I wasn't supposed to be in Johannesburg during the national audition phase. I broke up with my girlfriend a week before the auditions were supposed to take place. It's funny how things worked out. I think everything in life happens for a reason. I stood in a queue for 7 hours just to audition. It was freezing cold.
How did you feel when you heard you won?
How do you describe the feeling of a dream coming true? You can't. There's no words that can ever describe it. Inside there's all these emotions you never knew you had - just this rush of all of those emotions through your body all at once. It's a feeling which... you can't describe it.
Doing something like this; winning something like this - it means you instantly become public property. You become a public person with a public profile. You win stuff through that, and you lose stuff through that. It probably perhaps have already happened to you just walking down the street and being greeted and recognised. Are you ready to be a public person?
I don't think you can ever get used to that attention. it's not a normal feeling. Yet you have to embrace it. If you're in this industry it's something that comes with the territory. I can't understand why some people are always complaining about this and yet want to remain in the public eye - why are they then doing it? I wasn't even on social media before the competition. I only just now have joined Facebook and Twitter. It's still something I'm getting used to but it's something I have to embrace.
You studied at Rhodes, now you're living in Johannesburg. Will you be working from Johannesburg and remain based there or be moving to Cape Town?
Based in Johannesburg, yes.
And what are you looking forward to the most, Top Billing work wise?
Just working with these incredibly amazing people and meeting incredible people, and just working with this incredibly close-knit family unit. I just know it's going to be this amazing journey. Also the travelling and people. I love travel and people and that is what Top Billing is all about. Top Billing is about highlighting people's dreams and sharing in their dreams and that is what I will be doing.
Obviously you had to put your life as it was up until now on hold for ... who knows ... seven weeks and is was basically completely changing.
Yes.
...and not knowing the outcome. And now you have won, and you are a part of Top Billing now and now it is permanently changing. What's the biggest, uhm, challenges or changes; the biggest things that you have to think about now?
There's no ways I'm going to give up on my directing and writing which are things which I will definitely carry on doing anyway. I think with the people I'm going to be meeting with, meeting very creative people it will be natural to continue that. I've got a Loerie finalist coming up; my second Loerie coming up.
So directing is really something I am very passionate about and which I will keep going on the side and I will keep writing. And hopefully a feature film will be coming out of me one day.
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