Nina Lucy Wylde on her role as Margaret Harding.
You travelled from England to play this part of an Englishwoman who comes to South Africa in 1913. How long have you been performing in England? Initially I grew up in Pretoria, then Johannesburg, and then I spent a small part of my life in Cumbria in the English Lake District. As a teen I spent year at Rugby School in Warwickshire, but I went to Breschia House for high school in Johannesburg, in Bryanston.
You see, my father was in education. He was a headmaster and president of the International Confederation of Principals, and he sits on the executive of the IEB. My mother is a freelance theatre director and screenwriter. She went back and got her MA at Wits in Drama. Both my parents were born in the UK but they are very much South Africans.
I spent a gap year working at the BBC but decided to come back to South Africa and studied drama at Rhodes, and my parents were by then in Grahamstown, at St Andrews School, and then went back to London to study at the Central School of Speech and Drama. So I have really quite a split life between South Africa and the UK.
So how do you identify - as a South African? It is difficult. I think my outlook on the world is European, but my soul completely belongs to this country. My understanding of humanity is tied so closely to South Africa - in being grateful for the little things, a roof over my head, to wake up and be breathing, to be pleased by fresh water and sunny skies. There is space time and silence to exist in, in this country.
And I think the quality of your existence is better here. In England it's efficient, you can do everything, it all works, it's all at your fingertips, but it's so overcrowded there. I would never able to be say "This space belongs to me."
Also in England it is now a very fractured society - the only identity that is British is snobbery: you are either upper class or yob football-supporting, those are the only two stereotyped identities, other than that it's a crucible of many cultures. In South Africa we all share something. England doesn't have that any more.
In acting, so much has to do with how you speak, so what accent do you cultivate? My accent has to be neutral British in London for auditions, but when I come home, back here and see my parents, if I stay for a fair amount of time my British accent will slip away. Especially when I talk to people, like when I hear a very Afrikaans voice I find myself mimicking that South African voice.
What kind of theatre work have you done in the past? In England I did a production of Chekhov's The Seagull and I played Nina, at the Oxford Theatre. I played Lady Macbeth in a Tomahawk Productions piece, also in Oxford. I worked quite a lot in Oxford after I first left college. Then I did Hendrik Ibsen's Little Eyolf and I played Rita.
I have also done a touring pantomime so now I've done that and got it out of my system, it was good fun and we toured all around. Back in South Africa I did a theatre production here when I finished university.
What South African theatre work have you done? I trained with Andrew Buckland and I find that sometimes the approach to a role has to be in the body, and then it will come out in the expression of the voice and sound. It needs to be in the bloodstream, not just in the head.
I was one of the founding members of Ubom, an Eastern Cape theatre company, with Andrew and Janet Buckland. I also worked for the First Physical Theatre Company, on the premier of Reza de Wet's On the Lake.
Have you done much TV in England? I did Eddie Jordan's Bad Boy Races, about a Formula One guy, and I played a cameo role as his sexy female chauffeur. That was on Channel 5.
I also acted on Channel 4 in Embarrassing Illnesses, as a patient with a hairy chest! I've also done a whole stash of independent film - in The Reunion I played Sara Green for Londonwood Productions, which will be going to London festivals.
I worked for a company that does graphic and computer animation for Ridley Scott's production company. They into alternative reality games, and I played a news anchor in their game called Perplex City, for release on the internet. The film industry in London is big but small - I've done a huge amount of indie film.
What drew you to this project enough to entice you back to South Africa from England? Well, firstly it's period drama, which I love. The character is fantastic, the way Margaret has been written. I haven't worked in South Africa since 2001, no one's seen me here.
My partner is also South African, so to pass up the opportunity to come back, when I loved the script and the character - just on the basis that it was less money than I could get in the UK - I couldn't do that. Because the opportunity to work in this market doesn't come that often. I was thrilled to come back home. It was one of the most relaxed, friendly sets I've ever been on and there was such a lovely team.
There are two lines in the screenplay I just loved: "I finally found a reason for living!" and "She felt the future in her bones!" This incredible woman who comes to this strange place - the Karoo - is totally progressive and says "I will stay standing for that".
