What We’re Actually Looking For When We Cast

By Leroux Botha, Creative Director, afrOkaans

I applied for Survivor South Africa twice. Season one and season two. I didn’t get in.

The second time round it was a conflict of interest, because Handrie was working for M-Net at the time, so I did the next best thing and made an independent podcast about season two instead. Years later I ended up as Content Producer on season three, then we bought the format rights when they came back to the territory, and now we’re the ones sitting on the other side of the table deciding who gets on the island.

I tell you this because I want you to understand that I know exactly what it feels like to send in an application and hear nothing back. And because it means I’ve thought about casting from both chairs for a very long time.

So here’s what we’re actually looking for. Not the myth. The real thing.

First, the honest bit about why casting matters so much to us

People ask why Survivor South Africa travels so well with international fans, and my answer is always the same two things. We’re fans of the format making it for fans, and our casting is really well done. If you’ve got a great framework for the cast to play in and you’ve got a great cast, you’re bound to get the best show. That’s the whole equation. Everything else is production value.

Which means when we cast, we’re not filling slots. We’re building the thing the entire season rests on.

Be someone, not something

The biggest misunderstanding about reality casting is that we’re hunting for “characters” in the cartoon sense. The villain. The flirt. The one who cries on cue. We’re not. Producers who cast archetypes get three good episodes and then a flat season, because an archetype has nowhere to go.

We’re looking for a person with a real interior life who happens to be watchable. Someone whose opinions come from somewhere. Someone who wants something specific and will say so out loud.

Look at Plaasjapie season two. Sixteen people, eight men and eight women, from twenty to fifty-five, from Piet Retief all the way to Windhoek. That spread isn’t a box-tick. A farm strips people down to who they really are, and a room full of similar people gives you nothing to watch. The variety is the format.

Give me a solution

This is the phrase we use on the floor when we’re shooting, and it’s become how I think about people generally.

Don’t just tell me it’s broken. Tell me how you’d fix it. My mentor at Egoli, Laurence Laurie, told me once that all you need to remember about directing is that everyone is following your vision, so make a decision, even if it’s the wrong one. Just make a decision. That’s stayed with me for twenty years, and it’s exactly what I’m watching for in a casting session.

When something goes sideways on one of our shows, and it always does, the people who make brilliant television are the ones who move. On Survivor season six we had a contestant quit on the night of a double tribal, and the whole EP team had to invent a mechanism on the spot. That’s the job. It’s also, funnily enough, the exact quality that makes someone great to watch. Decisiveness is castable. Dithering is not.

Bring the thing you’re genuinely good at

Every one of our formats asks you to actually do something. On Klein Paradys, six teams had four weeks to turn an empty micro-unit into five-star accommodation, with a million rand at the end of it. On Plaasjapie, you’re farming without modern technology while the country watches.

So skill matters. Not TV skill. Real skill. If you can build, cook, negotiate, fix an engine, read a room, calm a panicking teammate, or keep your head at 4am when everything’s gone wrong, we want to know. Tell us in plain words what you’re good at and where you learnt it. That one detail moves more applications forward than any amount of “I’m bubbly and outgoing.”

And be equally honest about what you’re terrible at. Some of the best television we’ve ever shot was someone completely out of their depth and refusing to quit.

We need to understand your stakes

Here’s the one most applicants miss. We need to know why this matters to you.

Not “I want to win the money.” Everyone wants to win the money. Why do you want it, what would it change, and what are you leaving behind at home to chase it? Dian Louw won the first season of Plaasjapie and came out the other side telling people to enter because it was the experience of a lifetime. That’s not a marketing line. That’s what happens when somebody arrives with something genuinely on the line.

If you can’t say your stakes in two sentences, sit with it a while longer. Then apply anyway.

Can you actually be in a relationship on camera?

Almost every format we make is a relationship format wearing a different jacket. Klein Paradys deliberately cast pairs who already knew and trusted each other, siblings, parents and children, friends, colleagues, exes, flatmates, because an existing relationship under pressure is the story.

So half of what we’re assessing is how you are with other people. Do you listen? Do you shift when someone gives you new information? Can you disagree without it curdling? Can you apologise? People who genuinely connect are gold, because connection creates conflict that means something, and conflict without meaning is just noise.

Get real, work hard, be human

That’s our company mantra, and we don’t only apply it to crew.

We run our sets the way you’d run a tribe. Crew being “like family” is a nice line, but you don’t choose your family, and you do choose a tribe. You buy in, and once you buy in you live by the rules. Be realistic about what can and can’t be done. Work hard. Make space for other people’s humanity.

Cast are part of that tribe from the moment they arrive. So when we’re looking at you, we’re partly asking a very practical question. Is this a person we can put in a hard, hot, tiring, emotional environment for weeks, who’ll still treat the runner and the medic and the person holding the boom with decency at day twenty-one?

It’s okay to be yourself

I got this nugget of advice when I was 18. This is also the note I’d tattoo on the casting room wall if the tribe let me.

Performing for the camera reads instantly and it kills your chances faster than shyness ever will. Cameras are unbelievably good at spotting someone doing an impression of a reality TV contestant. We’ve all watched enough of it that we can do the accent, and it’s boring.

The people who make brilliant television forget the lens is there by day three, and the ones who forget by day three are almost always the ones who never put on an act on day one.

What to actually do when you apply

When you send us a video… send a video, not an essay. Ninety seconds, shot on your phone, no filter, no script, in a room where we can hear you. Tell us who you are, what you do, why you want this show specifically rather than any show, and one story you’d tell a stranger at a braai.

Be specific. “I’m adventurous” tells us nothing. “I drove my bakkie to Namibia on my own with R2000 and a broken aircon” tells us everything.

Don’t polish it. A slightly rough, warm, real video beats a beautifully lit one every time, and the casting team clocks the difference within about eight seconds.

And then trust your gut

The other guiding principle of my whole career is that your gut is seldom wrong. I’ve followed mine into a soap opera art department, onto an island, into a food truck, and into buying back a format nobody was using. It’s never once steered me badly.

So if you’ve read this far and something in your chest went “ja, that’s me”, listen to that. Go and look at what we’ve got open. Apply even if you’re convinced you’re not the type, because some of the best casting calls I’ve ever been part of were people who very nearly didn’t send it in.

Bronze is also on the podium, as my mom says. Just get yourself into the running.