He has been a troublesome character on Muvhango. One that is bold and daring enough to shake things up in the Mukwevho royal family.
His guts have sent shivers down Chief Azwindini’s spine with a hard brick in the chief of Thathe’s marriage with Mpho.
As Tendamudzimu, he has stopped at nothing to get what he wants.
Not much has changed in Netflix’s Fatal Seduction where Nathaniel Ramabulana plays Vuyo, a former police officer and renowned investigator who was forced into retirement by a shooting that caused a permanent limp.
Jumping into a call with Drum to talk about this interesting character, he first apologises for being late for the call as he has been on set shooting Muvhango.
Asking for his sniffing to also be excused as he has sinuses, he continues to say that playing his new character has been extremely exciting.
“He’s a very strong, rich, dynamic character. He's got so much happening. He's so loaded. Even the story itself is very intense. There's a lot of drama. So, he's very integral in that throughout the drama.”
He adds that throughout the 14-episode series, his challenge has been being able to decipher Vuyo as he was “holding so much [in]”.
Read More | Want more of Fatal Seduction? More episodes dropping next week
“He's got secrets to so many people. He's got access to so many people, but you know, he might know that as the character, but the audience doesn't necessarily know that. So, the challenge for me was sort of being strong enough, but not giving too much away."
From the first seven series, very little is known about Vuyo and he spends most of his time in the shadows of his brother, Leonard who is played by Thapelo Mokoena.
However, in the second part of the series, we see Vuyo come out of his shell in an effort to crack the murder case of his lover.
While trying to nab her killer, he discovers the secrets of everyone around him, including his lover who had been in an affair with his brother.
One by one, they all start to be at the mercy of this man who will do anything for his family, especially when they pass his loyalty test.
To bring all this together, he worked around developing a believable limp in his walk without letting it take over the character.
In telling his story, he also had to tap into his past self.
“I'm not a smoker myself. I'm not a drinker myself, but I used to way back. So, [I enjoyed] accessing those parts of myself that I had sort of forgotten about, or it had been a while since I had visited them. I just really embraced that whole experience and yeah, it was a breath of fresh air.”
Contrary to popular belief though, the sex scenes in the series were more challenging than they were enjoyable.
“The sex scenes, the partial nudity, that was a challenge. The misconception out there is [that it is cool to play such scenes but] those are very private sort of things and very intimate things.
“In the real world, you're given a chance to warm up to the person, to develop feelings for the person. When you get to that stage, it's in a room, you're by yourselves, you know, there's a sort of a written agreement or an unwritten agreement rather, that you know, whatever happens here stays here type of thing,” he chuckles.
“But now on a set, there's camera, there's lights, there's people, there's cues, there's lines. We are virtual strangers, you know, with the actress or the actor. And, and now you must just assume that, you know, we've, we've gone through all those stages where we were courting [whereas] there was none of those cues that sort of led up to that moment.”
He adds that “it’s a hell of a challenge” but he’s grateful that they were quipped with the tools that they needed to bring the intimacy alive.
With these tools, the air was cleared and there wasn’t any weirdness or awkwardness that rose.
Also, as a cast, he says they were all sort of open to the idea of playing sex scenes and they embraced them as they came, given that they are quite a new phenomenon in South African storytelling.
Watching himself back, he says he commends himself for pulling off the scene where his brother tells him that the child he had known to be his niece for twenty years, is in fact Vuyo’s daughter.
He admits to Drum that carrying across the emotions that Vuyo was feeling to be believable and so he tried to be as present as possible for the moment where he was being told all this.
“When I watched it, I was hella proud. I was hella proud because the way it played out was that when I was within it, I wasn't trying to really reveal too much because the news is so much. But then once I sort of got out the buzz and then was by myself, then the rage and all the emotions sort of came and I just, I really enjoyed how that played out and how that was balanced out,” he says.
Read More | Fatal Seduction cast address outrage over sex scenes: ‘They tell a greater story worth telling’
When Nandi, his brother’s wife played by Kgomotso Christopher fails his loyalty test, a different side of him comes out.
He turns his back on the mother of his daughter and sends her to prison. Although he pulled this off also like a pro, he says he felt bad as he watched it back as Nathaniel.
“When I watched him, I was like, Oh, you're cool, bro. But why do that? I felt sorry for Nandi. I felt sorry that these guys, their lives are falling apart. And I thought, you know, maybe he could have maybe done something different and not handled it as badly as he did.”
Laughing it off a bit, he swears that Nathaniel wouldn’t have done half the things that Vuyo did because “Nat (short for Nathaniel) feels very uncomfortable when people are feeling, when people are under their feelings and he's at the center or he's in the middle of it. So, no, I wouldn't have the balls to try something like that."
