Montana actress
Chantal Stanfield writes a special guest column for us about her experiences on the show. Chantal plays rich-witch Dalene Phillips, who uses her cash to promote her dubious, often sex-andalous agendas. Here's Part 8 of her column: The Wicked Witch of Montana ...
Did you see him? Did you see Bruce Hall? Would you be able to resist that face?
Now you understand why I was gushing about Clyde (he’s such a dish), how much Dalene loves men and power (that combo is really her Kryptonite, isn’t it) and you have just a slight indication of how powerful Charles Johnson really is (VERY).
Who would’ve thought that old Chalky MacWhitebread had it in him to take Dalene’s slight so personally and play the game so hard that the man went and trashed her salon?!
He then rubbed it in further by coming to the salon telling her it’s only over when HE says it is.
And he followed it up - which will surely catch Dalene completely off-guard in the weeks to come as he tightens the screws - with luring her into a virtual honeytrap with Bruce ‘Boggo’ Hall playing his willing puppet. Talk about taking rejection badly!
But soon, Charles is going to push Dalene on a more personal front and, surprisingly, she actually comes to her family’s defence. Despite all her shortcomings, she makes a play to defend her true loved ones with all the chutzpah she can muster and attempts to scare him off.
Dalene, in the meantime, with the appearance of that dashing businessman, has all but forgotten about Charles in her pursuit of riches once more and she’s roped poor Victor into the business deal at his refrigeration warehouse.
As if her brother won’t have enough to worry about, he’s going to be caught in the middle of a really nasty and very sticky situation.
There’s a crazy twist that sows it’s seeds this week - remember that Yvonne and Skillie are still looking for the murderer of that twenty-year-old corpse and their investigation comes right back to Sis Nothemba. Trust - you ain’t gonna see this coming!
Also this week Nolitha, Victor and Vatiswa become ‘housemates’. This promises to put even more pressure on the engaged couple’s already strained relationship. Maybe Nolitha’s hoping that Victor will let up on asking her questions or being suspicious of her. Maybe she thinks this ‘good deed’ will cancel out the ‘bad deeds’ with Lwazi…
As indicated last week, when I spoke about the lovely Ayanda Tini and her many talents, the cast of Montana is supremely blessed with gifts. I already mentioned that both Ayanda and Az are radio dj’s in Cape Town for Good Hope Fm and Heart Fm respectively.
So here are some more talented Montanians (does that word make sense? It did in my head).
Lu Chase, who plays the role of Rochelle, has been the vocalist for dance-house music group Iridium Project for the past couple of years, is currently working on her solo album and her own Burlesque show and is a presenter on Ctv, a community-based TV station exclusive to Cape Town.
Keeno-Lee Hector, who plays the pitboss at the casino, is an amazing singer too. He’s better known as Keeno-Lee and his songs “Your Man” and “Hooked” have been riding high on local radio charts all year. He’s just been signed to Stereotype Records and his first complete album should be out very soon.
Mthunzi Ntoyi, who plays Zola, is obviously a great break-dancer but he’s also a stand-up comedian. He had us rolling around at the launch party and he also did a few gigs in Cape Town during filming.
Behind-the-scenes: • Trashing the salon was a messy, thorny business for the crew! Remember that we shot those scenes in an actual salon so we couldn’t trash it then rebuild it or move to another set. Aikona! Everything had to be put back in the same place afterwards and things had to be sparkly-clean.
I wondered how on God’s green earth this was going to work when I read that part of the script but I really needn’t have worried.
The trashed-salon scenes were shot on our last few days there, which helped with not having to clean-up quickly. All the glass and mirrored surfaces that would be spray-painted were covered with a thin plastic film that could be easily removed afterwards.
Broken glass, mirrors and flowers that had been in a vase were strewn on the floor and various liquids like conditioner and liquid soap were also squirted on the floor - try dodging that in high heels!
I left set the day before with ‘my salon’ looking fly and the next day it looked like a tornado had made its way through it! That also helped the actors because we’d been so used to seeing the salon properly and now we had more that enough drama to react to, it made our job easier.
Well, there it is. If you have any questions you want answered in my next column, please reply below or send me
tvsa-mail. We only have a few more weeks of the series left and you’ll suffer withdrawal symptoms (I know I will).
So do enjoy your weekly dose of Montana - where everything is so messed up and crazy, it makes your own life look less bleak!