Nomzamo shared the story of her financial struggle when she started working on isiBaya.
“First year at Isibaya I earned peanuts, but I was working hard. Most months, my bank account was at a minus. And can you imagine, uNomzamo Mbatha wonke pho, at a whole event without a black cent. But you walk like you’ve got it…”
Speaking to a group of students at Nedbank’s Talks 4 Success, the petite actress relayed to the audience how being underpaid and overworked was a way to film school for her. Recalling her journey, she termed it a “battlefield”.
“I was underpaid, I was overworked, but it was fine, it was my way of film school. I was learning, I was in the battlefield, I was shooting in the gym,” she said.
All of this went into teaching her the value of her time. “It’s not until the second year when I left isiBaya, and I went and I got my nice-nice projects – Umlilo, movie – it’s not until then that I understood the value of my time. That actually, me just sitting here is costing me a good R35 000.
But now at the tender age of 26, she’s satisfied with how it all turned out.
“At 26, everything that I wanted, everything that I had imagined, is happening. I’m travelling the world, I’m travelling the world with my job nje, which is great,” the Tell Me Something Sweet actress said.