There are exciting times ahead for actor Samkelo Ndlovu.
Two years of “nothing” had her reflecting on her love of arts and giving herself a much-needed break from filming. With 14 years in the industry and a two-year break, the star has new projects set to hit our screens.
Samkelo tells us that the “feeling of mundane exhaustion” prompted her hiatus but now she's ready to have us glued to the screen. Yearning to get back to what she loves, she told her agent it's time for a comeback.
“Towards the end of last year (2022), I said to my agent, ‘fine, you can put my picture back on your wall, I'm ready to come back’ and she was so excited on the phone.”
Portraying detective Ayanda Jali on the Emmy-nominated series M-Net’s Reyka for its second instalment, she describes her character as a badass.
“She's quite rigid, strict, she's got a stillness to her that kind of is quite intriguing and in some spaces quite endearing because in some places where people would rather move around and panic, she would rather be still and find her answer in the chaos but in her stillness. And she's also quite stern. I don't find her funny [or] exciting but she is a badass. She fights for what's right.”
The series follows the life of detective Reyka Gama (played by Kim Engelbrecht) as she returns to the Durban Harbour Police Station where she’s busy building the profile of a killer who targets couples at a coastal lookout spot called Lover’s Lane, where the attacker is a sinister enigma who finishes his male victims off in a cold and clinical fashion yet shows remorse over female victims.
With every film, there’s always a message intended to leave viewers impacted and Samkelo says she hopes Reyka shines a light on the “pathology of criminals”.
The thespian says, “The series itself, I'm just hoping that it shines a light on just the general pathology of criminals and how the justice system should be investing more in rehabilitating these people first. Before they're criminals, they're also people. I think because we really do go through a journey where we try to figure this guy out to catch him. And we learn that a lot of the time when you see women, and stories and these superhero movies, a lot of the time, their intention is to heal from a [some]thing”.
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Although, the second season of Reyka will air in January 2024, the actress has an exciting project premiering in December 2023.
Last seen on the canned series Rhythm City as the cunning Lerato, she also made strides in building a name for herself on Soul City and iNkaba, Freedom, just to name a few. Speaking more on her hiatus, Samkelo shares that she didn’t feel motivated anymore and needed to save her herself.
“I didn't intend on leaving forever. I was bound to come back anyway but I just needed about a year or two off. So that was prompted by almost a feeling of mundane exhaustion. It just felt like I was on a hamster on a wheel. I had been going for 14 years, no breaks, going from one show to another. And I'm like a purist at heart, so it didn't feel motivated anymore.
“It no longer felt like art. It felt like I'm doing it because I'm going to this production because I need a job. I wanted to be back at that feeling where I was doing it because I love it so much and because I love being on set.”
Adding that, “I needed to go back to where I was loving the art in me and not so much myself in the art, because myself in the art is in the pop culture eye, it's in the culture, in the media, in people's hearts [and] faces; I was afraid rather that it was no longer going to become about me loving the art in me.”
“So, I needed to save it. I needed to save my ego before it died. I needed to save myself and my art. And that's what prompted me taking the break. [And] me coming back really was just from a feeling. I felt ready again. I felt, I saw myself suddenly being interested in being part of some shows, you know. Before that, I really couldn't care less.”
She’s says she's grown in leaps and bounds during her time off, not only falling in love with her craft but having spent time with her loved ones. She reiterates the importance of stepping away from the immense pressure of being an artist.
“I did nothing and it's so important. I think that artists and creatives should be allowed to roam endlessly and do nothing because part of our job means living life so that we can drink from that nectar,” she says. Adding that “I chose to be a mom and really focus on that [and] focus on the other things that I am because another thing that really made me step away for a moment was that I also needed to figure out who I am without this title.”
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She focused more on family and aligning herself.
“I'm a celebrated seasoned actress and all that but I'm also a girl, mom, daughter, sister, girlfriend and friend. I needed those other roles of mine that I also encompass to also be in the light. For my kid to see me every day in the morning and at night. And not because hours are weird, I can leave before she leaves for school and come back after she was asleep, and that's not cute. She's still in her formative years, so, I wanted the space and the time to be able to drop my kid at school. Spend some time with my mom as a daughter and spend more time with my sisters as a sister.
Samkelo’s return to the big screen will have everyone glued to their screens. Not only is she working on Reyka but her next gig will blow your mind. Though she can’t speak on it for now, she says, “it's quite a big show, very nice, controversial, part of the culture”.
“There are goals, which I'm not approved to speak about yet because I'd like for my things to be a surprise like this year. There is another show that is also coming out, but the thing is what's crazy about the film industry is that you can shoot this thing today and it comes out tomorrow and you can shoot another thing last week and it only comes out next month.”
