Actor Biographies

Wanted - three kids to star in a movie of love, lust and betrayal. Straight up - Tiyane Tsumba is looking for love and fame. Sure he knows classmate Linda Karombo is hot for him but she just doesn't push his buttons. But Juliet, now she's one slick chick. Of course she's rich, gorgeous and totally out of Tiyane's league but that don't stop him at all!

Finding actors to play these parts was tight! We're talking 30 schools in Harare (that's in Zimbabwe for all you geographically challenged people out there) and over three thousand teenagers just panting to be A Star baby. Everybody who had the right looks and the right moves was auditioned on video - coz man, the camera never lies and if you can't cut it in front of the lens then forget it.

Our Main Man, Leroy Gopal, scored the part of Tiyane. No stranger to acting, he had appeared in two films before this - Adventure Unlimited in 1996 and Choose Freedom in 1998 - both of them Christian films about teenage lifestyles, but Yellow Card was a whole new experience for Leroy, coz hell, he got to kiss girls in this one! But seriously this film was longer, harder and more demanding than anything he had ever done before.

Leroy is always joking around so at first the casting crew thought he was perfect for the role of Nocks, a major supporting role. After Leroy trooped through the casting rooms a dozen times to read the second lead for yet another Tiyane hopeful, the casting director suddenly struck his forehead in best slapstick tradition and declared "Leroy is Tiyane". The camera loved him and he was fit, essential for all the soccer scenes in Yellow Card.

In the immortal words of Leroy himself - "I had it going on man! Being on set six days a week for 12 hours a day, can you handle �. The one thing I learned to do was to sustain character. That kept me going - knowing in detail what I wanted to bring out that day".

Leroy, like most guys, could identify with Tiyane's fear when he makes classmate Linda pregnant. "It's something anybody around the world can relate to and know: it's happening and it's the truth! This film is real man, the talk is real, the action is real".

Leroy thinks Tiyane's a pretty cool guy - "he has this courage, this urge to get to the top. He's one person who doesn't let things stand in his way. I like that, but you know, sometimes our dreams and our passions land us in trouble, and boy did Tiyane land in lotsa trouble". "He's only human and sometimes it's hard for him to be honest all the time, he's scared to take responsibility - and facing up to having a baby is the thing that might just stop him from having everything he's dreamed of."

Leroy feels young guys can relate to Tiyane's situation. "Teenagers don't want to face their fears. Tiyane is running away from something but it's going to catch up with him."

Leroy reckons that parents have a role to play also in making teenagers more open. His own relationship with his mother is very open. "We discuss everything,".

Leroy aims to go into film professionally some day. "One day I want to write my own script and direct my own film." But first he plans to study Psychology at college in the US later this year.

Ok, now for the Leroy Gopal fact file. Born on 6 July, 1979, this guy is fit man, he plays Rugby, Basketball, Athletics (and now Soccer) and holds the Zimbabwe National Junior High Jump record.

Star Number 2 Ratidzo Mambo come on down!

Ratty was just seventeen (and a sweet convent girl!) when she was spotted at one of the first auditions. Right away, casting director Andrew Whaley was convinced this was the right girl. But the search continued for another six weeks to see if there just might be someone better out there. But Ratty finally landed the role.

A commercial student at the Dominican Convent Ratty had acted in numerous school plays and she still rates theatre acting above film. She admits that when she auditioned the first time, she didn't take it seriously, "but when I was called the second time, I knew that this was it!"

"I found the role of Linda taxing, but I would have responded very differently if I was in the same situation. Linda was too soft, I felt sorry for her. It felt so cruel the way Tiyane (who dumps her) treated her, but she was too much of a victim." So girls, you be strong now and don't let those boys walk all over you!

Ratty loved "the whole big mixture of races in the film. That is something I have never done before. But it's exactly what is going on at the moment, in the community."

"I really hope that this film and what it deals with, teenage love, pregnancy, HIV and rejection will talk to people and, hopefully, change how they act."

Ratty's now gone East, far far East. She's spending a year in the Cane-fields of Queensland, Australia. The mind boggles! So if you see this cute, slightly confused looking Zimbabwean girl wandering around amongst those beer-swilling Aussies - say Ndeipi, what's up babe!

Kasamba Mkumba - Now she's the Bomb!

The role of Juliet in the film took longer than all the others to cast. Tons of gorgeous young women, some of them top southern African models, auditioned but none really fitted the role, until the casting director, unpacking his memory of seven weeks of auditions, suddenly remembered a quiet, young woman from a much earlier casting session at a Harare school. In desperation, he ransacked his notebooks till he found the name.

He called Kasamba Mkumba. "By that stage we had already decided on our male lead, Leroy Gopal," said casting director Andrew Whaley. "When Kasamba auditioned, I immediately thought she had the sensitivity needed, and the guts to go with it. She was adventurous and spirited, and when she teamed up with Leroy Gopal, it became obvious why Tiyane would fall for her, there was definitely a chemical reaction going on!"

Kasamba was also a Convent girl, but the kind that sends the Nuns into hissy fits. She's the rapper KTG and she designs and makes the funkiest clothes this side of Smith Street (you find out where it is)