“Uzalo” has been part of South African living rooms since February 2015, when SABC 1 introduced the KwaZulu-Natal drama as a new addition to its prime-time lineup.
Produced by “Stained Glass Pictures”, the show is set in KwaMashu and centred on two family dynasties, the Mdletshes and the Xulus, whose fortunes have been tangled together for years.
Since then, new storylines and characters have been introduced and the show has reportedly grown into one of the most watched programmes on South African television, at one point pulling in over 10 million viewers.
It is within that world that actor and radio presenter Khaya Dladla built the character of “GC”, a role that he’s since been best known for.
He shared how the actual role started as almost nothing, and how his role grew into a regular fixture on the show.
At a sit-down at “AMPD Studios”, Dladla walked through how that happened, and used his own path onto “Uzalo” to hand out some hard-earned lessons to everyone in the room.
According to him, he had been hired to sing, booked as a choir member for the production, not as an actor.
However his determination had him turning up with scripts anyway, on the chance something more would open up.
His instinct paid off on the day the production ran out of audition forms. Staff had stopped handing them out, he said. And without one, people were being turned away. In his own account, Dladla wasn’t willing to be one of them.
“I will even audition for these producers by their cars. I’m not moving,” he remembered saying. He stayed until the last group was called in, then walked in with them.
Everyone else had a form to hand over while he didn’t. When they asked him where his was, he said the lady at the door never gave him one, and that he still wanted his shot.
“I’m ready. I know the lines. I can get on to it,” he told them. They let him try. He delivered his lines, and the audition landed well enough that someone told him to get his details down.
He didn’t let the moment pass without saying something to the lady who refused to hand him forms. In front of the producers, he made clear what had almost happened to him.
“Sisi, don’t ever again do what you did, because you don't know what it took for me to get here. And what if I’m going to work with you soon? Don’t be like that,” he told the story.
The call came after that, offering him a part with two or three lines across three episodes. It wasn’t much, so he decided to make those few words count.
“The line is so short, and I had to make it very long, for it to be remembered, you know what I mean?” he said.
When he was told the camera was on him, he treated it as the moment he’d been working toward, and pushed the performance as far as it would go.
Dladla shared that by the time the scene ended, the crew was on its feet applauding when the director called cut, a reaction that told him something he hadn’t fully clocked before.
“I realised that I’m good at it,” he said.
Just as quickly, the work seemed to dry up. He was told there were no more lines written for his character, and he thanked the production, expecting that to be the end of it.
Before he left, he asked one more question: if he came back, would he actually get to speak? He was told yes. What nobody told him at first was what the character even was.
GC, it turned out, stood for “gay character”. That was the entire description with no name or history built around it yet on the show. Dladla said filling that gap became the job.
“That’s when I had to now create an entire storyline, to create the GC, gave the character a whole body that did not exist,” he said.
That experience now shapes how he treats other actors when he’s the one sitting behind the casting table. He said the nerves someone walks in with aren’t something to dismiss.
“Those butterflies, I need you to use them correctly for your performance,” he said. When a room feels like it’s already written you off, he said the first thing to do is figure out whether you’re actually losing anything by staying, or whether you’d be better off trying somewhere else.
In sharing his story, Dladla did not sugarcoat how fast casting rooms move, or how cold the exit usually is. A quick line to camera, your name and surname, a “thank you”, and a “we’ll call you” that mostly never comes.
“When you leave the room not feeling like you got the job, it’s unfair,” he said. He placed part of that on the people running the room, saying they carry a responsibility not to make someone feel small as they leave. However he was equally clear that the last word belongs to the person walking out of it.
“It’s also your responsibility that whoever tries to make you feel little does not win,” he said.
nomathamsanqa.sithathu@nationalmg.co.za