In an excerpt from her upcoming book Masquerade: The Story of My Life, which will be published in June, Rayda Jacobs describes her film debut.
The first morning of filming arrived. As Jack applied my make-up in a makeshift tent on a field in Athlone at 6am, I realised what I had taken on. I knew by this time what some people thought about my many roles. But I had lived with Abeeda for three years at this point. How could I leave her in the hands of another actress, or another director? It wasn’t that I thought no one else could do it. But I was that woman who struggled constantly between God’s love and temptation. She was in my blood.
Rayda wanted on the set!
I got used to my name constantly being called and people following me around, even to the toilet, waiting with a crackling walkie-talkie outside the door. I was nervous as I took my place. It was my debut in front of the camera.
Action!
The word action became a kind of bismillah for me to proceed. It was the command that put me into Abeeda’s skin and rendered me unaware of the people standing about. I was in character, incensed and shamed by my bitchy daughter-in-law’s pleasurable declaration that my son was a moffie and that he had Aids.
After this scene, I knew I would be all right. There was no time to entertain fear. Abeeda was in every scene. The pace was grinding. The pressure was on. I would be finished with one scene and would be called to wardrobe and makeup for the next.
There was a wonderful atmosphere on the set. The crew was one of the best to work with and the actors, mostly amateurs, gave great performances. There were no histrionics although there were one or two painful moments where I had to dig deep into myself to remain calm. I was playing in the fields of the gods. I only had documentary experience; I was a novice. I kept my cool and a low profile. I wasn’t there to diva it on the set. I was there to make a film and learn as much as I could.
Despite our gruelling schedule, production was held up only once, and only for half an hour. We had done a scene in a jacuzzi with four women in the hot swirling water for almost three hours. By the time we dragged ourselves out of the hot tub, it was 11pm and all we wanted to do was sleep.
I had a quick shower. The scene coming up was an intense one where Abeeda comes to Garaatie’s house in the middle of the night, after having lost all her money at the casino, and tells Garaatie that she’d arranged to have her car stolen.
The trucks and crew were all set up outside in the street. Neighbours stood at their gates, excited to see a movie being shot in their neighbourhood. The cameraman was waiting. Inside the house, I was paralysed with fatigue.
‘Call Ghalik,” Nabé said. ‘It’s too much. I haven’t even had a chance to smoke one cigarette in three hours.”
My brother arrived with ginger tea.
‘The star has conked in,” Nabé told him.
‘Close your eyes for a few minutes and rest, Tiets.”
After 15 minutes, I went out and did the scene. My legs felt wobbly. I feared that I might faint and fall to the ground. When I look at that scene now, I can see the strain in my eyes. I learned afterwards from the doctor that being in the hot water for three hours had lowered my blood pressure, immobilising me for that short period of time.
This didn’t compare, however, with the fatigue of shooting the casino scenes. We’d had trouble finding a casino until Sun City agreed that we could film on their premises. A few days before leaving for Sun City, we were told that we would not be allowed to film on the casino floor but that we could have the use of an empty conference room with fourteen machines. We were shocked. The gambling scenes relied heavily on the glitz and glamour of a casino. We had no time to lament. It was yes or no. We left for Sun City.
Tom Gubb, our art director, saved us. The machines were moved away from the walls and positioned in different combinations for different scenes. There were twinkling lights and buttons and coins and all kinds of casino paraphernalia stuck on the ceiling and the walls. The machines were old and worn out and didn’t take money, and we had someone stand at the back of the machine to pull the notes through. Similarly, we had coins dribbling into a tray with the help of someone pouring coins from behind the door of the machine. We also gave the casino a dark seedy look.
We filmed from midnight until 8am. By 4am I was a zombie and the producer had to virtually pick me up from the couch, walk me to the machine and stick a cigarette between my lips. My dead-beat look worked well for the hazy atmosphere we wanted to create, especially for the last scenes where Abeeda is worn out from gambling.
At last it was over. The crew packed up. People drifted off. After the pick-up shots almost a year later, Reggie, our youngest editor, and I, with the producer, Ross, sat in a darkened room and restructured the film. It was the most rewarding part of the process, to tell the story everyone had contributed to.
Confessions of a Gambler opened at cinemas on Friday