Episode 30 - John Kani: Arts, Hollywood, Pan-Africanism and the future of storytelling

In conversation with the Legendary actor, playwright, and activist Ntate John Kani. Kani joins Dr. Mbuyiseni Ndlozi for a powerful conversation on theatre, Hollywood, African storytelling, and the politics shaping the modern world.

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Alright, uh be gentle with me. I'm going to be gentle. I'm going to be uh I'm known to walk out. I have no respect for just just for the sake of the audience. What about sit-down interviews do you hate so much? You know, I spent it's almost two years looking in my other previous radio job. Couldn't pin you down. You know, we should have started this podcast with you as the first interview. But you hate interviews. What why? Look, I don't mind if I'm doing a project. I'm doing a new play I've written, I'm in a movie, I'm in a television series. Therefore, the interview must focus on the work I'm doing now. Then I have everything to say and to promote the work I'm doing because it's in my contract and I get paid a lot of dollars or pounds for doing that. Now, if you then want to interview me outside my work, I'm sitting at home, you just want to talk about South Africa, the art situation, this and that, I feel like you're putting me in a situation where I have to sound very profound. People might say, Did you hear that interview? I love when he said. I love when he said, I hate those. I love when he said, What I deal with is, ask me, I will answer. And my answer is final. So in that way, but uh I've just returned now from Los Angeles. He got a press junket. There are 30 to 500, 150 international journalists close to each other. What do you think this movie must take away from? And then you answer that question next. What do you think that's it? What you said the moment is, but it was not in my camera. I see. So you go on and on about this talking about talking. But if the interview is start exploring important things. So when you first wanted to know that I could come to you, I said, no, no, no. I know Mbussen in love. I've seen him, I've seen him in action, and I still remember when we were together in the Viz Governing Council, and he kept his hand up all the time, annoying everybody in the room, until finally says, yes, sir, and finally he just lights up the room. So it's okay, but I'll find the time. Why don't we start there then? Maybe to make this particular one as pleasant as possible. What is your current uh artistic preoccupation? What are you working on at this moment? I arrived last uh Sunday from Los Angeles. I was asked to play Sam in Master Harold and the Boys in tribute to the great Arthur Fugart at the Gaffin Playhouse in Los Angeles. I'd last done this play in 1985. That's when I was born. Now I'm asking them, it's 40 years later. I don't understand and remember anything of that time. And they said, no, no, now as an established artist and as an elder, what happens in the play is would be more sort of tragic if this young little white boy sort of insults or says bad things to Sam, who is the role I play. So I said, okay, for that, that's what I'm doing. At the moment as well, in September, my play Kunene and the King is opening at Gutbury Theater in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Now I did ask them, you remember we watch on CNN all those riots of ice and foreigners and aliens and undocumented. And I'm thinking, I'm not going there because I'm from South Africa. We've solved this document problem long ago. I think I spoke too soon. I think I spoke too soon. So that is what I'm doing at the moment. And there are projects of a couple of movies that I have to do. So if I were to talk to you and you were a producer and you would ask me, uh, what's your availability? I would say to you, let's look at 2028. Oh God. You see, and and then I could see where I could fit you in. Yes. It's not you trying to get me, it's me fitting you in. So uh I have earned that status, but we say I started in 1965. Right at the time after the Rivonia trial. Oh, yes. We walked around in New Brighton like there's been a death, and that death is hope. And people were thinking, what next? And I was almost thinking also, we need to do something. All of us felt the call. There was no meeting saying young people must organize, young people must leave the country to join MK, to join all the forces outside to fight for liberation. It was a feeling by an individual. Is this what my life is? There got to be something I can do. And somehow I bumped into this group called the Serpent Players. They were doing a play called Antigone by Sophocles, which is 2,000 years old. And I'm thinking, what the hell? There's so much to say in this world. So I went to see these people with a friend of mine called Fez Buholana, and he knew he was an bad actor doing township work and doing also at schools set work. So I arrived. There was a white boy, a white guy outside smoking a pipe. I thought he was the caretaker of the building. So I walked in, and uh, just before we start the play, this guy I saw outside comes in. And first my brother, my friend says, Hey, Arthur, this is John. John, this is Athol. Oh. And he held his hand like that. I'm angry. I'm black. I want to kill all white people soon as I can learn how to shoot. And his hand is sticking out like that. So I got very polite. So I shook his hand. And that began that relationship, which last year, when 2025, when he passed away, it was 60 years since we've worked together, collaborated, created, worked together. And also, within it was the first time in my life that I get introduced to a white person on first name basis. It should have been John, this is Mr. Fugart. Mr. Fugart, this is John. But Fett said, Arthur, this is John. John, this is Arthur. And I thought, there must be good white people, but I haven't met them yet. And I'm not just assuming this one is also a good one, but we're going to walk together every foot, every step to understand what he went from us. So I was that kind of annoying, black, conscious, black, black, black. It was annoying to those that want to deny the truth and not identify my pain, but it was good for me because it kept my passion, my hope burning all the time. And hope was in trouble in the 60s, and we said. Everybody you know was either dead or in exile or in prison or on Robben Island. As young people, we actually wanted to be detained in order to be respected in the township. Ubani was detained. I was detained too. You know, or Ubani has been arrested, Ubani has been sent to Robben Island. We called it the University of Life. If you go to Robben Island, you're truly, truly committed to the struggle for liberation. Are there any to this 40-year-old work? Are there any new interesting layers with its uh revival today? I mean, you are counting 40 years when last you played in it. But are there in any way new layers other than the fact that you are playing a much older looking Sam? Yes. Going back to that text, I was amazed how many things that I took for granted. How much of the insults of from white little white boy to a black man, his humanity, his dignity, that I glazed upon through lack of experience of really unearthing the text. Now I understood that Afol actually grew up in a very racist family, not just society. Now I understood within this new reapproaching the work, because I didn't want to remember what I did, it was impossible. With the new cast of two American young actors, we were rediscovering, refining the journey, unpacking and getting the puzzle clear now. Nana realized that Arthur was one inch away of being worse than Ter Blanche. We meeting us black people, working with the serpent players, about menchinga, George Luce, people like George or Mike Mokolo, save this young little white boy. Without that, there would have never been an Arthur Fugart, a prolific known sort of uh activist as a writer, he would never have been there. And the script is littered with things that generally he wrote about that are not easy to swallow. So you've got to find reason. Why am I not killing this boy before the end of the play? You know, but then you realize, which is the biggest challenge, is that our humanity, in the manner in which we try to save this young little white boy, as he has a spark of what could be in the future. For instance, when Zake Smuckai played this role in 1985 on Broadway, he won a Tony Award for Best Supporting Actor. But he had difficulties in the role. There were things that Athol had written that he made huge assumptions that black people will understand. But then when James L. Jones played the role, James said, I can't do that. And there's a there's a scene in the play where the white little kid spits on his face. And he stands, and James said the natural reaction to slap the shit out of him in his face. But then Arthur says, but the actual character didn't. And it's true that Sam didn't. So then there was a difficulty. In fact, James left the production. He said there were serious