Johannesburg – Showmax’s Hlomu The Wife has just dropped its full-length trailer, “It’s going to be very different,” said author Dudu Busani-Dube on the telenovela adaptation.
Busane-Dube has become the face of self-publishing in South Africa, having topped the Exclusive Books charts, and landed four books simultaneously in the Nielsen Bookscan SA bestseller list for July 2021.
This comes before Showmax announced that they were adapting the series of books that made her name – Hlomu the Wife, Zandile the Resolute, and Naledi His Love – into their first Showmax Original telenovela, unleashing the most heated casting debate South Africa has ever seen.
Busane Dube says the adaptation is the biggest thing that ever happened to her and ” it’s still overwhelming”.
She added that although she is not vastly involved in the production of the telenovela, she has been to the scene a couple of times and also took part in the auditions.
“But I’m not a filmmaker; I’m a books person. So I don’t know much about what happens. In just a little time that I got myself involved, where I have been coming to set, I found that the work is really technical,” she added.
Busane-Dube further explained that the adaptation does not depict the book fully, she said it is different.
“It’s going to be very different. When somebody reads a book, it’s going to be their imagination. But when it comes to something visual, it’s actually not easy to adapt it as it is.
“There are going to be new things and new people that are introduced by the film part of it and things that are going to be left out from the books. This is a telenovela that is inspired by the books, so it changes. It changes a lot.
“So look, it’s going to be different, but people are going to love it. As long as the actors deliver, people will eventually accept that ‘Okay, so this is the story that we know, but these are the new things that came out of it,” she said.
The author says although this is what her readers have been asking for, she felt very anxious because of the adaptation announcement. However, she was relieved once the announcement was made, she said the reaction from her fans was great and well received.
Even though some fans disputed some of the characters and made suggestions on social media after the cast was announced, Busane-Dube says it was not possible to get eight identical men.
“I personally am happy with the cast. I have met them. They are very talented.
“What I like the most is that, in the days that I spent with them, we developed a connection. You know, they sound and they look like friends; they even hang out and laugh together a lot. And that is what the characters in my book are about, the Zulu brothers, they’re about brotherhood. They’re about, you know, the typical boy thing: they tease each other, they laugh together, they protect each other. They are a bit dangerous, of course, but they are a family. So I felt that with the cast and I was very happy with that.
“And the lead, Mqhele, everybody loves him. He fits the description. He has the face. He understands the character. So, yeah, I’m happy. I’m relieved,” the author further explained.
Although she has not yet watched the final product, Busane-Dube says she is excited to see, “where they go back to the village where their parents were killed. They have to meet with the chief because they need to come back for the traditional wedding. So they have to go back and they have to apologise on behalf of their father. And the chief is shocked that they have the audacity to come back here, knowing who their father was and what he did.
“So I’m actually looking forward to that part where they go back to a place where they had to run from while their parents were being burned to ashes. And also just the love between the two main characters, Mqhele and Hlomu. Yeah, that’s another thing that I’m interested in just watching on screen,” she concluded.
Watch the trailer below:
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