GROWTH, BABES!
A lot has changed in Tali’s Joburg. “We joke that she’s lost her Joburg street cred,” says Julia. “Everything that she’s used to has changed.
And Joburg is so developed – which plays into the boys’ property storyline as well – that things that used to be there have been developed into a new building or a new law firm.” And not only is Tali’s childhood dog dead and her old bedroom is now her mom Michelle’s (Kate Normington, Janet in cancelled telenovela Legacy) acting studio, but the kid Tali cruelly nicknamed Monique
The Beak in high school because of her prominent nose is the new queen bee of Tali’s social group.
Bringing Tali back home under her parents’ roof and sticking her back with the friends and frenemies from her school days is an opportunity to show how much the character has grown, not just from when we first met her as a bridezilla, but from the nightmare teen that she must have been.
“What I do love about the season is exactly that, that we are taking Tali and we are putting her in a teenage situation. She’s gone through all these big life stages such as getting married, having a baby, buying a house, making a new life in Cape Town. And now we see her back as a high school girl in many ways. That’s really where we see the growth of Tali this season,” says Julia. “All those sorts of adventures that she goes on, in the school setting, are a driving force behind her emotional arc.
“In the writers’ room we have drawn on a lot of what we remember from school: The bullies that we faced, the nicknames that we might have been called. A lot of them stem from my high school situation, which was very intense. I went to an all-girls school (St Mary’s in Johannesburg), which I think is even worse in this situation. We tap into the ways that we felt as insecure, awkward teenagers. Obviously we’ve stretched it a bit to add to the comedy, but the underlying elements are still there.”