artistic differences, interpretation. Right. And then, of course, when I came into the road because I was from South Africa, I'd already done it anyway here. I joined them. So you then find out that the American concept of the black struggle is aligned to civil rights. Yes. From being enslaved to civil rights, I used to say to them, you guys are worrying that you can't drink in this well because you are black, but you can drink into the other one because you're white. There was no well for black people. So we were, if I went to town in the 60s, my dad would ask us to pee first. Because as we shop around in Whiteport Elizabeth, there were no toilets for black people. My father would be very angry when you say, says, What now? I want we and my mom would say, and my dad would say, That's why I don't want to go with children. They want a we. And we looked around, and my dad saw me, make a rainbow. I took it out and made a curve. And there was a nice white person who walked and says, You should be ashamed of yourself, saying that to my father. My father said, My father was six feet, six inches tall. From my point of view as a kid, he was two meters wide. And this little white man, my father looked down upon him and says, Tell him. So those are the things that you found in the new interpretations. So you had to work hard, also working with Americans who seem to have a superior understanding of other people's problems, not relating them to theirs. Superior understanding. You understand? So that was for me the challenge in that production was school had to start with this is South Africa. I see. This is racism. This is apartheid. This is institutionalized way of life. Now, coming to 1994, it was not just the men, the the uh Donald Trump would sit in the in the Oval Office and do these presidential orders, changing everything. There was no such. We just slid in into a format that standing there and tried to make a difference from this postcard that must I must see myself in this so-called democracy. I must see myself. So if I don't see myself in that postcard, then I'm struggling with the word democracy all my life. The first act of the current president when he came into office, uh, President Donald Trump was or was accompanied by cutting funding to uh movements of uh black studies, uh African studies in universities. It looks like there is at least intellectually some movement to silence the black experience. And this play taking place and interrogating racism, how are these audiences in the US receiving it? You've got to understand that theater is a very sophisticated audience. Theater audiences claim to be converted already, and yet when they are hid by the truth, their true inner feelings exposes themselves. People would sit and watch the play. In fact, the NAACP came with 30 members to watch the play. And they said, How do you go through that now in 2026? How do you allow yourself as an actor to go through that dehumanizing experience, outreach of your dignity and humanity? I said, I'm glad you are seeing that. It then means I did a nice job because I wanted you to see that. The play has to make you uncomfortable. Even if it's a comedy, whatever it is, a stand-up comedian, if it's so nice you laugh yourself and you go out crying, you've missed the point or it wasn't effective. Art must reflect the environment in which the artists operate in a truthful manner. Art must hold a mirror to society. You only hold in that mirror. Do not argue and try and distort what's in the mirror. Some people would say, I saw this play 40 years ago. I cried right through this time. I said, why? It's because it shows how little American people have moved, how little change has happened. Actually, this play exposed the fact that there has been a reversal of the gains of the post and slavery time, the post-civil rights, all those gains, the writers' votes, I mean the voting rights, the redestruct, the rezoning. And this was exactly P.W. Porter's brilliance in inverted commerce. Take a city like Pretoria. He divides Pretoria into 10 constituencies. So you are going to get 10 members that might make to parliament. But then he divides Jobek, which is six times bigger than Pretoria, into four constituencies. Meaning that then the opposition to the Nationalist Party, which will come from the modern uh like Cape Town, like Grahamstown, all, will not amount to the majority because of the zoning. And that's what they're doing now. And when you watch this play, and they people, I mean, especially African American people, especially we had one audience with the uh Latin American postgraduate students. And they said that, they said, it's happening again. I said, what? Make America great again. I said, no, it means make America white again. What sometimes certain leaders, when we have nice white leaders during South Africa's 60s, 50s, there was a hope that we could negotiate this freedom and that they would wake up one morning with a change of heart and decide themselves that no more apartheid, no more and discrimination, we then, of course, in this country realize they're not gonna do that. We better make them change or take over. So when you find a person like that, like like PW Border, he obliterates any hope you have that they may change. So if you define white racism in the context of you poor white, you could have been this, but your opportunities are taken by black people. So the white people see black people as enemy number one. And if you talk about being white, it means therefore that that means that you are entitled by birth to success and innate respect from other races or other people. What the present situation in America is, it has done what they have been silently thinking and unable to suppress or politely able to suppress. For instance, there's a scene in Master Harold, the role of Halley, which is Athol's, was played by Warren Beatty's son, the great Hollywood actor and Ander Benning. And there's a line when he has to say, my father's joke is about niggers. Now, this kid is about 25, and I say, say it. He said, I have a difficulty, sir. How do I say to Dr. Kani? I said, forget Dr. Kani. Say the word. Nigger. I said, now I'm gonna ask you a question. You've got to be honest. When you're driving and an African-American taxi driver cuts in front of you and doesn't care and does the finger, what's the innate feeling in you? Don't you feel like saying, damn you, you nigger. You think it. You think it all the time. So release it. Say it. You're always self-centered, censoring yourself in everything you say. You want to be politically correct. You don't want to sound like a racist. Yes, you are. By virtue of the privilege of being white, you are. By virtue of the state's mechanism and structures supporting your seniority or supremacy, you are. But you can unlearn that. But you need to put effort into it. It's not an evolutionary process with sign like turning this to green. You have to work at refining, at a rebirth of yourself. And that was what this play did, made them realize that I do think like that sometimes. I also do feel like that sometimes. So that's why then the Republicans in America will get the ground, grassroots support from the white supremacists, because it says, I will give you first. And your problem is not me, your problem is these structures that are glorifying and are supporting so-called equality. In America, I mean, they almost even say sometimes, why don't you go back where you came from? Now it's more common. In the streets, in shops at Cape Mart, in all these, one, two, three, why don't you go back where you came from? They said, let's rewind a little bit. When you people came here, there was people living here. So you too has had an arrival date. Before you tell me where to go, you have an arrival date. I don't have an arrival date in Africa. I am Africa. That's an interesting uh because one thinks of the US as the center of the modern arts. Suddenly, I mean, with the film being the particular Form of artistic development that took a big industrious form with the United States and Hollywood. But you have music as well, theater, and the intellectuals, novelists, all the African intelligencia is either in the United States or Europe, mostly US, is is the changing texture of the society, American society, as you've described it. Closing in an era of the US as the global center of international or world artistic excellence, where every single gifted artist is able to arrive and be successful. Is that closing out with what is happening there? No, no. You've got to get rid of the illusion that America is the home of freedom, the home of democracy, the home of opportunities. You've got to get that right. What has happened now is that they have found a way to industrialize art. And this is what Matsimela Manaka would say to us, uh wonderful young friend of mine. How do we industrialize our arts? How do we put on plays that bring in millions of people and make money so that we could use the money to develop this art form and even in rural communities? Why are we