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Generations star Athi Cwele: ‘Being a celebrity is not my thing'

Generations star Athi Cwele: ‘Being a celebrity is not my thing'

News242 days ago
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He trends every other week on TikTok because of his portrayal of Kamogelo Moroka on Generations: The Legacy.
He brings incredible energy and passion to the role.
Since joining the SABC1 show, Athi Cwele has become an overnight sensation, and he's not planning on slowing down either.
His personality grabs our attention when we catch up with the actor, who animatedly reveals to Drum that playing a character who speaks Tshwane, which is not his mother tongue, is challenging.'
'Playing Kamo has been quite challenging because I get to speak a language that's not mine. I'm Zulu, but I can speak three other languages, Xhosa, Tshwana, Isiswati and I'm currently learning Venda, which is quite difficult,' he concedes as he chuckles, adding that growing up in Carltonville gave him the advantage of learning languages from those around him.
He was an A-student in high school and was one of the top five students in matric, so his parents thought he would pursue academics, but unbeknownst to them, Athi had a burning desire to act, something that completely through them off.
Read more | 'Never lose yourself in a relationship because of a man' - Zenande Mfenyana on playing Thumeka
'I realised when I was in high school that I was more interested in becoming an actor than pursuing academia, it wasn't something I was into. My parents, on the other hand, expected that for me, especially since I was a good student, but it never happened,' he recalls.
'My parents didn't like it, but they've come around after seeing the strides I've made.'
Being on such a huge show comes with attention, and that's something that Athi doesn't quite enjoy.
'This whole celebrity vibe is not my thing; I don't consider myself a celebrity; I work and then go home. If theatre paid, I would have remained there, but because I want stability, I had no choice but to pursue the TV side of things,' he asserts.
There are challenges in the cutthroat industry he's in, but he's not fazed by them, as his main priority is doing what he loves, which is acting.
'I'm aware of the challenges that we have in the industry, such as finding work. It's not easy to find work in this industry, and that's one of the challenges I've seen, but I'm happy that I'm able to take care of myself, because I'm working. It's difficult to get cast in certain roles, because they usually have a specific look that they want,' he explains.
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Before hitting the big time on Generations: The Legacy, he was into editing, which gave birth to his desire to one day step into the director's chair, something he longs to do soon.
'I want to dabble in directing. I have a passion for it. I sustained myself by doing theatre and editing, which increased my desire to become a director one day, and I'm going to pursue that, as it is something I'm keen on doing,' he concludes.
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Wait, there was a time when Bill Camp, probably the most reliable screen presence around, the working actor's working actor, the anchor of good shows and the elevator of weak ones — there was a time when this guy wasn't acting? Camp graduated from Julliard in 1989 with no real-world experience: the school discouraged students from working while in training. He immediately appeared in two Shakespeare in the Park productions — 'Titus Andronicus' and 'Twelfth Night' — and landed a small film role, in 1990's 'Reversal of Fortune.' Acting wasn't yet a career. It was 'just a thing I was doing,' he says. And that's more or less how it remained throughout the 1990s. He was learning, particularly onstage, but he wasn't progressing to a point where it felt like a career. 'I was going to places and hanging out for six months, doing a couple of plays,' he says. 'Basically, taking everything I could learn from these actors that had done five times as many things as I had.' After a decade of stage work, he followed his then-girlfriend Marvel to Los Angeles, hoping to break into what he calls 'commercial work,' but … 'I couldn't find a foothold there and got very frustrated by the whole deal and stopped.' Hollywood is not Broadway. He didn't know how to audition and get a part. 'I was like f--- this place,' he says. And so he f---ed off from it. And life piled on. He moved back to New York. He worked random, nonacting jobs: landscaper, cook, mechanic, security guard on the graveyard shift. He f---ed back to Los Angeles. He and Marvel broke up. Life rarely plays out the way movies do. Most of us don't get that one phone call that alters the trajectory of our lives. We don't make that one decision that changes everything. But before quitting, Camp had lived a decade of his life embodying people who did have those moments, so perhaps it should come as no surprise that he did receive one of those fork-in-the-road calls. It was from playwright Tony Kushner. 