Since his breakout role of Gift Mabuza in Mzansi Magic daily drama The Queen in 2017 and his rise to fame as Karabo “KB” Molapo in Netflix YA series Blood & Water, Thabang Molaba has played a certain type of role — the obnoxious, entitled, and badly behaved brat whom local viewers love to hate.
For the fandom, it helps that his delightful charm is “so babygirl”. Now, his Hollywood breakthrough as Lethabo Khoza in Now You See Me: Now You Don’t, as a South African military vet and sidekick to English rose Rosamund Pike’s villainous Veronika van der Berg is a career turn, with him breaking away from that typecast.
“Locally, it has always been the spoilt brat, rich kid, and I’m tired of that,” he tells me at the beginning of November, a few days before making his big-screen debut in the US heist film. “I want to play the bad guy, villains, gangsters, and drug lords. That kind of stuff, I feel like I would kill it.”
The 30-year-old actor has always been too handsome for his own good. We joke that the biggest misconception about him is that people dismiss him as a “f*ckboy”.
“It works for me, but it’s a misconception,” says Molaba, laughing. “Any person with good looks will get that perception from others. But I’m not a f*ckboy. I’ve learnt to accept and embrace it. It’s an aesthetic, it works, and I’m running with it, even though I’m not participating.”
In the third film in the Now You See Me franchise, Molaba is joined by new cast members Pike, Justice Smith, Dominic Sessa, and Ariana Greenblatt, while Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, Dave Franco, Isla Fisher, and Morgan Freeman reprise their roles. They filmed for three months in Budapest, Abu Dhabi, and Antwerp. Molaba filmed his first scene with “the Four Horsemen” (Eisenberg, Harrelson, Franco, and Fisher), which was understandably intimidating. “It was my first time on a Hollywood set,” he admits. “There I was, with these stars who I have always watched growing up. It was scary, but I managed.”
Molaba landed the role after they had unsuccessfully searched in the UK. He did one audition last year July, then had a callback where he met director Ruben Fleischer and within three weeks he was filming on set. A huge lesson for him was how down to earth the star-studded cast was.
“When you work with people like that, you expect them to be bougie or weird. Like, ‘Oh, I’m a star!’ But they are the most beautiful people,” Molaba says. “They are a delightful bunch of people and that taught me that you are never too big. Never have a nasty attitude — I took that with me. It was humbling because I did tend to have a big head before I got there. So, when I saw these people who are so calm, I realised I need to cut this big head and simmer down.”
A few days after our interview, Pike, who had received an Oscar nomination for her lead role in Gone Girl in 2015, goes viral on TikTok in an interview with British content creator Ian Joseph Paget about her process in nailing the SA accent in Now You See Me: Now You Don’t. The comments section is filled with praise from South Africans like, “This might be the best South African accent from a non-South African ever.”
Pike also receives the thumbs up from Molaba. “She’s a beautiful soul and so friendly, charismatic, and amazing,” Molaba applauds. “Then there’s her work ethic, which is brilliant as well. I loved how she did the South African accent; she killed it. She’s one of the people who got it right. She’s like a posh South African lady.”
Molaba remarks that being on a Hollywood set was a huge departure from the small local productions he was used to. “It’s so different, drastically. From the trailers to how they work, the number of scenes you get to shoot a day and having a stunt double,” he says. “You also have a stand-in, who gets there before you shoot a scene and they need to set up lighting; normally, in South Africa, you as the actor stand there. You have your own driver and car. It’s a big set, it’s insane. I think we had a crew of about 200 people. We each had a stunt double and they first film the scene in their own way and then they show it to us. Then we get to learn the moves and routine. By the time you are on set, you are prepped and know what to do.”
The elder of two children, Molaba was born in Bethlehem and raised in Harrismith. Growing up he used to be a street dancer, performing as part of crews and youth clubs. To make his parents happy, he studied logistic and supply chain management at TUT (Tshwane University of Technology) and then, after graduation, embarked on his acting career. “I was born for the arts,” he notes.
“There is nothing artistic that I haven’t done. In my early years I went to an art school and I was a good drawer. I don’t have that anymore because I stopped at a young age — I felt it wasn’t cool anymore because of peer pressure. I stopped dancing in varsity and made music along the way. When people started making fun of me that I ‘open circles’, that’s when I stopped.
“A lot of stuff I stopped doing in my earlier years because I cared too much about what people thought of me. I had not worked on my self-esteem then. I would advise a younger version of myself to work on his confidence and fully tap into personal development, which is essentially what I’m into now.”