always succeeding in winning the best actor award, the best play, and it dies there? So when Winston and I arrived in London in 1973 with a play called Cizwebanzi is dead and the island, that was a play about protest. That was a play about who we are in the struggle for liberation. We took great chances. In fact, we knew we could be in trouble. But the people reading the play in England and America saw it's a very small cast. And it's got an incredible appeal. We like the subject they're dealing with. We could make them play in 700 sites and charge about 50 to 250 pounds. We could make money, it costs less to make money about this, other than doing this full big musical production. They saw the business in it and they saw the opportunity to make a lot of money. But also at the same time, we might be acknowledged within this industry as people with some soul or heart that we do also present things that are thought-provoking. So winning the Tony Award on Broadway was like, wow, you see, it worked. So when you go to Hollywood, maybe when you start writing your script, it's the idea of honesty, passion, humanity, the role of the arts. But when we producers read the script, we ask, is this a hit? Is this going to make money? It's a very good thing. Mr. Androvo wrote a beautiful play, but who's going to want to see this play? So how do we do it? So let's do it this way. Mr. Androvo, you heard Mr. Seloma Kakangubi play this role. We're giving it to Denzel Washington. He said, No, no, no, no, no, no. I wrote it with Seloma, Kakangubi in the man says, See, your role is finished now. Could you leave the room? We're making decisions now. So when those decisions are made, they're made for business. So what America has done was to industrialize it, was to make it big business, right? And therefore, but America has got sort of structured itself to off-Broadway or off-off. On the areas that you could be doing these plays, it's fine in your little region and your little communities. They're not going anywhere. But as soon as they become something that could be big, and that's why everybody says you go to New York for theater, you go to Los Angeles, Hollywood for great movies. Because there it's just the business. I mean, movies like Black Panther, movies like The Disney and the Marvel, the Paramount, the Warner Brothers, those are moguls who may not even have read your script, but we're told that this is a money-making possibility. And that's what then we would do it. So America becomes that. So when we then from Africa go to America, we see the opportunity of a broader audience, of a global audience, of a more income on distribution. So we also have an ulterior motive of making money in taking things to Europe, to England, to America. And we also have a situation where a young designer says to me, You are going to overseas a lot. Do you know any designers I could in you could introduce them to my work? And I'm saying, who has seen your work in South Africa? Not yet. Who has seen your work on the African continent not work? No, but I'm looking at overseas distribution. Do you see? Therefore, then it can't adjaundish the whole process as to making a product through export. Because that's what we've been taught. That's what our government always talks about. How do you measure a successful economy? How do we come to the GDP that says this economy is thriving? It's by the amount of goods we get out of our country. It's not on what we bring in or what we grow within the country. It's measured on what are how much investors have we allowed to siphon the remaining wealth that we have abroad, then that business is successful. That government that exports a lot is the government that the West can rely on. That's it. So we are sort of getting, it infiltrates itself even in art. I mean, even I, when I'm writing a new play, I'm already thinking, I wonder it's going to open in the market theater, it opens in Kramstown, it opens in the Baxter Theater or everywhere. Is there anybody in the theater who perhaps would say, Oh, I love John Carney's work? I have a friend in London, producers. But now we've reached a level where whenever you open a new play, producers always want to know, what are we doing? Because they know that the work will be absolutely appreciated. So if we then do that, we neglect the first audience. I was talking to Suleiman Sise just before he died. We were being honored in the Silicon Valley in Santa Fe by the Africa-French film industry for our contribution to the African film industry. He says if a movie opens in Ghana and then goes to Burkina Faso, and then goes to Egypt, and then goes to Kenya, and then goes to Balden, and then goes to South Africa, you would have made your money and broken even before you take this movie to the Cannes Festival. Maybe there somebody might notice, and then you'll get a distribution from the Telenor, those arti arti, not main sort of film distribution. And then you may even win an award which nobody remembers who's it named after, which recognizes your work as part of the foreign language, right? And and maybe our music is under the special effects. It's not even recognized as music. So then you would might gain that that fame notoriety that is very successful. This movie was very successful abroad, but you haven't made money to fund the next one. Yes. That's this illusion of taking work abroad. Is that if I'm a designer, if I'm a new product, if I discover this, if my book has been translated into various languages, if perhaps even somebody abroad has wants to do a movie about my book, then you think that is success. But someone in Zimbabwe, just in Botswana, in Malawi, in Mozambique, in Eswatin, has never heard of you. But you're very famous abroad. In fact, you need to be introduced, as when I was introduced in Ghana, Accra, they said Dr. John Khani of the Black Panther fame. And then you say, if my people, my own people, cannot recognize me as John Carney, an incredible, very successful actor from Africa, from South Africa, that I always said to be prefixed or suffixed with the of Black Panther, of the Lion King, of Murder Mystery. Yeah, I do those. Don't get me wrong. I go to feed the wolf, I go to keep that family going. But there are things that I do that I believe are important. So we need to get the mindset of African artists that it is successful, even if it opened in Soweto. What are the catalysts for this path of local continental industrialization of the arts? What needs to happen? Right. We were talking about this in Burkina Faso and saying that we have the story. One of the greatest stories are in Africa. Even the Black Panther happens in Wakanda and someplace in Africa. Even the uh woman warrior happens somewhere in Benin. But we don't have the budget. We don't have people who believe that if they invest in the arts, they may make money. Because our approach is always funding. Funding are NGOs, funding are social responsibility. When I have a movie, I want investors. I'm saying to the investors, I've done the budget. The budget is about 12 to 15 to 20, 30 million dollars. Now, if you invest, I have connections with international distributors, and I have connections right through the continent. We put 330 million, we were sure to make 90 million. We're sure to make 150. Now those investors come back to you again and say, what's your next project? Now the process is I have a story once upon a time. It's a narrative, it's boring. So how are we going to make this a screenplay? Yes. How do we then incubate the South African or the African screenplayers, screenwriters to know how to open up the script and make it successful? Some young men said to me, Hey Brad Juan, you you you guys make these movies without even one car crash. Because we don't have the money to cut to crash the cars. You know, we don't have the money. So when I speak to African Americans and very rich people, I say, look, here's the idea, here's the storyline. Who is the best screenplay writer now in Africa or in the world? So we get that person who transforms this narrative, this little story into the most powerful mermaid, into the most powerful Black Panther, into the most powerful Titanic. A story of a ship that sang at the end of the story. But it made over a billion dollars. Because the screenplay converted it. Those writers were were they were interns. You know. So we have these things. So I'm saying to African Americans, why don't we work together? Why don't we sort of collaborate? I have the great story. It's an African story of an African king who defeated the Boers, who did this, who was at Tababosicho before the mountain in Israel, before Julius Caesar was born, before all these people. But we need incubation. You can't have it now and do next year. Some people say they've been working on this script for five, six, eight years. And when therefore it was ready, presented to the big producers of Hollywood, there was an interest. And they still put it through their processes to make sure that it's successful and also to accept the fact that