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Camp took things a notch further by putting the panties on his head during the scene, a directive that does not appear in the script — and probably shouldn't appear in this newspaper — to mirror the main female character, who wears a burqa. 'I immediately said, 'Please, can I steal that and put it in the script?'' Kushner says. 'It was like the whole play in a nutshell, and the audience, you could feel, got it. It was so outrageous and kind of gross. The two polar opposites of the way women are treated.' 'That kind of invention from an actor is everything to a writer,' Kushner says. In most professions, doing such a thing might not earn you the label 'true professional' nor would it win you an Obie Award, but in Camp's world, it did. His other collaborators echo Kushner's praise. They call him a 'positive role model' on set (Kelley) and describe him as 'rock solid,' 'a pro,' 'no bulls---.' (Jeff Daniels). 'When the casting director puts out his list, he's probably on it almost every time,' says Kelley, who worked with him on 'Presumed Innocent.' Camp can do drama. He can do comedy. He can be wry or serious, sentimental or cold. 'He's so versatile,' Kelley adds. 'He's like a toy for a writer.' Daniels worked with Camp on 'The Looming Tower,' 'American Rust' and 'A Man in Full.' In these Camp 'played three different people. And they were always fully realized on take one.' Daniels credits this, in part, to Camp's theater background. 'Coming out of the theater, you've got weeks of rehearsal to get ready for an audience,' Daniels says. 'Well, the audience is the camera, and there is no rehearsal.' And Camp is always ready. 'It's as if he goes through six weeks of rehearsal to get to take one on day one, all on his own. Which is what theater people do. We come in ready. Choices have been made.' 'And that's gold.' Gold that almost went undiscovered. Camp first acted in 1973, in a fourth-grade production of the new musical sensation 'Godspell.' Even now, he'll claim he wasn't the best in the room, saying, 'There were some very talented people in my class who could have probably had better careers than myself that went on to do other things, like become a vet or go into finance.' He didn't get the bug. He didn't think about it all that much. 'I had fun,' he says. 'It was a blast. But it was equally as fun as playing baseball or playing soccer or hockey or the other things I did as a young kid.' In high school, he did a couple of plays after breaking his leg and giving hockey a rest. He went to college at the University of Vermont, where it quickly became clear he probably wouldn't graduate. He majored in just about everything for a minute — Environmental studies! Classics! Undeclared! — while working in the theater department as part of his work-study financial aid. He used his carpentry knowledge to become a stagehand, a job that took him to plays and rock shows around the state. He didn't know what he wanted to do with his life, but he knew he liked theater people. 'We're of the same sort of cut,' he remembers thinking. He liked the communal creativity. Then he spent a summer working as a carpenter at a Shakespeare festival and found himself fascinated by the language. He put the pieces together. College wasn't working, and the theater felt like home. At 20, he decided to go for it. 'My parents were happy that I had made a choice,' he says of enrolling in the Juilliard School. 'I was really focused for the first time. I was really sure this was the right thing I was doing.' He graduated in 1989 and quit acting about a dozen years later. After Kushner nudged him back into acting, he finally began getting consistent screen work beyond the occasional 'Law & Order' appearance, and he had to learn that unlike on the stage, 'replication is not necessarily the goal,' he says. 'I felt like I had to be extremely consistent because I didn't want to f--- anything up. I had this understanding like 'This is how they really want it.'' 'I didn't need to be a Swiss watch all the time,' he says. It worked. Since his return to acting in 2004, he's racked up more than nearly 100 roles in TV and film, while continuing stage work. Jobs began dovetailing and overlapping, which puts him at some ease. Having all these various parts and differing roles and types of performances, which he compares to 'the film version of being a theater actor in a company,' is comforting. 'That kind of thing is delicious to me, as an actor,' he says, as he finishes a sandwich in Central Park and returns to the present. He has to get home soon to feed his dogs: A French bulldog named Butters after the 'South Park' character and a dachshund-miniature pinscher mix named Houdini. 'There were days I'd be doing 'Sirens,' and then I'd wrap and get into the car and drive to shoot the next morning as J.P. Morgan' in 'The Gilded Age.' 'I love it. I think it's great,' he says. 'And if I wasn't a character actor I wouldn't be able to do that sort of thing.' 'And if it stops tomorrow,' he adds, 'I'll be fine.'

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