‘She brings a different dynamic’ — Lerato Mvelase tells all on her ‘The Wife’ role

Lerato Mvelase's character on Showmax's telenovela The Wife has got fans of the show singing her praises. They are loving her as Nomusa and she's shared some fun facts about being part of the popular telenovela. 

She plays Nomusa — the woman who replaced Zandile (Khanyi Mbau) in a jail cell after the Zulu brothers broke her out Prison Break style in season one.

In a young Q&A Lerato zooms in on her character and more. 

She said agreeing to join the show was a no-brainer, because the telenovela is the biggest in the country at the moment.

How did you react when you found out you’d got the role?

It was obviously very exciting for me, seeing that The Wife is one of the most spoken about productions at the moment. Which actor doesn't want to be in the most popular show of the moment, to share your talent with the rest of SA?

Tell us about your character, Nomusa?

She's a single mom who lives with her mother and her sickly son. He needs a very expensive surgery, which she obviously cannot afford because she works as a cleaner. When Nkosana approaches her, it's tit for tat: I do this for you, you do that for me. So she's an honest working mum who is now having to go into jail to be a prisoner, so that she can save her child's life.

Nomusa isn’t in Zandile The Resolute, Dudu Busani-Dube’s book that inspired Season 2 of The Wife. What does she add to the story in the series?

She brings a different dynamic, which parents will relate to. As parents, we are often so busy raising our children and trying to survive that we don't take a moment to acknowledge how much we actually do for our families to work, for this machine to keep moving.

I hope Nomusa’s story will also help young people to see the daily sacrifices parents have to make.

So this is one of those storylines that really touches on the essence of who we are as human beings. And I guess that's why many people relate to this character and her sacrifice.

How does Nomusa differ from other characters you’ve played?

When I think of all the characters that I've played, what makes Nomusa different is that within her weakness, we see so much strength.

I've played characters who are strong, overtly strong. And then here Nomusa is: this woman who people might look at and be like, “I have no confidence in her.”

We know she's not a gangster. She's not going to be stabbing anyone in the jail cell. She's probably not going to be fighting anybody. She doesn't want trouble. She just wants to be here, to serve the sentence she needs to serve.

Lerato felt for her character Nomusa who had to adapt to jail life, and grappling with what's to be her reality for the coming years.

“It’s just unfortunate that she's now exposed to the dynamics of a jail cell. There's no peace. You wake up and someone wants to stab you. What are you going to do when you've never stabbed anyone? When you’ve never had to confront people violently or aggressively and now you're faced with that?”

“You know, when you're thinking of jail, you have a preconceived idea of what happens to people in jail and how they have to be butch and boisterous and aggressive. But Nomusa is literally the opposite of that, which makes it even harder for her.”