I may write the play and I may see myself playing the role, but they would may say to me, no, we've looked at it. The money these days is on Idris Elba. The money these days, these days is on Denzel Washington. We have a chance if your role is played by Denzel. That's money. Now you can get, you can say, no, I want to play the role myself, but the problem is then it's not going anywhere. So we have been conditioned to believe that if we have access to international markets, our work is successful, but we do not mention quality of the work. There is this uh interesting controversy around uh in this case which actor will have the money follow. I mean, if it's Denzel. So there's uh a chap, our chap from South Africa, multi-billionaire, big influence in the US called Elon Musk. Yes. I want to get the name of uh it keeps escaping me. Uh so there is a new take on the famous battle of Troy, the Odyssey. Yes, Lupita Nanyon goes to the and Lupita Lupita has been casted to play uh to play Helen of Troy. Helen of Troy. Yes. It's an important white female beauty figure in the history of white people, you know what I mean? And his name, the director, his famous director, uh, chose Lupita Nyongo to everyone's absolute discomfort, and there is a big fight uh about that. We've heard the problem with Halle Berry that did the young girl playing the mermaid. Yes, yeah, that's that's this. Yes, so have we ever seen a mermaid? Has anyone ever ever seen a mermaid? Christopher Nolan. Christopher Nolan, has anyone ever seen the mermaid? What do you make of that uh interesting choice uh by by Christopher Nolan? He's a superstar, and even if he casted nobody's, just his name gets us watching. Uh uh, this is the guy that direct that directs a variety of very interesting uh you know, Hollywood and the big superhero Black Man, Black I mean um Batman and all the superheroes all of those things. Yes. But what do you think he's trying to do in this case? What do you I mean he's striking at something in American society and imagination at this moment with the choice of Lupita Nyongo playing Helen of Troy? I want to venture to say to you, ten years ago would have been an artistic experience. It would have been accepted as an artistic experience. It also would be to give female actors in the industry also opportunity to play the lead in major roles, meaningful, because the sense the story of uh Helen uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh in Ellen of Troy is based on she is the main figure. Yes, she's the beauty, she's the that two countries to fight over how many years? Ten years, yes. Decades. Now, that would have been the experiment. There are situations whereby uh another director decided to do King Lear, but cast Glenda Jackson. And Glenda did not want to play Queen Lear, she wanted to play King Lear. And people had a problem with the fact that knowing she's a woman. When I just left America now, there is something running on social media on the list of African actors given roles that are not really sidelining African American actors. In those lists, they put Idris Elbert, Chuvitel Edge 4, they have all these other actors that are from Africa origin, including what's the actor who played um the Black Panther. It's a black actor. Yes, yes. But the complaint was that, because there is a small, assumed to be small, but very influential little click that watches whether anything we do will marginalize white America. So with this time, with the politics of America, it was not a very uh, it was a very dangerous decision to say I'm gonna cast. I've worked with Lupita in the Black Panther, I've known her very well. And she is an actor. So Christopher Nolan might just think, I'm going to cast the best of the actresses that I auditioned. Remember, they all came. You can even think about Nicole Kidman, you can think about Scarlett Johansson, you can think Meryl Streep. They all came to audition for Christopher. But there was something skiff about Christopher this time. I use the word skiff, which was which was dangerously naughty or brave. Or daring. Or daring. Yes. I'm Christopher. I'm going to cast this actor, in my point of view, in my story, in my as a director, is the best person to serve this role. But you're working in an America where racial issues have been heightened. The text outside there is constantly talking, non-white and non-black. Talking about, like some little boy from P says to me, how many players of color are in the Spring Book? I said, Rewind. What do you mean, players of color? How did that language enter out? How many lexicons? Do you understand me? How many players of color? I said, uh, why don't you ask how many black actors are in this springbook? Don't be so this is what the the response to this is the fact that if this happens, all those great roles will now be open to everybody. All the by white actors who claim I'm totally liberal, she's fine for the actor. Anybody can play any role because what Hollywood is doing now, if you do a movie, in the movie, if there is a nondescript character, it just says lawyer, so we will go for a person of color. It just says teacher, we'll go for the person of color. But it says husband, now we have to be careful because we how do we get the wife in the context of the story? So you may then have a situation whereby the husband is white, the wife is also white. But the friends and others are nondescript and unexplained. Is the nurse, is the lawyer, is the doctor, is the manager, is the chief police officer, is the chief fireman. Those roles are made for us because they don't describe actually gender, race, and anything. So when Christopher makes that daring choice, it evokes that innate racism, which is explained by with pushing the envelope too far. Surely Cleopatra was white. Surely Cleopatra was black. She was Nubian, but she was played by Elizabeth Taylor. Nobody tweeted and opened about it. Surely these characters are there. But now you are in a different political environment in the world. Fascism is on the rise. Far right in everywhere in Europe, in every election. The influx of these migrants crossing the Mediterranean, making it the second largest burial site of Africa, second only to the Atlantic. Now these things are happening. So everybody is winning elections in Poland, in Hungary, in Paris, in Germany on the migrant issue. Anybody who says we do not want migrants in this country or we will control the number of migrants in this country, even the British Prime Minister is in danger of losing that leadership space because of the number of migrants that have walked in. And most of them are supposed to be Muslim. The rise of the number of mosques in London makes me think about South Africa driving from my Home to Sentin, there's a mosque on the left, there's a mosque on the right, there's a mosque there, there's a mosque there. You are going to soon hear this conversation in South Africa that they about the Muslim invasion. And now we're talking about the Africa invasion into Africa. I quote, my Lord English is very good. You know what I'm saying? So these are the questions that are critical in America today. Which roles must be specifically adhere to the historical distorted history? It's interesting because, in any way, he's got the opening uh ticket sales, I think they are already sold out. Uh, that's Christopher Nolan with the Odyssey. Because it's a it's a biggest, one of the biggest, highly anticipated films coming out this year. Do you think in any way this Lupita Nyongo choice might affect the actual show-up of audiences? You got to understand. Now, when we are cast in these major roles, there's a very silent question that is asked. Are you on social media? If you then say yes, it said, okay, they're gonna check you out. They'll find out how many followers do you have. Why would you cast in all honesty, I mean with great respect, that Beyoncé played no Niala? Right. Because she's got over 15 to 20 million followers. Announcing that Beyoncé is going to play this role, it's sold out. Announcing that Christopher Nolan is directing the Odyssey, it's sold out. Before you even enlist the cast, before you talk about the cast, if you're saying to me now that uh Spike Lee is doing the Odyssey, you've got the majority of those audiences African American or other Latinos and all, but there will also be a huge white audience that follows it. But if you had said to me, Darrell Root, with all due respect, or an unknown director is doing the Odyssey, the controversy would have been pooped long ago. And those pre-bookings wouldn't have worked. We make an announcement on Broadway that Denzel Washington is going to play Othello. Yes. Nine million dollars before even first day rehearsal. And what happens during the play opens? Critics says, what a brilliant production, but the more is missing. M-O-R, but meaning in brackets, the black person is missing. So he didn't get good reviews for it. But that didn't touch the box office. Because they will go. America has a star industry. I see. We don't have that. Now, here, if