Naidoo’s career keeps blossoming
LOCAL actor Ruben Naidoo has been in show business since the late 1990s and now, at the age of 56, his career is blossoming.
He started out doing stand-up comedy and more recently played “The Chillies Uncle” in the local big screen hit Keeping Up with The Kandasamys.
Naidoo has also featured alongside veteran Indian icon Anupam Kher and comedian Russel Peters in a Canadian television series The Indian Detective.
The comedic drama, filmed in Cape Town and Mumbai, India, in February, reportedly follows Toronto cop Doug D’Mello (Peters) as he becomes embroiled in a murder case, while visiting his father, Stanley (Kher), in Mumbai. The investigation leads Doug to uncover a dangerous conspiracy, while dealing with his own ambivalence towards a country where despite his heritage, he is an outsider.
Naidoo, of Queensburg, played a magistrate, while Keeping Up with the Kandsamys actress Mishqah Parthiephal played an advocate.
The father of two said working alongside Peters and Kher was, sometimes, intimidating. “You question yourself initially on whether you belong in being in their company, but once you start chatting to them, you look at them as fellow cast. I felt humbled to be on set with him.”
Naidoo, who has been teaching creative arts for over 25 years and is based at Collingwood Primary in Wentworth, said the role that evoked the most response was Keeping Up with The Kandsamys.
The two movies he directed, Getting Off the Treadmill (2014) and Broken Mirror (2016), at Collingwood Primary, took the annual district awards for creative arts in uMlazi.
Naidoo is working on a short film about addiction to technology called Innovation of Loneliness.
The movie is set in a rehabilitation centre and has been submitted to feature in the Durban Film Festival in July.