Broken Vows actress Nambitha-Ben Mazwi may seem confident and beautiful now but it wasn’t always the case while growing up. She says having a darker complexion made her a mockery to her peers. This teasing got to her and her confidence levels was very low as she didn’t feel comfortable in her own skin. However, that’s a thing of the past as she wants to use her experience to encourage girls who find themselves in that predicament to be comfortable in their own skins.
Trying times
It’s safe to say that everyone goes through their fair share of teasing growing up and so do our celebrities. She explains how as a young girl her complexion was likened to a dark bird called Nomyayi and this followed with a song kids used to sing when she was around, “Kids would follow me around and sing, nomyayi, nomyayi, everytime they got a chance to,” she says. She pays homage to her grandmother who instinctively knew that something was upsetting her and her grandmother was instrumental in building up Nambitha’s confidence. “My grandmother always used to tell me and reassure me that black is beautiful and that people with that complexion are special because people who are lighter easily reveal their emotions. When they’re sad they turn blue, when they’re embarrassed or angry they turn red,” her granny told her. The moral of the story being that people who are darker can hide the emotions and no one really knows what they’re thinking or going through, somewhat or a built in poker face. “A while back I did something with Love Life that had to do with people being a different shade of colour to others, so I’m somewhat of an ambassador for complexion.”
Acting career
The talented actor started off her career doing musicals in her hometown of Port Elizabeth in the Eastern Cape. Those musicals took her to places as far as Europe. Thereafter Nambitha worked at the Gramercy theatre in Manhattan, New York where she got her first glimpse of the stage and acting. Later on she got her first professional acting job on a drama series called Black Mirror. Most recently she got a chance to act alongside Hollywood great Mr. Laurence Fishburne on the Madiba series that plays every Monday at 9pm on Discovery channel, where she plays the role of 18 year old Nandi. She currently star in etv’s drama series Broken Vows as Lulu.
