Star baker
Koek (Cake) star Cindy Swanepoel speaks to DQ about this award-winning South African drama about a housewife who is thrust into Cape Town’s criminal underworld, and why it’s time to put Afrikaans series in the spotlight.
Rising from theatre to a long-running role in a soap and then leading a drama series, South African actor Cindy Swanepoel admits she hadn’t planned her career to work out that way.
But after starting out “surviving” in children’s theatre, she now stars in the hugely successful drama Koek (Cake), which recently scooped numerous awards at the Silweskerm Film Festival.
Swanepoel was among the winners herself, taking home the best actress in a TV drama prize for her role as Cape Town housewife Christelle Smit, who discovers evidence that her husband is having an affair with a stripper named Candi Floss. She then begins an investigation that takes her away from the suburban utopia she knows and deep into the city’s criminal underworld.
Launching in February this year on African streamer Showmax, Koek has become one of the 10 most-watched Afrikaans series on the platform and has recently been renewed for a second season. Written by Christiaan Olwagen (Recipes for Love & Murder) and directed by Johannes Pieter Nel (Magda Louw), the cast also includes Ashley de Lange, Stain Bam, Jacques Bessenger and Sandra Prinsloo as Moekie, the brandy-drinking, cigar-smoking, leopard print-loving, kidney-stealing mob boss she’s soon in debt to.
“It was such a beautiful, giving cast with no ego; just playful and ready and excited to finally tell stories like this in Afrikaans,” Swanepoel tells DQ. “There were no restrictions. Afrikaans people can be very conservative, but we aren’t. I don’t know why that’s a thing. We were all just so excited to be able to tell a story like this. I couldn’t say no to it.”
Swanepoel began her acting career in “frustrating” children’s theatre, before moving to theatre and then landing a part in soap Binnelanders, where she played the character of Dr Annalize Roux.
The Afrikaans series is set around a fictional private hospital in Pretoria, Binneland Kliniek, and follows the trials and tribulations of its patients and the staff who work there. But after eight years working on the show, she wanted to seek out a new challenge.
“I felt like there’s nothing you can now throw at me because in a soapie, the character goes through every single drama you can think of. They should all be seeing therapists,” the actor says.
“It’s really an incredible genre to be able to master, and it really helped me for the future because now, I’m not scared of learning lines and I’m not scared of getting direction and following direction quickly, taking notes quickly. It was just the right time [to leave]. I was stagnating a bit. So it was a good choice and it was perfect timing.”
Leaving a long-running series after so many years playing the same character can leave some actors open to being offered similar roles once they leave. Swanepoel admits she was “fearful” of that, but having a number of film and television credits before joining Binnelanders meant “there are a lot of people what know I’m not just that character.”
“So I’ve been very lucky with that. Koek has really helped me with that,” she says. “I’m not a soapie actor, I’m an actor in a soapie. And I couldn’t have asked for a better turn-out. I got work immediately after Binnelanders in a comedy, which is what I feel I’m really strong at. Comedy is one of my favourite things. I’m always being stupid.”
That comedy was Magda Louw, with Swanepoel joining the second season of the Afrikaans-language KykNet show about the title character and her husband Erhard, who decide to participate in a reality show as a camera crew documents their day-to-day life.
Written by Desiré Gardner and directed by Nel, Swanepoel found a new freedom on a television set after leaving Binnelanders, where every move or action was specific and rehearsed.
“You can’t improvise; you’re kind of in a cage,” she says. “I have so much respect for it because it’s very difficult. But then to go from that to Magda Louw, where they go, ‘All right, you play and then the camera will follow you. You don’t have to worry about the camera, we’ll look where you go and you’re allowed to say what you want.’ I couldn’t believe that all of a sudden we can just play and be silly. It was such a wonderful relief.”
Swanepoel credits British shows such as Smack the Pony and Little Britain for her love of sketch comedy and playing different characters. “Comedy is a very difficult genre. You can’t really teach anyone that. You can’t teach someone timing,” she notes.
“When I was young, I saw that people in theatre would be like, ‘Wow, that drama was amazing. That person was crying, it was so good.’ And I’m like, ‘But what about the person who makes you laugh?’ Because that’s so difficult. If you stand there, you go, ‘OK, I’m going to make you laugh,’ people go, ‘Well, let’s see.’ So there’s an art to be able to do comedy and comic timing.”
Indeed, there are comedic elements in Koek, which Swanepoel describes as a dramedy. On set, the actors were allowed to improvise, “throwing the script out of the window” to bring a layer of authenticity to their performances. “That is what makes it special, too, because you’re not just following a script like a soapie. We can colour it in,” she says. “We can have discussions about it beforehand in rehearsals and make it yours. Everyone brings their own flavour. That’s what’s so beautiful about performing. You must always know what you can bring to the table that’s unique or different or that’s yours, that no one else has.
“That is why I’m so thankful that I could play this part, because I just got a lot of Cindy in it. It’s funny but you just feel very sorry for that person, and I always wanted to achieve that juxtaposition. That’s what Koek is – a juxtaposition. You laugh, you can’t believe what you’re seeing, and then there are really great performances by everyone.”
Produced by Wolflight Films, Swanepoel was immediately drawn to the project after seeing Olwagen’s name was attached, and had only read a synopsis of the story when she signed up. Then, when she did read the scripts, she realised quite how much of the show she would be in as the lead character.
“I was like, ‘Crap, how am I going to do all of that?’” she jokes. “It’s also because you work out of continuity, which is very hard because Christelle goes through an incredible number of emotions, frustration and irritation. And then she’s just tired. So you can’t pitch every emotion at the same place. Mapping it out, I just thought, ‘Let’s just take it a day at a time.’
“That was the hardest part for me. She is going through so many emotions. But I had such an incredible team with me. I can’t even take this all upon myself and say I made this character because I feel we all built it together.”
In fact, Swanepoel believes Koek has seven lead characters, with every main role coming with its own storyline. “But Christelle is the glue that makes the whole story come together. I kind of based her on my sister, who is a mum with two kids, a loyal wife who does everything right. But then she gets an SMS on another phone that she finds and sees it is from another woman, and she finds out that this woman is a stripper. Then they go to a strip club – but it’s more than just a strip club.”
To reveal any more might ruin the surprise of quite what Christelle becomes involved in. “But she grows and she becomes very strong and she doesn’t take any bullshit,” Swanepoel adds. “It’s a lovely journey to for any actor to play, and it’s just such a fantastic ending. It is beautiful revenge.”
With a second season confirmed, Christelle will be returning to screens in 2025, while Swanepoel also hopes the series will have the chance to travel the world – and take the Afrikaans language with it. MultiChoice Studios is handling sales for both seasons.
“It would be so fantastic if people can start seeing our stories. It’s very important,” she says, but with a show set in a strip club, it’s fair to say Koek pushes the boundaries of Afrikaans storytelling.
“It’s definitely groundbreaking,” the actor agrees. “If we can say a swear word and not freak out about it, that’s a big thing in Afrikaans because older people tend to go, ‘No, no, no, that’s not how we are. We don’t do that.’ But we’ve got so many different kinds of Afrikaans. Finally, we feel free to be able to tell it how we really want to and Showmax enabled us to do that.
“Now, it would be incredible if it can go outside of South Africa and people can see how we tell our stories and who we are. It’s just a fantastic story anyway. If it was told in any other languages, it would still be great.”
tagged in: Afrikaans, Ashley de Lange, Binnelanders, Cake, Christiaan Olwagen, Cindy Swanepoel, Jacques Bessenger, Johannes Pieter Nel, Koek, Sandra Prinsloo, Showmax, South Africa, Stain Bam