you said there's a new play is going to open at the market, it's called John Cunny. By the next week, they're still looking at people coming. I'm phoning my friends. Hey guys, man, can you come and see the play? Now, the Geffen Playhouse in LA announces that we're doing Master Harold and the boys and John Cunny off, off, off, off, off, off, off, off, off, off. The season was sold out before the first day of rehearsal. Because they've come to see the maestro, the master. Yes. That sells it. Then you, as the cast, do not have the problem of how do we make it work. Actually, you may get the responsibility of not making it work by being so bad that it drives away audiences, by being so bad that it makes people cancel their tickets. But this Lupita Nanyongo is going to be greatly successful on two levels. One, on the fact that Christopher Nolan, award-winning, multi-oscar, Lupita Nanyongo, an Oscar award-winning actor who is from Africa, but brilliant actress, and also the storyline and who the other supporting cast is. But when we see it, the people who are uncomfortable with the fact that the cast, the Helen was made black, will write. Will write. There will be certain critics who are not happy with their interpretation, trying very gently and very subtly not to say, because she's black. She's very proud and very, very brave to say, all right, Christopher, I go with you. Do you understand? So that's the controversy of that business. Ten years ago it would have been a non-event. But now we have a new emerging. Totalitarian. With aspirations of being king, of creating an empire. And anything that goes against that empire is seen as anti-American. How many times do the repo the Democrats refer to as ultra-right, or as reactionary, as revolutionary, or as people from because it's creating a pro a situation whereby people must see any opposition to the big billionaires. Now, those billionaires influence policy. You talk about Elon Musk, who is from Pretoria, who has rejected his South Africanness to the core using the billions, now even be a trillionaire, with the latest listing of this sterling thing into the stock exchange. He's the one who is in the ear of the important, is whispering in the ear of important Americans about South Africa. One, taking Israel to the ICC, two, joining BRICS and all these things we do that feel like we also also saying no to Starlink in South Africa. Not saying no, but putting conditions. Nobody said they must be black. It could be Rupert, it could be open army, it could be so-and-so. But there must be a South African possibility of investing. But he puts a story on the other side as I'm told to give my shares to black people. Like to give it's invest, they're gonna put money into it. So the Lupita Nanga and Christopher Nolan controversy. It's a it's normal in America. It's normal, it must be a specifically beautiful time for black actors that there is this debate at this time in Hollywood. I mean, it must be uh Christopher's provocation, for me at least, I think it's actually very timely. It should never been 10 years ago. This is the time to provoke and see if people really understand and are committed to high art. There was a couple of five years ago a talk about non-racial casting, whereby I went to see King Lear in Stratford at the Royal Shakespeare Company. There was such a mix of the characters. Polonia's daughter is black, so-and-so's husband is Indian, but the child is white. But the characters were just part of what Shakespeare says. You're playing this role, you're playing that role. And that was really promoted by a wonderful friend called Greg Doran, who was the artistic director, was the partner of Sir Anthony Shea, who I did the play with, Kunan and the King. He began that uh that that non-racial casting. It doesn't matter. When I spoke, for instance, to Danny Glover, Danny Glover would say that the Lethal Weapon movie was the first time a black cop had a family. Wow. In Hollywood. In Hollywood. Always black cops. They end up in the office, in the crime and shooting, they got white partners. But it is Mel Gibson who goes to home. Yeah. It is they are the white character that is a family. But the ones, it's the first time. And and Mel Gibson is actually the dysfunctional character there from a family perspective. Yes. When Glover is a stable family man with daughters and a wife. The wife, that's the first time it went home. Yes. But the Bill Cosby show, it was again the first time we had a really upper middle class black family with no political or racial problems, but very qualified, very successful, very disciplined, talking no drugs. And that meant America had to see themselves that it'd be different. It gave an eye into what's happening on the other side. Right. So the casting now in America is really like non-racial. It is striving to be as much as they can. It would need a very big director, producer like Christopher to make that chance. The smaller ones and the little ones won't take that chance. As I said to you when Halliberry did spell differently, the young actress played the mermaid. There was a controversy, but what are children going to think when they watch this movie, which is targeting young American children who must grow with this fallacy of America being the greatest country in the world? That when the New York Jets fights the LA what it's world series. It's not because it's themselves. It's not, nobody's there. How long have we had a world champion in boxing that they'd never left the shores of America until other people came from other countries began to knock them out? So that's what the American culture is. It'll always be be careful of racial straining issues. But certain people will decide, yes, we're going there. Yes, we're going there because there is a movement of liberalism and is driven by Africa and is driven by people outside. We in this country have our hidden, silent billionaires who could be taking the lead in the art, culture, creative industry, who could promote and invest, not fund, invest, so that our work is exploding on the stages, on the screens of Africa. How many cinemas? Somebody said there are less than 3,000 cinemas in the entire continent of Africa. When the Black Panther opened in Hollywood, there were 5,000 openings across the length and breadth of America. We can't produce those 5,000 original copies. We can't. So by the time you don't like it, we've broken even. By the time it goes to England, it goes to Europe, it comes to Japan, it goes all over the world, we've made huge money, 1.6 billion. Now in South Africa, it opens in Jobek. And then we wait for a vote. And we go to negotiate with the distributor here, Step, not to put us in the Rosebank, in a telenovela, secluded little tiny audiences. You get to the bigger audience because their program also they have a schedule that this year that production from America comes, that British one. So where your movie comes is going to be in between the two weeks. By the time we hear about your movie, you're gone. So we need that big money, but to make money, we also need to write stories that people want to hear. We also need to watch. We got to look at the size up the market. Does the market want to know more about the past, apart it, and the pain? Isn't that documentaries? Or does the market want to know how we are successful? America will paint an untrue picture of great success. America will sell the lie with the $10 billion. And it will be the truth within the first release. And you can argue, but that doesn't happen. That doesn't happen. America does that. When I go to America, I always sort of communicate with some of the Native Americans that have made friends over these 50 years have been working. And they still talk about you and I. They still talk about marginalization. They still talk about, I mean, one good friend said of me, white men promised many things, John, but kept only one. They said they'll take our land, and they did. And they did. You see, we are not conscious of the plot and the plan against the success of South Africa's democracy. We think that 1994 we signed an agreement with all the people of South Africa that from day one we are going to promote this new emerging society, this reinfor nation. When you take something from people and now make it yours and distribute to the majority of the people, why are you assuming that they also willingly join you in that effort? All these commissions and commissions and commissions and commissions are just unearthing things we knew were happening. But there is no projected solution. So what then? My friend in America is one of the congressmen. He was the one who gave me a citation which I posted for my contribution to fighting against discrimination, racism, and all that around the world. He's asking me, explain something to me. In your country, you have the African National Congress, then you have the EFF, then you have the other, but you have this other party that seems to be the remnants of the old apartheid regime, which has reinvented itself as