The tousled side-hair are gone. So is the moustache.
Oubaas got a big makeover and looks strikingly different - as the actor and director Pierre van Pletzen is getting ready to make his appearance as a brand-new character in kykNET's (DStv 144) Afrikaans soap Getroud met Rugby from early 2018.
After he got unceremoniously fired in June by Danie Odendaal Productions producing the SABC's Afrikaans weekday soap 7de Laan on SABC2, Pierre van Pletzen was snapped up for his acting and directing services by several TV productions doing shows for rival pay-TV broadcaster M-Net's Afrikaans language kykNET channel.
This year Pierre van Pletzen started appearing in kykNET's comedy Phil 101 and the reality show Die Ooms se Band on VIA (DStv 147) while the number of his 7de Laan scenes earlier this year dramatically got downsized and dwindled until he got his marching orders.
Some of the other older 7de Laan actors who were also abruptly changed from permanent to on-call status, remain with the show.
Now the widely respected and veteran artist Pierre van Pletzen has found new professional life both on-screen and off - just like during his heydey on 7de Laan when he was allowed to do more than one job at the same production before the rules were unilaterally changed due to SABC mandated orders.
From 15 January Pierre van Pletzen will make his first appearance on-screen on kykNET's Afrikaans soap Getroud met Rugby as a new character.
The clean-shaven character - complete with gold chain around the neck - is light years removed from the curmudgeonly, bumbling, old-man jersey wearing caretaker of The Heights where Pierre played a character decades older than his real age.
Pierre van Pletzen - who said that he won't set a foot back on the 7de Laan set just after an awkward press statement from the show that said it was looking forward to the character returning in the future when the news of his exit was announced - told Beeld newspaper last week that he is shocked about the latest in absentia twist for the Oubaas character.
It has now been revealed in 7de Laan through other characters, that Oubaas has secretly been carrying on an extra-marital affair with another woman for years, something that Pierre van Pletzen said is a "slap in the face of Oubaas, for the public, and for me as an actor".
"Why would you suddenly change the most dependable character, who loved his wife for 17 and a half years, who praised her and ate her bad food, in a philanderer?"
Besides his on-screen role in Getroud met Rugby, Pierre van Pletzen is also heading up the directing team at the new kykNET comedy, Die Kasteel (The Castle) with Josh Rous and Andre Odendaal.
Episodes of Die Kasteel is currently being recorded at Sasani Studios in Johannesburg in front of a live studio audience as part of a 26-episode first season order.
Die Kasteel, also starting in January 2018 on kykNET is produced by Rous House Productions.
Starring Dorette Potgieter and Hannes Muller as former beauty queen Tina-Marie and her husband Eckard, a high society couple decides to turn their "castle" - their mansion in the posh suburb of Waterkloof - into a boutique hotel due to financial problems, where "Fawlty Towers" type shenanigans ensue as they try to run an accomodation establishment.
