Daily Thetha

Season 1 SABC1 (*191) 11:00 Talkshow

Kini Shandu hasn’t just swapped his gig as a radio DJ to be one of the presenters on youth talkshow Daily Thetha (2017-current), he’s swapped cities too! “I flew up from Durban for the audition and it wasn’t ideal,” laughs the 32-yearold. “I thought that I’d fluffed my shot at the job, but then I got a call-back and I made the most of it.” But this isn’t his first stint in front of the cameras…

Where else will viewers know you from? I had a role on Uzalo (2015-current) as Shaun the lawyer earlier this year. But a talkshow is more my style. I get to be myself instead of a character. What did you expect when you got to set? [Laughs] Honestly, it was a case of “how did I get here?” – it was nerve-wracking. Is there a difference between Daily Thetha and shooting Uzalo? A huge one! On a soap, you shoot, cut, reshoot, cut and then reshoot – and you get to fix your mistakes. A live talkshow like this, it’s live and you have to think on your feet. Once you say or do something, it’s out there in the world. So there’s no rehearsal for you? Luckily there is! We do a dry run, where we go through the entire episode. That lets us iron out any small issues before we film the second take right afterwards. And what’s your prep work like? We have scripts and do content meetings where the team goes through everything. We make sure that topics are researched, that we know what we’re dealing with and we update and amend. Team work! Does the audience influence how an episode runs? Very much so. And they don’t realise the impact they have. Our audience at home has huge impact too thanks to social media. We listen to our fans. And how do you balance your two jobs? I’m on a break from radio… for now.