the democratic alliance. How come what kind of population numbers support them in comparison to the other major ones? And then he says, I watched a convention somewhere with nearly in a whole of nearly about a thousand or four, three thousand, and there's about 90% black people who were in that Congress. And then when the winner, the leadership was announced on stage, it was amazing that it did not reflect the body of the conference. How does that happen? He wants to know from me have black people lost hope in the leadership of the ANC that they would vote for any other thing, irrespective of previous history or position today towards freedom. I couldn't answer the question. So it's explain it to me. It's like the question I like, which uh the ANC Women's League always asks and accuses the ANC of patriarchal. Always the 60% members of that elective conference are women. If they just unelected another woman and voted for her, there would be no leader that is woman, not woman in the leadership of the ANC. So how does that happen? You see, so I'm unable to answer to this guy that how come this party has such a huge black following? Does that mean black South Africans have lost hope in the leadership of the ANC or even in the AD as a whole? Maybe it's at this stage that I would like to push you towards political commentary. And a considerably very organized movement has taken root in the same way you were describing about Euro America against immigrants, and these are specifically African immigrants or black immigrants if we include Pakistanese. What I find curious is from time to time you do have xenophobic outbursts in South Africa, 2008, you name them. But it's for the first time, really, because the rest of them would be characterized as spontaneous. This time it's for the first time that you've got an organization with t-shirts, with a logo, with a leadership, uh properly funded, and it's saying Africans must be told to go back. It's on the streets now, chasing them uh like dogs, really. Other black people, they must go stinging. What's your reading of what we have become? I want you to forget that I'm an artist and an actor, and a very well-known one with the quality of the work and the type of work I do. I want you to ask the elder, Udatu John Gunn, who is 82 years old, what is your take on what's happening? So I want you to bracket it that way, to frame it that way, so that I understand that and the audience out there understands that you didn't ask the question because I'm just an actor or a writer. You asked the question because I'm a citizen. And you are a veteran of the struggle for freedom in South Africa, as an elderly veteran South African who has paid for a specific society with your life to be born when you look at the sort of struggle for or against immigrants. What does it tell you about the state of our being as a people, of our society that we dreamed of, uh, but also the state of this freedom that many have died for. I keep saying for every move you make, there is a negative and opposite reaction. South Africans, especially us as African, we're very generous people. We've got such open hearts. We wish good on everybody. Even the bad in our society, we think we can call them to a meeting and talk them out of it. Even the young people who are dying of nyope, who are dying of overdoses and drugs in Western Cape gangsterism, we always believe that there could be a meeting. We talk to them and they would stop what they're doing. What we are not understanding, what we are not missing, is that the process of destabilization started in 1994. That's when the people who were anti of the results of that happened there decided that your struggle, you think you've won, our struggle begins to destabilize and undermine that freedom you are talking about. So when then we get to a situation from 1994 right up to year 2000, there have been Africans in this country. They came from all over the world. There's never been an issue about it. But if you strangle the economy of the country, you strangle it because you are a player in the Johannesburg Stock Exchange. You are a major player in World Banks and IMF and the global financial institutions. You are able to control the economy. You know exactly where to close the tape. And when therefore there's a rise in unemployment within the country itself, because remember during apartheid, there was a quota system of young people who must pass metric. You can't get them all because what are we going to do with them? There are no universities to accommodate these young people. And in universities, there was another strangling little bottleneck to pass as few as possible. Because when they have this education, they become an intellectual opposition to what we are doing. During the late 2000s, remember when there was a strike and people demonstrate for water? They spoke in Zulu, they spoke in Isi Kosa, the SABC of ETV, the broadcasters were interpreting what this person is complaining about. When you watch those marches today, they speak English. The people that are complaining this government is corrupt, this government is not doing this, these people are not doing this, they say it in English, which means the level of those protest leaders has grown up in education. Now they are articulate about the wrongs and the failures of the present system. Now, if you put a little bit of salt in there or pepper in there and talk about people coming from other countries, now you've introduced something I can't spell. With all me, it's very difficult to spell xenophobia. It's very difficult. Is there an X? Where does the H come? So how does it become such an important movement, xenophobia, when none of us truly understands what we're talking about? Who gave us this? So we must be careful sometimes, Dang, that we are given a problem by the enemies of progress and democracy in this country. And that program is problem is given to us by bases of foreign countries that are in South Africa. I was doing a movie called Options in Wood Sprite, and we were driving because we're following the herds, the Verde Bestes, and there was a pod, a sign that says American military base. I nearly fainted. I didn't know there was an American base in South Africa. What are they doing here? I didn't know there was a French base in Franco-Africa, that there was a German base, that they're all over Africa. For as long as Africa is not the breadbasket that feeds the people of Europe, exporting food first, food first. As long as we are not aware that the colonialist that we threw out was followed by the same colonialist coming back as an investor at a more powerful position. So sometimes we get hung up and really kill each other on issues that have nothing to do with us being African. We're given this xenophobia problem. These organizations, you are saying yourself, as an actor because I've got a good ear, you say funded, organized movements that are funded and they have t-shirts. Who funds them? There was a strike in Paris. Because the township outside Paris is bigger than Paris. Therefore, it meant the counselors would mostly come from Paris. And there was an opposition of black as well that was trying to be opposing the other major political parties. There was a helicopter that delivered the pamphlets for the small minority. There's a helicopter. I do movies, it costs $220,000 an hour to do an aerial shot. Thank God to the development of drones. Now we can shoot that thing with one little toy above us. But that's what I'm trying to say. I truly believe that South Africa has been given the xenophobic problem. And we are now dealing with it because we haven't traced the roots of it. The roots of it is to destabilize the whole journey to a better country in this country and a better world for all of us. Now I've been in Khana, I've been in Burkina Fas, I've been in Nigeria, I've been, as I told you now, I've been invited to go to receive an award in Kampala. And I'm going to ask my wife, do you think it's Satan fuzz? Because my wife must have a husband after all these famous trips. So those are the issues. So if you then say you guys can't get jobs, because these jobs are taken by Zimbabweans. Now, which Zimbabweans that have been here since the 60s? Is there a new group arriving yesterday that's taking jobs? Your jobs are taken by DRCs, the Kong because they're running away from the war. There's now the immigrants or refugees from war, refugees, economic refugees in looking for better opportunities somewhere. And all that is so exaggerated within the context of South Africa's economy that me as a South African who knew that I'm not looking for a job, or I am looking for a job, I have all the qualifications, but the economy is not growing fast enough to create more jobs. So when I don't get the job, I put someone to blame. The blame for me is my neighbor, who I know is from Nigeria, who I know is from Mozambique, I know he's married to my sister. He's from Malawi. Why is he now the problem? We need to do a deeper research about what's going on in this