distinction when reading biographies that mix together different periods of her personal life.

His Later Life Is Less Publicly Documented

Carlos’s film listings extend beyond the marriage. IMDb associates him with Goal II: Living the Dream, released in 2007, alongside his earlier directing projects. That later listing does not establish what he does today.

The sources reviewed for this article do not reliably establish his current occupation, relationship status or net worth.

What they do provide is a professional history that began before his wedding: assistant-director work, a short film made with another director, and an African documentary carrying his own writing and directing credits. His marriage to Sade is part of that history, but it is not the whole of it.