I love that Meg (the director who adapted the screenplay from the novel, Margaret Harding by Perceval Gibbon) took the spirit from the book and made it even more so for the screenplay. So it was this woman who says: "This is what I believe in and I'm not going to back down!"
And then the idea of finding something so wonderful that gives you a reason for living, that appealed to me. Because I think human stories are about that. I think a lot of the world's problems are because people don't find a reason for living. So those were my two main reasons for being drawn to Land of Thirst.
Do you think that international viewers will be drawn to Land Of Thirst? What would resonate with them? The fact that it's about what their empire was doing when it started to fall apart. Queen Victoria has died, by 1913 things were really looking a bit shaky on the ground and if you take 1910-20, that was a decade of disaster, and I think what will resonate with the English, and overseas viewers in general.
There is also that negative dynamic that is explored: we expel people who are ill, we don't accept people who are different. They still do that, if you didn't go to the right school in England, the class system still is rampant. After I read the screenplay of Land of Thirst I sent it to British friends of mine and their response was "What a beautiful story, it's a love story that has all these international issues: race, illness, time aspects - but it's still a love story."
There is the fact that racism rears its ugly head to mar the love story. How do you think that your character Margaret, transcends the racism of the time? Firstly, the surprise of how Khanyiso greets Margaret. Immediately she sees her own level of intelligence and society within him. Then because she recognises the aspects of his soul, the person not immediately accepted by society, so she is able to see past the colour. She sees he's well dressed, that he's gorgeous and then she is able to go past the colour to identify the aspects of him that relate to aspects of her.
How did you audition for the role, being in England during the casting? I was able to film an audition scene and put it online and I also sent DVD copies. So the director, and you as producer, and Anne Davis as SABC Commissioning Editor, were all able to watch it immediately. It was exciting all round the globe.
The first episode of my net drama was on YouTube, so I let you all know in South Africa that you could go to this link and could watch this short 4 minute video. It showed my face in action and my British voice. You see, I had read the screenplay that was sent to me on email - and then ordered the book on Amazon. It came 36 hours later.
You were able to access this historical South African novel so quickly, even though it is out of print? Yes, you can order books second hand and they can deliver straight away. The following day I got a copy in the post! So I immediately read the book and two things came out: one, I liked that Meg had stretched Margaret's strength in the screenplay. She had taken the spirit of one so strong and made it more so. And secondly, I liked that the book gave me the massive background on Margaret Harding, these tiny details. So I get her now, I see her. I do see that she is ill, she is dying. I knew that make-up was not supposed to make me look beautiful but they needed to put those sunken eyes in.
How did you feel playing the person who is not healthy, not full of life (since Margaret is ill with TB)? I felt very happy about it because it was a completely different challenge. I had to continuously remember that my character is ill, even the love scenes. She is in love with Khanyiso, but she is dying. That comes first - so the power of the story is in those moments when she forgets that she's ill.
She has what was considered a fatal illness then - like how many people live with HIV now (when they do not have access to Anti-Retrovirals, ARVs) - you have this illness, but you are surviving with it.
Have you thought about the parallels between TB then and HIV/Aids now? Yes, absolutely. The number one example is the kissing, of wanting to engage with someone intimately, but registering that she shouldn't because of the illness. But that it's okay to do that - you can be in love with a person who is HIV positive and spend intimate moments with that person. They don't have to be bodily juice-exchanging moments, there are many ways of being intimate.
But I think it's interesting: you are sent to a sanatorium as an ill person who must go away from society. In England they were saying to Margaret, "We don't want you in our coffee houses because you are ill". It is like the stigma of AIDS, you can't be a full part of society because you have this thing - which of course is all rubbish.
Have you read Edwin Cameron's book, Witness To Aids? I read it when it first came out and he came to visit in the UK. The parallel with Margaret is that he continues to stand up and he remains standing. He says, "I'm going to be honest, I'm going to stay standing here, with this stigma, and face you with it." I think it's marvellous, utterly phenomenal.