country. We're fighting battles, we are given the cause for by other people. And we take this cause and make it our own, and we become so eloquent. How many political commentators have you interviewed? Where does this experience come from? That so-and-so is known as a political commentator. And once he disagrees with the editorial policy of the particular broadcast station, there's no longer an expert, we get another one. Because you have to get a one that serves to decriticize South Africans is a mark of brilliance in political commentators. So we have messed ourselves in a situation whereby it's going to need a meeting, a way to honestly evaluate and analyze what's going on and come up with a strategy. When that Berlin minute was done in 1909, when Africa was cut into regions and areas and boundaries, there was a plan, and that plan was to keep Africa never free and economically powerful, because that would be the death of Europe and the other world. That policy is standing. You see, when when the when Trump talks about the Abraham Accord, that is when was that written? When was that that all the countries in the Middle East must accept the existence and position of Israel? When was that accord? When then you don't want to believe that there was an agreement of how to handle this new emerging democracy in South Africa, especially South Africa, which is so rich in what we need as the West. So rich in what we need. When Mr. My president was called to the White House, and he said there are 600 American companies operating in South Africa now. Nobody listened. They started playing the tape car, Kamalema, Kill the Bua, kill, distracting from this truth that he needs to answer to. And yet in America, there are less than 60 South African companies operating in America. But nobody listened to that because the plan is not to listen. The plan is to create this image of they need us. They need us. Whenever we see black success, we think corruption. Whenever we see white success, we see hard work. So this for me, in my age, and I've grown through this country and through this struggle, I carry the scars in my body and in my mind. I know we're on the right track. But we are not acknowledging the power and the force of the opposition. And that opposition is internal. It's internal. Remember during uh in the 60s, there was that big uh fight between the PAC and the ANC. People who belong to the ANC would have white shirts, people belong to, even during the the the the the Kumalo, the third force. Yes. Right. We really thought the Zulus were fighting the Korsas. We really thought it was IFP. It was against ANC. We really believed that. But there was a third force. You see how we found out? A little late that actually there was a third force that goes in there with the colors and the manifesto of our parties and speak that manifesto in order to ferment violence against each other. The only way to divide South Africa is to divide the people politically and perpetuate violence. So this xenophobia, which is now becoming like South Africa's isolation in the continent and in the world, is something we were given. It's not rooted in a wound. It's rooted in some new philosophy or ideology that your failure is because this government focuses on cheap labor from abroad. The same way the white supremacists are told the reason you are not successful in America are all these compromises and laws and structures and DY, the affirmative action, all these things is because you are poor, they are making money. They even have a wonderful one. A guy drives past on the rolls, and these two rednecks are standing out with the manga caps, and the comp comment is how. So you break this window and the alarm comes, we don't need the cops in this area. So there is an organized crime. And South African justice or police system is so ill-trained by years of apartheid. The only intelligence we had in South Africa pre-94, who is in the ANC underground structures, who is planning to overthrow this government, what black people are doing here, who is sleeping with a white person and is not white, who is doing this, who is stealing this. We never understood just simple case profiling. So that if there's a robbery in this North Avenue, we know which gangs operate in this area. We can pick them up this evening and find out who did that. Now we are learning as a judicial system, especially the police, into understanding how to police this country. Because how can things happen? And the Secret Service didn't know about that. It means we are either colluding or in compliance. Or we are infiltrated. Or we are infiltrated. Or now we have people in the meeting of a secret meeting. We have people in that meeting. So South Africa must look into itself and not say it's xenophobia and say who is giving us this problem and what are the intentions. Because while we are dealing with this problem, the women are not protected, the children are raped. People's high school dropouts is alarming. Poverty is alarming. SASA is so corrupt that people are getting paid when they died 30 years ago. And all in every there is, Charlotte McTlager has not been repaired with billions spent. Each municipality returns billions of unspent in the budget. What is going on? It's not xenophobia, it's not other people, it's us who is sabotaging ourselves. We are imploding as a society because we are refusing to sit down and say, someone's doing this. Call the security sector and says, I'm giving you 15 days, find out who's behind this, or you're all gone. Otherwise, we're going to have a commission, another commission, another commission, another commission. But something beautiful, my friend in LA said, is a politician, congressman. He said, What I like about South Africa, you're not starting from the bottom where the guy who sells the drugs in the street. You're going right on top to the person who is running the organization. You've got ministers, you've got chief of the police, you've got generals going into jail. So in that way, it makes the ground operation leaderless. But the only danger in that is that the ground leaderless is going to find leaders and they're going to start fighting for territorial gains. So the killing on the floor is still going to continue because you need to work fast to get down and fix the country. So that is the opinion of an elder. That's an opinion of an elder. Maybe the final question must be about the arts. And and uh is artificial intelligence announcing the obliteration of film. Do you remember when television came, 1976? Yes. That was the death of radio. People said there will never be radio anymore. Because these box pictures were so beautiful and everybody was like glued. We didn't even perform on Tuesdays because it was Dallas at nine. That was the craze. But radio has survived. Radio is more important now. In my car, stuck in traffic. I'm led by the drive home. I pick up the news. I find out more what's happening in this country on my radio. Now we come to special effects. We come to uh computer-generated images. In the movie The Ghost and the Darkness, Val Kilman and I are fighting a lions, attacking, and there were no lions on set. I was fighting in the air. I was shooting in the air. Now we get into another level of AI. Now I went to Adobe when I was in LA at the Silicon Valley. I was invited just as a walkthrough. I went to Microsoft, I went to Google, and I asked the same question. And the question was yes, in the manner of speaking, but in reality, you can't give feeling within the Android created to replace John Carney. I see. We have not gotten there yet. It is impossible to show sadness on a face that's created. It is impossible to show anger. It might shout. It might be a voice over shouting. But therefore, I'm a member of the Screen Actors Guild. What we're constantly doing is to negotiate each section by section. So that, okay, if you're then going to use John Kanye in Rafiki because I voice Rafiki. But this time you use the copy of John Carney's voice. What it lacks is content of the conversation at that particular time. It will only feed the missed line. So then he explains it to me. We're shooting this scene. Now the camera is on you and the camera is on me, right? And then we then realize in editing that we didn't capture you nodding. It's important that when I make this statement, that you nod. So we go back to the pre-shots to find you nodding in another shot. We can bring you in, right? Or we can use the last take you did in this scene and make that one nod. But we only need you to do this before we realize you're not seeing anything. We go back there. But they say it is dangerous, it is a real threat. The Pope has just pleaded for humanity. The Pope has just pleaded for understanding that we don't play God too soon. But therefore, yes, there's going to be. How many children that are walking around in the world cloned? What went wrong? Because we remember when we talk cloning and dolly the ship, we thought, oh, there it is. We're done. Yes, these can, in the context of speedying