Zola Nombona's been the flava of the year this year. She's delivered a cocktail of drama and comedy with starring roles in three of the countries top shows: e.tv's Z'bondiwe and SABC1's Forced Love and Single Galz, which retained its status as a Top 10 show on the channel during it's recent rebroadcast.
We know Zola as Roxanne, Kat and Lerato but who is she when she isn't in character? I had a vino-drinking chinwag with her at the e.tv Summer Upfronts and snooped out stuff about her.
These are 10 things I discovered:
1. Her main goal is to do big blockbusters in Hollywood.
Zola: “I love my country but the Trevor’s and the Black Coffee’s have shown us that it is actually possible for us to get that side and dominate so I think: why not? I want to be more settled in my craft. I can never say, ‘Okay, now I’m a good actress, I’m perfect at what I do.’ But with experience I’ll grow and it’s going to get better.”
She wants to go in the next three years.
2. She's like Lerato in Single Galz because she gets lots of attention from guys But she’s more focused on her career than she is on them.
A lot of the attention she gets is on social media.
Zola: “Apparently when someone sees me face-to-face I’m too intimidating. When I’m at events I hardly get any attention and then when I get home I get Tweets or someone sends me a message on Facebook and says: 'You looked so nice, I wish I could have said “hi”' and I’m like, 'Why didn’t you?!'"
3. She lives with her bestie.
4. Her mind was freaked when she started filming Z'bondiwe.
Zola: "It was an amazing cast which was quite nerve wracking at first ‘cos I thought, 'Yoh! I’m with all these people that I grew up watching and I grew up wanting to act with them. I would say, ‘I want to act with them,’ and then it actually happened and you’re like,'Yoh, okay, this is happening.’ They were really supportive - I didn’t even feel I was that new."
5. She’s from a big family - she’s the last born of five. Her siblings are doctors and teachers and she's the only artist amongst them.
She was born in Umtata in the Eastern Cape where she completed Grade 1 to 9 and then she went to Grahamstown for Grades 10 to 12. She went on to study Drama at Wits.
6. She's a full-on schleb in her hometown.
Zola: “It’s so funny because when you’re working in Joburg people are like, 'Oh yes we know her,' and then you go home and there’s this HUGE amount of affection that you’ve never received before. My hometown is very supportive, my people *laughs*, they’re supportive and even on social media, on Twitter, a lot of people say, 'We love the way you speak your language to inspire us to not try to be other people.'”
7. She loves having fun and making jokes but also loves having time to herself to balance.
Zola: “I love being alone but when I’m with a group of friends, I’m the comedy. I love fooling around.”
8. Besides acting, her other passion is singing. She's always been in choirs and she loves house music so she's working on releasing a single that combones the two: house music and her choral, operatic voice.
9. She watches a
lot of TV and also pushes herself to read a lot because of how it changes her perspective. She uses it to flex her imagination so that she can easily imagine scenes when she gets scripts to read.
10. Her fave TV show (besides the show's she's in): Empire.
Zola: “I’d like to be part of Empire. Yeah! I’d like to be there! But really blockbusters are my thing. I’d love to be in big movies overseas. It’s wonderful to see what South African movies are doing now so I want to get there.”