Fame came to Bonnie Mbuli while she was still in school, standing at a bus-stop, waiting for a bus.
A TV casting agent saw she had what it takes, and as it turned out, she was right. From her smouldering roles in series such as Home Affairs and Gaz’lam, Bonnie graduated to big Hollywood productions, including Catch a Fire, with Tim Robbins, and Clint Eastwood’s World Cup Rugby epic, Invictus.
Then she went out to find her fame and fortune. In real life, it’s never as easy as it in the movies, and her journey has led her from bright lights to dashed dreams to divorce and the darkness of clinical depression. But she is a survivor too, resilient and determined, a blazing star about to embark on the third act of her remarkable story. She tells all to Ruda Landman.
Transcript:
R: Hello, and welcome to another session of the Change Exchange. And today our guest is Bonnie Mbuli – I’m so glad to meet you and to have you here.
B: Thank you for having me – I’m really honoured to be here today.
R: Bonnie, we talk Change Moments on this forum. You were 13 when your life changed dramatically. What happened?
B: I was at a bus stop coming home from school – there was a whole bunch of us. We always caught the same bus there every day, the number 74. It was around 2:30 in the afternoon …
R: Johannesburg?
B: Johannesburg, Greenside. I went to Greenside High School – I always tried to be very inconspicuous at school. I didn’t like standing out, I always kind of just … always move to the back or just found a way to hide. And this particular day an agent stopped her … I didn’t know she was an agent, but she was this eccentric woman with fiery red hair and she walked out of the car and handed out these pamphlets. And on them it said: “Do you want to be a TV star?” And of course I thought: “No, I don’t want to be a TV star. How stupid!” I put it in my pocket and just watched all the kids get excited: “I’m gonna go – it’s so exciting!” There were maybe about 15 of us at the bus stop. And she got into her car and she drove off and she suddenly stopped, she reversed, made a beeline for me. And she said to me: “I really want you to come and see me. I think that you’d look absolutely incredible on-screen. And the first thing I thought was: “Too much attention! Too much attention!” And she got back into her car and she left, and of course everyone started asking me what she said, what’s going on. May I tell you why I went to see her? It’s because that moment stood out so much for me, where somebody had seen something in me without me doing anything to attract it or to go on that kind of affirmation … I was just standing there, really. Doing nothing. And it just sparked my curiosity. I wanted to find out what she actually had seen and I wanted more of that affirmation.
R: And when you were in front of the cameras for the first time? Did it come naturally?
B: Something lit up inside of me. It was like I had another world inside of me, and suddenly I just was able to communicate it to a camera. And I found comfort in knowing that there was nobody else but me and this machine. And I knew it couldn’t talk back and it couldn’t judge me. And I just came alive, I really did. Even to this day, my persona on camera is very different to my persona off camera.
R: But since then, you’ve worked on – and I made a list: Backstage, Home Affairs, Gaz’lam, Rhythm City, Soul City, Traffic, Rockville … What is the key to being cast again and again?
B: Again and again … Wow. You know, for me, when I started out in this industry, everyone kept telling me that you always need something to fall back on. That it wasn’t a career that you could have for a lifetime. And I always had, in the back of my mind, a quest to defy that. And I thought to myself there’s got to be a way, because otherwise then it’s not a career, is it? And it’s not something that you can get really good at and, and why is anyone doing it if you can’t have it forever? And I thought to myself well why does it bring me so much satisfaction if I can’t have it forever, and what else am I going to do? And I thought about other things that I could do that I could enjoy doing, and I always found that it’s always still in the same field, in the same industry, in the same world. And then I decided well, I think what was best was to develop myself outside of just being an actress or a TV presenter, and I found that the more I focused on developing myself in other ways I grew as an actor and I grew as a presenter and I grew as a writer.
R: What do you mean in other ways?
B: As in just self-development, constant stretching yourself, challenging yourself to learn new things, whether it’s a new language or whether it’s learning a new skill or just living. Just making sure you’re living and not existing in your job all the time. And I just found that there was just such a big world even in what I was doing, that there was always something new to discover. So I think the trick has been for me not to focus on one thing, but to constantly keep myself excited about what I do. And also just understanding that it’s something … it’s a legacy I want to leave. Something … I want my work to live beyond the fame. Beyond the relevance. Beyond when everyone is not talking about me anymore, or I’m not on the front page of a newspaper. I want to be able to look back and say: “This is how I made a difference in people’s lives, this is how my children will remember me – as a person who stood for a certain value and that value has changed people around me’s lives in a positive way. Very big on giving back as well. I do spend a lot of my time just giving back in any way that I can. And I find that it just keeps me excited about what I do, and I think if I walk into a casting or an audition, and that excitement is immediately infectious or it’s just in the atmosphere … there’s something that gets people that are working on the other side of the camera excited about working with me, finding more about me.
