With Hollywood in the title you don't really expect highbrow, but Nonhle Thema's self-titled reality show Nonhle Goes to Hollywood on Vuzu (DStv 123) is a vapid, self-indulgent and mediocre ''starlet in constructed trouble'' attempt with production values so laugh-out-loud shoddy that it seems as if it was filmed by a handycam and people who never went to film school.
''A lady always knows when to leave the room and that's always been my motto in life,'' says Nonhle Thema, formely O Access presenter and V-everwhere TV presenter. Sadly, if she really believed and followed her own advice, Nonhle Goes to Hollywood would leave TV screens after the first episode of this overacted, heavily staged, preposterous purple production that leaves viewers with probably just one question: Why is this trash on TV?
Major chunks of Nonhle Goes to Hollywood – scenes and dialogue – come across as deliberately staged and reenacted. Besides the profile subject's affected speech (''Are you whay-teen for us Mister Pho-to-grah-pher?'' and ''When the big execs call you for a mee-thing, you never knoow whats go-hing down!'') Nonhle Thema also speaks with an American accent. Nobod bothered to tell her that if you want to record the links and make as if this happened before you went to America, the accent should only come afh-tuurwards.
Viewers must be told that Nonhle Thema is very busy and a busy body and a hard worker. This happens as Nonhle Thema is framed sitting at the pool. (No dramatic irony by the producers is actually intended.) Next we find out that Nonhle is open to dating. ''Exciting,'' says her manager Alice Haruvisi who, thanks to pathetic editing viewers can now call on her cellphone at 076917XXXX, since nobody cared to blur it out... in 3 long shots. The same goes for the number plates (but at least viewers see the product placement vehicle unspoilt).
In this ''reality'' show, executive produced by Colin Gayle, Nonhle Thema and Mark Reguard and produced by Bounceback Media, Nonhle Thema comes across as a KTV presenter who's every conversation is over-enunciated perfect for hyper-hamster-like, overly-animated soundbytes. It's as if Nonhle Thema's stuck in a perpetual tween pageant that's being played out on TV. Nobody helped her or cared that Nonhle Thema bought into the meme of the stereotypical MTV reality show where viewers have been before, and have seen already.
In the first episode Nonhle Thema is mostly reduced to hair and nails and lots of fawning around her. There's lots of Nonnie ad libbing psycho babble about having and doing it all, complete as if she's channeling Oprah. Nonhle Goes to Hollywood comes across as a hollow stereotype: viewers get a view of someone who's in a so-called reality show but acts in the way she's seen people behave in reality shows. Possibly Nonhle Thema (hopefully) gets more ''real'' and relaxed as this show progress, but the first episode came across exactly like Britney Spears' ''Lucky'' music video: an overly constructed behind-the-scenes but very self-aware cosy chat fused with moments of created Twitter-able melodrama - all of it acted out for mass consumption.
Interestingly enough Nonhle Thema's mom Cynthia Shange was the real emotional anchor of the episode. Only she displayed true unvarnished emotion, unhyped by the spectacle of her daughter's mirable dictu and the fabricated videosphere as Nonhle... goes to Hollywood.
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