Dineo Langa on peeling back the layers in Unseen S2
As the sister of the main character (Zenzi, played by Gail Mabalane), Dineo has described the experience of playing Naledi as deeply insightful. To fully embody the role, she often found herself immersing in Gail's world, constantly exploring the emotional depth of her character by asking, 'how would this make her feel?'
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A lot of the prepping came down to understanding how to plot the world and the emotional points. She would also find musical associations for her character before stepping into her scene.
She says, 'As soon as I knew that my lady had run away at a very young age, I knew that my lady had worked very hard to suppress whatever trauma that she had gone through. I knew that my lady had locked away her past, in a 'stronger than most' kind of way.'
Stepping into the characters
The second season breaks away the peels from Dineo's character and pushes us into her traumatic past.
She and Gail got to meet the actors who play the younger versions of their characters. It was an expressive moment of getting to see how they explained their worlds to each other.
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'We've watched the Blood and Water, we've watched them do Unseen, we've watched them do so many other things and they really are amazing storytellers. So me having the chance to meet the younger versions but also now having the root of the trauma, the point at which Naledi runs away, how it affects her physically. The trauma is so deep that she is a girl who throws up at the sight of a roadside, you know? So it goes that far deep.'
READ MORE | Gail Mabalane on her first lead role in Netflix's Unseen - 'It's something that I don't take for granted'
The sisters confront the trauma of reconnecting with their abusive past in a way reflects the complex dynamics of sisterhood. The older sister shoulders the responsibility of picking up the pieces, while the younger one withdraws, avoiding the emotional weight of it all.
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'In an abused environment, Naledi goes, 'I can't,' which is not understandable to a firstborn who needs their sister in the form of Naledi. It's not understandable that you're gonna dip when we've got a mother with a chronic illness and you're just gonna run away. That is not fathomable in Zenzi's world because, again, the level of responsibility and what she's been raised with.'
Being unseen
While the story centers on Zenzile and the often-invisible lives of domestic workers, Dineo highlights how it also mirrors the broader reality of women in South Africa today.
'So the dynamic of even being seen—people will say, 'Yeah, women are doing so much more today.' But there's a large percentage of women who are just being told, 'Hey, your part. Don't do more than that.'
Yet, she adds, even when they shrink themselves or stay silent, they're still met with the same criticism and scrutiny.
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