R: And it keeps you three-dimensional? You don’t come just as a cardboard character?
B: Yeah, so that’s what I find.
R: And you’ve also worked in film? Invictus? Drum? What’s the other one … Catch a Fire? How was it different?
B: Well, film is far more expansive, I find, than television. I mean, television is always kind of about hitting your mark at a certain point and making sure you don’t step too far to the left because then you’re out of frame. Making sure you’re not casting a shadow on your co-actor. It can tend to be almost robotic.
R: Mechanical?
B: Yeah. That’s the word. And I find, film, there’s so much more time allowed to explore emotions … It’s not a rush to fit into 30 episodes because a lot of the film is made in the editing process. So there’s so much more time given to what could become, there’s always a possibility that we could discover on set of what a scene could become.
R: And working with international stars and people who experience and live in a much bigger world? Matt Damon, Morgan Freeman, Clint Eastwood?
B: That’s … I mean, I started working with international stars from a very young age. I remember shooting a film called “Born Free II” when I was 13, and it starred all the gang from Jurassic Park – and remember Jurassic Park was huge then and everyone was talking about these young kids. And I remember being around them and just really getting over the idea of people being larger than life and larger than … I mean, we were all kids and they were quite bratty. And I think I just got over that and I realised they were just human, and they were going to behave like humans, and we were all there to contribute in a meaningful way to a bigger story and I needed to just participate in the greatest confidence that I could have.
R: And I’m sure that’s also when you, yourself became a known face. It must also have played into that? “Let me not take myself so seriously, I know people who are international stars.”
B: Exactly! So by the time, I mean, I met the Morgan Freemans and the Clint Eastwoods, and the Taye Diggs -, Philip Noyce or Tim Robbins … I always just … my first approach was always: “You’re here to bring very important and amazing work – I’ve seen your work and I honour that.” Versus being fixated on a persona of a person, because that would really destabilise me as a performer and I wouldn’t be able to match and deliver what needs to be delivered in a scene.
R: And TV presentation? Working as a presenter? How do you enjoy that?
B: I love presenting because I actually finally get to be myself. I spent so many years not playing myself on screen and highlighting aspects of other people’s stories, other people’s characters, and with finally with presenting there’s a settling and a relaxing that happens because I’m just being myself and I’m saying the things that I would normally say in a conversation, although there is kind of a heightened personality that you need to bring to presenting … You have to sound a little bit more exciting that you usually are, a little bit more fun, a little bit more charismatic. And sometimes Berocca helps me with that, but it’s a space I really enjoy and I mostly enjoy it because I get to meet so many different people. And I ask them a wide variety of questions – interviewing is my favourite thing to do. And just bringing people out or creating an atmosphere where people feel like they’re safe and they can just pour out their hearts. I really enjoy that.
R: Ja, that for me is also the key to an interview, to make the other people feel safe and create a space where it can happen.
B: I totally agree.
R: And you wrote a memoir? Eye-bags and …
B: Dimples.
R: And Dimples. Quite exposing. Why did you decide to do that and how did you experience it?
B: When I initially started writing, I hadn’t decided to write a book.
R: You just wanted to get it out there?
B: I needed to get something out of me. I just had this gunk, of just this dark mass of pain in the middle of my soul that I didn’t know what to do with. And I’ve always written from a young age and I always had found writing very therapeutic and very freeing and it was just a place that when I was in I could just really interrogate my emotions and what was going on in my head without judging it – I’d take on the role of the writer and not the role of Bonnie. And I become more of a witness. A silent witness. And more awareness comes into my space in that way, but what happened was that I was now struggling with depression, and I was diagnosed with clinical depression and I kind of just needed to understand when it had all happened, how, and why. So I am a very analytical thinker, so I thought well, the best thing to do is to maybe just order my … the events of my life chronologically. Order my thinking around it and what kind of thought patterns developed when, and so I just decided to just write everything that I remember happening, how it made me feel and how it had changed me afterwards. And then …
R: And it was a rough time?