When I think about Margaret Harding, the way I imagine her, she is glued to the ground in a strong wind and she refuses to be blown over. That's the image that I have of her. So back to the sensation of what's in the blood, back, to my Buckland training from Rhodes, the fight is that she wants a reason to stay standing, and she finds that reason in Khanyiso.
Is there anything about you that is like Margaret? I'm very opinionated, like her and I do speak my mind. I don't suffer fools and neither does she. That scene with Ford (the consumptive character whose love for Margaret is unrequited), where she turns on Ford - she doesn't apologise but she says "You need to understand why I've said what I said."
I think that relationship with Ford is lovely. There is huge comfort in seeing a love that someone is willing to make a sacrifice for, but also huge pity because it's unrequited.
What was it like first meeting your co-star, Hlomla Dandala? Phenomenal - he's great because both of us wanted to enjoy ourselves but also wanted to work really hard, and both of us were not willing to sacrifice quality.
Why do you feel that Margaret in the drama, is attracted to Khanyiso - given the big racial divide in 1913 South Africa? I think there was the factor of both of them being orphaned, they were both looked after, she by an uncle, he by a guardian in England and they are both technically strangers in the Karoo. So they come from this same place, this same guardianship, and their views, attitude and ways were not accepted by their societies. So the two of them have more in common than their differences.
So the only real differences are that black/white factor. But in the end they share more similarities than differences. They share the suffering of having parents taken away from them. Margaret has suffered in losing her child due to her TB.
What was it like working with other South African actors after your time away? It was 2003 when I last performed in South Africa, before now doing Land of Thirst. I'd heard of Hlomla and Ian. I knew them straight away, but meeting them, it was so lovely.
Working in the British industry you find that quite a lot of the actors in London are not actually British. You arrive at a casting and realise that the actors are Polish or something! So what's been nice is that you can be immediately open, honest and relaxed and be yourself here because South Africans are what they are, you don't put up facades - while London is full of people pretending to be what they're not.
When I go into a casting in London I have to present as British, I can't say I'm South African or they might have an issue, and it's not worth it. Because in England, if you come from a certain part of England you have to have a neutral London British accent or you'll always get typecast according to the region. It's hardcore in London, there's so much competition.
So unlike over there, there's a very strong sense here in South Africa of: "You are what you are". Which is what Ian (Roberts) is - he is so completely himself and he does not compromise himself. I got a bit starstruck acting opposite him. But all of the cast have been like that.
The character of Mrs. Hester Jake, played by Terry Norton- is she Margaret's nemesis? I though that when I read the book. There is this massive sacrifice that she makes for her husband and their relationship. She stays awake to drag him into bed, she gets up early, she spends the whole day stoically, she makes polite conversation, then in the evening she spends half the night getting him to bed (due to his alcoholism). Her sacrifice is mind-blowing.
I don't know if human beings do that any more. But at the same time the sacrifice becomes so much part of her that she becomes slightly dehumanised. She did love her husband but the sacrifice becomes duty.
How was it acting against Terry Norton? She was completely supportive. The whole cast was all lovely to work with. Terry was great with the idea of the soulfulness of the moment - what is it that, as two women, we are doing in this moment? So we share that.
You also had a lot of scenes with a young actor who had never acted for TV before, who was "discovered" in the casting of Land Of Thirst, Jacques Strydom? Yes, he is such an ingénue, and what's amazing about him is that he hasn't even begun to recognise his own ability yet. He has a beautiful, gentle soulfulness in those eyes, and a kind of longing that is in the character of Paul. But as an actor he hasn't begun to recognise his ability - which makes him humble. Humility and vulnerability are two most crucial aspects actor can have.
Have you seen much of current South African drama in the UK: Films, TV, Theatre? Because Tsotsi got nationwide release in the UK I was able to see it easily and I went to watch it with my partner (who is also a South African) and we were so homesick by the end of the film, even though it is about a hijacker who kidnaps a baby, it is also about a person who has been dehumanised and rediscovers his own humanity.
So I had been interested to come back here, and excited to hear the film industry is developing. And glad that there is a film version of this drama (in addition to the TV mini-series).