FROM TOM MBAMBO TO MAI NOKU …How Zim actors find it hard to move on from popular roles
LEE McHoney’s life has changed. Before she played Mai Noku on Zimbabwean television’s success story of the year, Wadiwa Wepamoyo, only fans of her music paid attention to her offbeat, humorous tweets and posts.
As Wadiwa Wepamoyo gained in popularity however, she found a horde of new followers camping on the comments section under every tweet, flooding her with inquiries about the Mai Noku and her devious better half Baba Noku.
They cared little about the well-being of Lee McHoney the musician. In fact, some were surprised that she was a musician at all. They cared even less about Linda Nyauchi, McHoney’s real name when she is off stage.
“It is a problem because there are people that think that I’m Mai Noku even when I’m not on screen,” McHoney told Sunday Life. “Even on social media, people will respond and ask about Baba Noku when I’m posting about something else. I just think they take these things a bit too seriously and if you’re acting in a popular television show in Zimbabwe it’s as if you’re in a reality show rather than something fictional.”
In Wadiwa Wepamoyo, McHoney was cast opposite Ben Mahaka, a man who most Zimbabweans still refer to as Tom Mbambo, years after Studio 263 came off the small screens.
Despite the increased scrutiny and attention, McHoney was not daunted. In fact, she does not think such behaviour is unique to Zimbabweans, a people that have been known to hold on a little too dearly to TV characters that they like.
“I don’t think it’s just a Zimbabwean thing. I think it’s a people problem in general because I remember a South African actress on Generations saying that people had been shouting and attacking her when she went to the shops because they believed that she was truly tormenting her mother in real life as she was doing on the show.”
The lines between reality and fiction, television and real life have become blurred for McHoney. As thousands tuned into Wadiwa Wepamoyo every week, Lee McHoney was being side-lined. For someone with a budding career as a musician, being typecast as Mai Noku wherever she goes or appears could be fatal.
She would not be the first to find herself in such a predicament with Zimbabwean audiences.
Aleck Zulu, for example, remembers how the role of Snake on Amakorokoza had people scared next to him as they believed he was the gangster he so convincingly portrayed on screen.
“People think that I’m a gangster. Sometimes people ask if I ever smile at all and I brush them off and tell them that I’m only portraying a role,” Zulu told Sunday Life.
Snake is a character that Zulu has found hard to shake off later in his career. To many people, he is still the violent, thug with a dangerous gold-lust. The role might have won him a Nama but it also earned him lifelong fear and loathing by some viewers.
T h e inspiration for the character had come to the show’s director, Cont Mhlanga, when he had seen a gold panner savagely attacking another while he was driving to Harare. Mhlanga intended the character, and the play which portrayed him, to stick in people’s minds.
“When I cast a character, I make sure that the character is never to be forgotten,” Mhlanga told Sunday Life. “I have an idea of the kind of actor that I want when I start auditions you will find that I will dismiss an actor just from the way that they walk when they come for the audition. I already know that this person is not what I’m looking for. When I cast the actor that I want however, people find it hard to forget them. That’s why you’ll find that people I would have directed years ago are still referred to by those character names even up to today. People don’t move on from them because the character would have been so well played.”
However, as Snake has discovered over the years, this can be a good and a bad thing. For example, when he appeared in court for stabbing his wife in 2016, it was a confirmation of many people’s fears, never mind the fact that the charges were later withdrawn. The court documents might have listed him down as Aleck Zulu but to observers he was once again Snake — a lanky, venomous agent of terror with cruel intentions.
For veteran playwright and director Raisedon Baya, realistic portrayals of characters become a problem when people expect actors to perform their roles wherever they see them.
“The acting is a world on its own and it has its own rules so when a person leaves that stage they have to live on different rules. I have laughed at people because if you’re an actor or a comedian and you attend a workshop, for example, people will ask, if you’re a comedian, that you tell them a joke or if you’re an actor they say act out something. But they never ask a doctor in a kombi to examine them or prescribe medication. You don’t do that because you know that a kombi is not his workplace. The public needs that clarity. Most of the time when they see the actors off stage or off camera, they want them to then act out their roles and that becomes a problem,” Baya said.
For Baya however, the biggest problem comes when actors, realising the popularity of
their characters, decide to adopt that same character in real life.
“One of the things that is left out is the importance of de-roling after portraying a role. That’s very important. We always advise actors to take some time and become themselves again. With the kids that we train, we always advise them to take 10 minutes after they come off stage and become themselves again because if you just jump and meet the public after a performance there’s a tendency of then becoming the person that you were on stage because that’s what the public will be relating to.
“The unfortunate part is that there are veterans that know the importance of de-roling but unfortunately because our sector does not pay well you find that with most actors they find it more comfortable living the character’s life because the character is popular and it gains them favours which they don’t have in their own life,” Baya said.
The realities of actors’ lives in Zimbabwe — poor remuneration and limited opportunities — mean some actors end up believing that the characters they portray have better lives than their own.
“The character is more popular than themselves in real life. You find that the character that they were given had a better life than yours so you tend to want to live your character’s life because your own has nothing, its empty. You have no money; you have nothing so you would rather live in this castle that you have built either on stage or television.
Most of the time it’s unfortunate that you get the bad characters like gangsters, and drunkards, and actors end up destroying their lives because they are living up to that character. Sometimes they end up living beyond their means because they’re trying to live up to the flashy character that they were portraying on TV,” said Baya.
Mapressa’s unlikely blend
of music and comedy
DJ Mapressa, a Tsholotsho-born performer, seems to be following the route mapped out by the late Dr Love, Paul Matavire, by blending music with comedy for extremely humorous results.
Unlike the late sungura ace however, Mapressa, born Promise Sibanda, does not stick to one genre but mixes comedy with various genres of music, with his vision set to be fully attained in September with the release of an album made up of the six singles, the first of which was released when the lockdown started in South Africa.
Mapressa has in the past made headlines for organising events like the Injiva Homecoming in 2016, the Tsholotsho Music Festival in 2016 and the Easter Explosion in Trenance, Bulawayo, last year.
He has also worked as a music compiler on South Africa’s Sloot FM.
In an interview with Sunday Life, Mapressa said he had decided to fuse with comedy after the realisation that music was the medium that reached people quickest. For his upcoming album, Mapressa does the same song in six different genres.
“I realised that a lot of people that are into music saw my album that comes out in September. It will be different genres. There’s a rhumba version, a maskandi version, isichathamiya version and there’s a piano track featuring a former Go Boyz member. It will be one track but done in different genres. I want everyone to get something out of it. They are all singles coming out every month. In March it was rhumba, in April it was maskandi and in July it will be isichathamiya. There’s already a house track out. I see this as a way of growing my comedy,” he said.
Over the last few months, Mapressa has become a social media sensation, earning followers for his candid and humorous take on life. Explaining his brand of comedy to Sunday Life, the former Tsholotsho High School boy said his intention was to always come up with an intoxicating cocktail of comedy and music.
“We deliver comedy but deliver it through music. When you listen to the song you are supposed to not just dance but crack your ribs laughing as well. As a man that knows people love many different things, this is what I decided to do to capture their attention. If you look at my comedy, sometimes, I pretend like I’m on the phone and sometimes I pretend like a DJ on air or a politician delivering a speech in Parliament. It all comes in different forms.
In the age of social media, many fancy themselves as comedians, Mapressa insists he is not a fly by night comic, as he has been making people laugh since his school days.
“I was very comedic back in high school. Even in class people knew that I could twist things and put a comedic twist on them, even my own name. Even the teachers knew me for my humorous nature. Even at assembly I would act out in a funny way,” he said.