B: It was rough. It was … the burdens of childhood. I had to grow up really. I had to be responsible for a lot more than I knew how to be responsible for. And then it was met by this other persona of being this … on television and suddenly this thrust into the spotlight, and yet I felt like I had this mess inside that I had to keep protecting, and maintaining this outer persona that’s quite perfect. And it kind of made me a very rebellious celebrity, or anti-celebrity to kind of coup on the whole idea of being famous and being well-liked, which wasn’t what I wanted, ideally, but I just kept having this foreboding sense of being found out.
R: And then you actually found yourself out?
B: I found myself out.
R: And then put it out there?
B: Ja.
R: And what was that experience like?
B: It was so cathartic. It was so empowering, because I was finally owning the finding out, and I knew that if I put it out there, nobody was going to come back and point a finger at me or judge me. I decided to be in charge of that whole process. And so, the more I wrote, the more I realised that the stuff that happened to be had really, really affected my personality and still was, and had affected ways of thinking and ways of operating and I had become quite self-sabotaging in many ways. And I just felt … I was so struck by the loneliness of it for so long … And I just wanted to say to people that if you’re going through this, don’t let it take as long as it took me to find out. Don’t endure the loneliness. You can get help, and if you speak up, there’s help available and it will come really quickly. So I was willing to put myself out there and be the sacrificial lamb. And I say sacrificial because there is a sense of privacy that I think I lost forever from exposing myself in that way.
R: You married Sisanda Henna, and then you went to America together? Why did you go; why did you come back?
B: The whole Hollywood dream is always kind of the Holy Grail for any actor or performer …
R: And this was?
B: After Catch a Fire, which thrust me into the international acting world in a big way, and it was met with great critical acclaim, my performance. In 2005 I was listed as the top performance of the year by the New York Times. And there was media interest from all over the world and I was just doing one interview after the other and hey, a star is born. It was reminiscent of the time when Nicole Kidman was discovered – it was quite giddy, you know. And I then got an agent in LA – I spent about three months in LA doing press junkets and travelling to film festivals and LA was the base. And I found an agent and manager. And they convinced me, saying: “Look, you can’t launch this career from little South Africa. You’ve got to come to this platform, which is what everybody does from anywhere in the world. So come!” And I thought: “Oh, I’ve got nothing to lose.” I didn’t have kids then, and I was newly married and I couldn’t lay to rest the idea that wouldn’t have pursued the shiny thing that was screaming at me.
R: You had to try.
B: I had to try, right? So I tried, not so … It wasn’t so well planned. It was quite, in many ways, reckless, which brought an excitement about it that I’ll never really forget. And I moved to LA with five hundred dollars with my husband at the time. And we just … we roughed it. Needless to say our timing was awful, because we arrived a day after the Hollywood strike had begun – the writers’ strike, which was going to last for another seven months. Nothing was going on, but it did give me an opportunity to meet a lot of casting directors and producers, everyone who had downtime now because the writers were striking. I’d drive to all the studios and see them picketing outside the studios and I had many conversations that later on became quite pertinent in be being sent scripts and me being headhunted for roles and I still do, which was really incredible.
R: And the decision to come back? [16:33]
B: After like seven months of like really just slogging it and hustling at not giving way because it was just the wrong time in Hollywood, and then us not being able to get work permits and work visas because you can only just stay for six months at a time, no matter how long your visa is. And we both had ten-year visas, but we had to exit and re-enter the country every six months, so …
R: Which cost money, of course. And of course the writers’ strike was full steam ahead and I left. And by the time I left I was depressed. Disillusioned. Disappointed. And tired. And hurt. And I just came back to South Africa licking my wounds.
R: And what happened when you arrived here? Were there new opportunities?
B: I then was just plunged into this like abyss of depression. And dealing with that. And I think what had happened is … when I got to LA, I was so exposed and I didn’t have my usual crutches and usual things to fall back on, that it kind of exposed things that were happening in a deeper level. Issues that I maybe evaded or ran away from for a very long time. So now it was time to actually deal with what happened, exposed or unpacked. And that’s when I started writing a book. I went on to meds and I started writing.
R: And you were healed in the process?
B: I got healed, and I found the power within myself to heal myself. That was really, really liberating.
