South African filmmaker, Chris Q Radebe, has written appreciation messages for both Adze Ugah and Nomzamo Mbatha for their work on Shaka iLembe.
Taking to social media this week, Radebe gushed about the perfectionist Mbatha is.
“This woman works her fingers to the bone and I feel so privileged and honoured to have borne witness to it. She understood the significance of the history attached to this production and gave us Nandi like we had never experienced or even imagined her before,” he wrote.
He said watching Mbatha week after week on set reminded him of the late Dudu Mkhize.
“The honesty with which you portrayed Nandi, the emotion in your scenes with Lemogang, you guys are a few months apart, but I completely got lost in your relationship as mother and son, in every single scene. You outdid yourself and I hope you are extremely proud of the great job you have done.”
Radebe also gave the Nigerian-born filmmaker, Adze Ugah, his flowers and said it was an honour to work with him over the years.
“When I first arrived on the set of Isibaya, he said ‘go crazy.’ It took us a while to get on the same page about the character. But once we got it, it was smooth sailing. When I arrived on the set of Shaka Ilembe, he only had one note for me. This guy is Dabula on steroids.”
He said he laughed and in some of the scenes, he didn’t even bother reading his lines, because Adze told him to forget about the script and just say whatever he felt like saying.
“This is actually one of the reasons I respect my co-actors so much. They just let me be. In fact, they seemed to enjoy Makhedama’s stupidity. What you don’t see on TV is that in that scene where Makhedama is eating and Zwide and his men are just staring at him, when the camera wasn’t on them, they were dying with laughter. That was the most fun scene to shoot for me.”
He also added that he came up with the chewing thing on set.
“Needless to say, it may not have been a big role, but man did I enjoy it. I was just happy to be a part of this incredible production, with some of the country’s very best. But the ultimate reward for me, it’s seeing all the videos people took while the show was playing, and hearing them laugh in the background.”
Follow @SundayWorldZA on Twitter and @sundayworldza on Instagram, or like our Facebook Page, Sunday World, by clicking here for the latest breaking news in South Africa.
