Actor Thabo Rametsi on portraying influential figures in history and his creative process

By Katlego Sekhu

Actor Thabo Rametsi starts his day on 959 Breakfast with Dineo Ranaka and Sol Phenduka.

Speaking about playing influential figures in history, the star says it’s important to remind people where they come from.

I think it’s important to tell the stories of those people, the leaders, where we come from. It’s more of an all artist propaganda and I’ve chosen projects that are my propaganda. Just to remind people who they are, where they come from.

On being typecast in local productions, Thabo Rametsi says he doesn’t mind it as long as the characters have great significance.

The work I’ve done here locally has generally been about those stories. If I get typecast telling the stories of our heroes that’s a good typecast.
I’m going to be playing Yasuke soon with Mandla Dube. Yasuke is also a Southern African Sumarai. He is a guy from Mozambique who went to Japan and became the great Sumarai that helped established Japan as we know it.

Speaking about his process of getting into character, the actor says he does as much research as possible.

My process is generally; I get a hold of the script and start piecing the character with as much research as possible. And then I hang around the people of that world to get the real perspective of them.
Like with Solomon Mhlangu I got to hang with his brother. But also, that’s dangerous because when I asked his brother about him he told me the perspective he knew about him.
And when I go to someone else and I get a new perspective so gets so difficult because you get so many perspectives about someone.