business transactions, you could do AI and make these things happen. But in the movie industry, the voice of the actor, the person of the actor, the writer is still needed. Someone must switch on before the Android speaks. Someone said to me, and I love this idea of the EVs and the hybrids because it helps us cut carbon emission, of which I had just won the highest award, which is the Living Planet Award for my contribution over 30 years working for nature conservation under the Green Trust and the WWF South Africa. Here's the point. Now we all have these EVs, Kulestratose Orland. They are charging points. Follow where the power comes from. The power station. Buy coal. You see? So we still need the power station by coal to bring the PowerPoint into where I'm funding my EV. Now, what happens then if the whole SEC province is on EV? We need more power stations. We need more nuclear plants. We need more solar panels and glasses and propellers running. So just to fund my car. Yes, it is an alternative when there are issues that there are too many carbon emission vehicles or power stations that will control. But it can't replace it. We're not there yet. That's why the people who created the first cloning ship were used, show us the ones you failed. No, no, no, not the one that's standing there called Dolly. They look like a head was on the shoulder. The D was that. Somebody also said, when you clone Mr. Inlose, you're cloning him at this age. That's where we get it from. We put it in a test tube. How old is the baby? Your age. So this thing is aging every day. So those were the challenges. So AI will, if used positively, enhance the film industry and cut down sometimes the issue of let's set up that scene again, let's go back. Like we shot the movie in Paris. While in Paris, we waited for an actor who was on, who was in New Zealand. He didn't arrive in time, but so we had to finish filming. And then when you got back to England, we went back to Paris. Because what we were shooting in under the Eiffel Tower. So we always had the Eiffel Tower where he's standing. And there was another voice of another actor from the other side. So when we flew back, all of us flew back to Paris to do the same scene, he now stood behind the image of the Eiffel Tower and all the scenes, we've shot the things, we just needed to be in the room. So that you could cut to, cut to, cut to Jennifer Aniston, cut to John Carney, cut to Adam Sandler, come to Mark Strong, and cut to him. And there he was now saying the lines. So in editing, you could bring it together. I see. But we had to go back. Now, if AI was advanced in a stage in filmmaking, We wouldn't need him because we have him in the other scenes. We would create him there in front of the IPR tower, but his content and facial emotions won't match you and I. And isn't acting the strength really about the interiority? Is this expression? I mean, when when I'm watching the bucket list, it's uh uh Morgan Freeman. Morgan Freeman and yeah, I know the movie, yes. Yeah, and what what you are particularly moved by, because these are men who are making uh accepting the end of their lives. And all they are doing in the movies leading us to the interiority of accepting death. That a that that a I can't do. It can't replace in that sense. I I suppose that's what you mean, the interiority of acting, uh of an acting out uh different emotions, even just an acting a silence. We say acting is a science. If I say to you I'm a doctor, you think I'm in surgery operations and you're happy, you even say, oh, wonderful. If I say to you, I'm a lawyer, you think, oh, it's in court, Supreme Court, if I say to you, I'm a I I am a um a social worker. These are professions accepted. But if I say to you, I'm an actor, what did I see you in? Why do I have to prove myself? You've accepted the guy saying I'm a doctor. You've accepted the guy saying I'm a lawyer. Why do I prove myself to you? It's because you have no concept yet of what I do. It's a science. When I analyze and move into a character, I loan my soul, my being, my body, my voice, every move I make into the creation of this character so that you truly believe that you're dealing with this colonel, you're dealing with uh Captain Traore. I have imbibed myself in him. You believe in me. And then I got out of it and go home and buta to gani meritumandi and with seven, six children, seven children and 20 grand, 10 grandchildren. You know what I'm saying? So when you do that, you can't achieve that in AI. You cannot achieve the emotional content, the soul which troubles, tortured by that truth, and leading to the triumph of surviving the onslaught of human nature. We present that on stage. Why do you think we rehearse for six or eight weeks when we know the lines? Why don't we just go say them? This is the challenge we have, which is the reason I started the John Cunny Performing Arts Academy, is to train already working actors to go back to basics, remind them what were the commitments, what were the steps and methodology. Because most of South African actors have never had the acting lesson. They went to generations, they went to Sidingo, they went to Umubango because they played the role they played themselves. And they're stuck in that role for 15 years in those series. And they've only played one role. Now you come out of that, then there's auditions all over the world. Who do you present there? What is your experience? Send in your CV. I was in Siddingo for 21 years. What was that? You can't act. No. What characters do to play different characters? No, I only played this. Like a young girl said, I don't understand why people are complaining that Tina celebrities and influencers are taking the parts of actors. We don't. We are never asked to act, we're asked to play ourselves. I found that answer very wonderful and powerful. We are never asked to act. So the John Cunning Academy says basics. Let's start. Here's the script. What's your first choice? What's your job? Where does it come from? Go back. When you said to mom, I want to be an actor, why did she freak out? What did she think? Oh no. Why don't you do maybe accounting to have something to fall back on, which I call double negative fall back? How could you fall any other way? You see what I'm saying? So the arts in South Africa today are powered by the truth. We found ourselves in a condition of accepting that what we have is what we have. It is what it is. We find ourselves even questioning ourselves when we question certain things just by thinking and writing and seeing. We now are even moving ourselves into meeting what the market wants out there. Now we are creating writers of one play and they're called authors. Now we're creating actors, and these untrained and bad actors win awards. And there's nothing you can teach them now because he's an award-winning actor. But basically, there is also the concept of what is art? What is culture? What is it that the government must take upon itself and have a department that's going to look after this? In that department, what was the genesis? What was the role? What is our role? We're creating a new society and emerging a society or an existing society. How does art play a role in producing this young person who is going to be useful, make a positive contribution to society? How do we then remind the young children that are growing up who is Abandon Baguandros? Where do you come from? Who were you before now? And you what is your vision? We create this transforming of the knowledge into people, into real experience. So when we watch and we write poems, we write these beautiful novels, we write beautiful papers to read. South Africans don't read. Don't read. When you get to England, the first question is, how are you doing? What are you reading? Well, um, the newspaper. Go to America. Have you seen the Alex Ailey group, this last production? Have you seen that movie? You must see that documentary. That's the normal conversation. Art is in the conversation. Have you seen this latest beautiful tribute to South African's musical, which is happening at the Jobek Theater with Billy Nunama and Seppo Hot Sticks? No. Oh, have you seen there is a lecture that's happening at the Vitz University? It's a Dr. Mbuseni Glove. No. I don't see the need to go there. How are we going to grow our brains as we only feed our stomachs? How are we going to be prepared for leadership? How is the light of the ancestors going to shine upon you and you show signs of leadership so that when the party meets, knows who is the next leader, except expecting the fact that I'm lobbying to be nominated. Then I lobby for votes to be leader. Are you understanding the process happening? So the absence of art is the absence of humanity in building a society. Thank you so much. And uh I sense there's a part too. I don't know how you how do you see it? Up to you. As long as I'm in the country. You see, I managed to change your attitude on interviews. You put me into thought. We had a great time. We really had a great time. Thank you so much.