‘It was a culture shift’ — Diolan Govender chats shooting intimate scenes on ‘Miseducation’’

Whenever Diolan Govender finds himself on stage or set he comes alive, and shooting for Netflix's teen series Miseducation was no different. 

He told TshisaLIVE he overcame his shyness and wore the professional actor's hat to shoot the intimate scenes. 

“Being a shy child, often, when I would speak, I found myself speaking really fast. Nothing's really changed. I also had a very bad stutter, to the point where people in conversation with me would almost put their ear out to try to figure out what Diolan was saying. My whole life when I conversed with people that's all I saw. I never felt heard, I never felt like I could get my point across as a child, but the one place where I could articulate a sentence perfectly was on stage without a stutter.”

In addition to drama school training as a child, he also studied at the New York Film Academy for a month's summer course in 2015. He said though he had the training and a bit of acting experience, filming for Miseducation was a totally different ball game.

“Now you are not learning, you are a professional. You show up to set on time, you try to show up as your best self. I think the difficult part of moving from student to a professional setting is that the industry has moved to the normality of intimate scenes. My scenes are quite intimate. Walking onto the set for the first day and having these scenes was quite a culture shock for me as a performer but I learnt so much.” 

The actor said he had to give his mother and partner a heads-up. 

“Sitting down with my mother was not as nerve-wrecking as telling my partner of two years who I adore. Walking onto set as a professional, this is my job and I was so thankful he respected that. I think I was more nervous to tell him because I had to tell him before the show for respect's sake. It was a culture shift. It's also exciting and the cast and crew made it so easy to immerse myself in the character in the scene. I act alongside Prev Reddy who I've known for many years so I think that made it quite easy and he's a phenomenal talent. Burnt Onion were amazing in preparing for the scene,” he said.