R: You were quite open about the struggles during the marriage, and then the divorce. How did you get through that? Because it’s sore, it’s deeply painful?
B: It is very painful. I went through years of a very radical, also intense relationship with the church, where at one stage we were training to be ministers.
R: Both of you?
B: Ja. I nearly became a fulltime minister. So, you know, it was this … we had this marriage that was very entrenched in a system that was very big on maintaining those kind of … well I don’t know … maybe just put itself as a custodian of marriage. So it felt like, with a marriage that was breaking down, I couldn’t pull out of that marriage without pulling out of this greater system, which is really hard. It was a hard thing to come to terms with, and it just felt like a huge unplugging when everything fell apart. But we’ve always … I mean, we have two children together and we have always lived our lives in a very … We were friends. We were always friends more than anything. And so even when everything was breaking down, we were ever so careful to just protect each other’s hearts and to remember that we were going to be raising those kids for the rest of our lives and we just never at any point wanted to look back and find that we just behaved in a way that we couldn’t account for later. Where you couldn’t just say: “I was drunk that night and I was too angry that night and you made me so mad.”
R: “I’m not taking responsibility, it’s your fault.”
B: Funny, all the lessons that we learned within the marriage were now actually playing themselves out in our breaking up, because we were just really kind to each other and still are. And very careful to protect our children. One of the quotes that I read in a book about separation, divorce and all that stuff when it was happening, it said … I don’t remember who said it, but they said: “When the elephants fight, it’s the grass that gets trampled.” And it just completely turned my perception of what was happening. It brought me to a different vantage point, where for me it just became about protecting the grass, protecting the children and understanding that. I mean, whether it be selfish or not, or for whatever reasons we were breaking up for, nobody else had to pay for it.
R: It was your decision.
B: Ja, and having said that, it doesn’t mean it was easy, a walk in a park. It just means that we just navigated it mindfully.
R: How do you handle the parenting from Johannesburg, where Sisanda lives, and you in Cape Town?
B: One does a lot of travelling. A lot of Facetime-ing. A lot of bedtime stories read on Facetime. For all our technological advancements in the world, one of the things that I’m grateful for about that is that it can bring people closer. Sisanda’s a great father. He’s got so much to share with his children and they make so many beautiful memories. I mean, every holiday is this big adventure where they trek off into the woods … He’s quite the jock … and they’re just happy to go. They all have little sleeping bags and put up the tents together. I mean, I get sent pictures from their holiday and I’m like: “Wow! How amazing!” I didn’t even have a childhood close to that, and neither did he. So in the end we just … I think we became better parents.
R: And your relationship with your mother? Did that change once you had children?
B: Definitely. I mean, I just … I think one of the notions that got shattered through my experience of just looking back on my childhood and becoming a mother was just that thing that happens where mommy comes off the pedestal and it’s no longer just mommy, because there’s this … all these ideas and associations that we make with someone being a mother. You just ideally expect them to be superhuman. And then when they suddenly stop just being mommy and have a name, and their name is Bonnie Mbuli or Lizzie Mbuli, you realise they also had this whole life of being human. Things happen to them and they met people and they got hurt and they lived a whole life and that, in your consideration of how you were parented, you have to take that into account.
R: And you suddenly can.
B: I suddenly, ja. Because I needed the same compassion now, because I was a mother and feeling like: “Oh my gosh, and I even going to survive this!?” And understanding that I wanted to be accepted for who I was, as much as I was daily attempting to be a better mother in any way that I could. But I wanted to constantly be …
R: Recognised as a person as well?
B: As a person as well. So I did that eventually with my mother and it just healed and fixed so many things.
R: And the move to Cape Town? It’s a huge, major change?
B: It is a major change.
R: You’re a Jo’burg girl.
B: I always loved Cape Town. I love the sea, I love the mountain, I love just the whimsical nature of Cape Town. I have never felt I belong in Jo’burg. My whole life I lived in Jo’burg feeling like there’s got to be something else. There’s got to be a different place. I couldn’t really withstand the constant push that needs to happen in Jo’burg. It’s very electrifying, and it can get you really working hard …
R: But it’s also exhausting.
B: But it’s also exhausting. And you can’t really tell when you’re way ahead of yourself. It takes a big bang or you getting really ill or something really negative happening to shift your focus all the time.
R: So what was that shift for you?
B: I guess perhaps for me it was … Because what happened is when we returned from LA, I moved to Cape Town and lived in Cape Town for four years. And we moved back to Jo’burg for a year – that’s when my marriage fell apart. And then I moved back to Cape Town, again, because I felt like that was the last place that I felt sane, normal, happy.
R: What is it in Cape Town? If you say Cape Town – what is the picture?
B: It’s a feeling of peace. It’s a feeling of space. I also just love that things are in closer proximity, so I spend less time driving.
R: And the pace is really slightly slower.
B: It is slightly slower and some people are energised by that, versus, some people are energised by a faster pace. I feel like when things are still, and quiet, I get a lot more done. But when there’s noise and pressure and push to go, go, go, go – I get far less done because I spend so much time worrying and being in angst about what I need to do and never actually getting to do it.
R: Lying awake because you’re lying awake?
B: Ja, exactly.
R: So what are you … you’re working on another book?
B: I am working on another book. You know, one of the most encouraging things that happened after I published the memoir, Eye-bags and Dimples – it went on to become a best seller. It’s on the top 10 list of most stolen books in South Africa – I don’t know if it’s comforting or not … A bit depressing, but also just I’m glad people are reading, because I’m one of those writers who are … I’m about … Every book I write, I want to make sure that there’s at least 20 more people who are now reading who never read before. That’s always what’s at the back of my mind when I write. And so, I don’t mind. I guess that people are stealing the book, people are tearing pages out of the book. But what happened is I … Zakes Mda, growing up, I always read Zakes Mda and I always just thought: “What a phenomenal writer – how does he write like that?” And he picked up my book and read it and he sent me a message on Twitter, he said to me: “Hello my child, I’ve just read your book and it’s amazing. You’re such a talent. Your ability to delve into your characters’ psychological landscape is really, really remarkable and you’ll bed yourself a good fiction writer.” And I thought: “Okay, that’s all I needed!”
R: What a fantastic … I mean, talk about affirmation!
B: Yes! And I just thought, this doesn’t happen every day. I grew up saying I want to one day perhaps, maybe, write like Zakes Mda. And that affirmation was just too big to ignore.
R: So you’re doing it?
B: I’m doing it.
R: Fantastic.
B: Fiction is definitely harder, because truth is stranger than fiction if nothing is more exciting than the truth. Can you imagine? It could be quite impressive, but the truth will shock you. So it’s hard to sit down and imagine your riveting, gripping story.
R: Which is not too far-fetched?
B: Ja, exactly.
R: So tell me about your home in Cape Town. What made you choose it?
B: I’m such a nomad as well, so I’m always moving. Always moving around Cape Town.
R: How do the kids react to that?
B: They don’t react too well to it. My son said to me the other day: “No more changes! No more changing! Everything that we have now, stays the same!” And I said: “Okay, I heard you.” And I mean, I was already feeling like: “Uuuurgh! You’re just putting too much …” And I guess it’s little things, like: “I need us to have a bigger garden so we can get a dog.” Or: “No, we need a …” I mean, it was all in light of what they need and what would be better for them, but we’re really happy where we are. We live in a house in Mowbray and it’s got a garden and we have a puppy … We went to the SPCA the other day to get a rescue and interview the dogs. And then I, you know, I think what I love about Cape Town as well is just a sense of a different quality of life. In the mornings I run my son to school while he rides his bike. Versus getting stuck in traffic for about forty minutes. So those are the things that I really value about …
R: Not all Capetonians can do that, but you’re very lucky.
B: Yes, I am very blessed.
R: Is there something that you’ve taken with you on your roaming? Is there an ornament or a cushion or a something?
B: I always take my books. I’m very precious about my books.
R: And do you unpack them? They don’t live in boxes?
B: Never! I love re-reading books as well, and I love rediscovering books. So my books go everywhere with me. And I think it’s little things that I’m attached to, and it’s mostly things that I was given to by friends. Gifts. I’m a very big gift person. I read the book Love Languages, and one of my Love Languages is gifts. So I really, really value gifts that people have given me.
R: Well, we look forward to your novel.
B: Yes!
R: And we’ll try to buy it and not to steal it.
B: Ja, you’re not allowed to steal it. I don’t have a working title yet, but I’m really excited about what’s going to come out of it.
R: Good luck.
B: Thank you. Thank you so much.
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