Kyle Clark: The making of a modern heartthrob

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There was a time when the walls of a teenager’s bedroom served as a shrine to celebrity crushes. Some of us plastered them with double-page spreads of soap stars; others preferred gatefold portraits of sporting heroes. Movie posters competed for space with nostalgic prints and Polaroids. But amid these carefully curated compositions, there was almost always a special spot reserved for a heartthrob.

And one of South Africa’s latest contenders for the title is Kyle Clark.

From the smouldering bad boys and girls of the 1950s — James Dean and Marilyn Monroe — to the Backstreet Boys and Blackstreet crooners of the 1990s, and the celebrity crushes we carried around on our cellphone lock screens in the 2010s, the South African heartthrob has evolved with the times. Now, thanks to streaming, Clark is back on our television screens.

Kyle Clark in ‘How to Ruin Diwali: Meet the Parents’. Clark isn’t your typical eyebrow-flashing leading man. He’s a performer, presenter, entrepreneur and, by his own admission, a man with a very clear vision of where he’s going. His substantial social media following might suggest just another influencer who has successfully crossed over into acting, but that would be to overlook the 15 years of hard work, rejection and reinvention behind his latest success.

In an industry increasingly accused of casting social media personalities for their follower counts rather than their talent, Clark has been quietly putting in the work. His leading role in Netflix’s How to Ruin Diwali: Meet the Parents this year represents what he describes as a moment of “stepping into my power”.

I feel like my career is a love letter to the community.

Clark’s journey began with dancing and singing. His first brush with the limelight came when he had a stint on So You Think You Can Dance South Africa, followed by another on Idols. He subsequently headed to the US to hone his dancing skills at New York’s Broadway Dance Center, where pursuing his dreams also meant washing dishes to pay the bills.

“If there was ever a legacy I leave behind, I don’t just want to be known for my artistry. I would love to be the poster image for resilience.”

The American experience toughened him up. There were difficult encounters, people who doubted his potential and the everyday indignities of trying to make it in a fiercely competitive industry. But rather than abandon his ambitions, Clark returned to South Africa and began rebuilding his career.

He eventually secured a place in local television history playing Sudesh Reddy in the long-running Afrikaans soap 7de Laan, a character involved in the show’s first same-sex wedding. He also joined the cast of The G-List, a reality series following young queer South Africans working in the entertainment industry.

Today, Clark divides his time between his presenting duties on SABC 3’s Expresso Morning Show and the demands of his burgeoning acting career. His latest breakthrough is Netflix’s three-part romantic comedy How to Ruin Diwali: Meet the Parents, the newest instalment released last month in the successful How to Ruin franchise created by Rethabile and Katleho Ramaphakela.

The series, which premiered on October 30, stars Clark opposite Rosemary Zimu-Mnguni in a story that brings a traditional Indian family and a Zulu family together for Diwali, with predictably chaotic consequences. It’s a significant moment for an actor who’s spent years working towards a leading role.

“I’m just gonna say it with my chest — I always knew I was gonna be a superstar,” he declares. It’s a statement delivered with the confidence of someone who’s learnt to take rejection on the chin. Without family connections in the entertainment industry, Clark has had to figure out its peculiar rules for himself. “When I look at my family, everyone is in corporate and in academia and I have always been the black sheep,” he says.

Ironically, his character in How to Ruin Diwali couldn’t be more different. Clark plays Varshen Chetty, a mild-mannered people-pleaser whose decision to bring his Zulu fiancée, Mmabatho, home to meet his traditional Indian family sets off a spectacular chain of domestic disasters.

Where Clark is poised, expressive and immaculately groomed, Varshen is a wallflower, a man who’d rather avoid confrontation than risk upsetting anyone. For an actor accustomed to projecting confidence, playing someone who seems to possess so little of it was surprisingly demanding.

“Before I was Varshen, I was on Expresso six to nine in the morning. There’s a je ne sais quoi about the line delivery, like a Top Billing presenter, and I had to switch that off because Varshen was not that person. “He’s a more subdued and laid-back man. He allows things to fly over his head. He doesn’t face issues head-on and he allows them to fix themselves instead of him being the one to do it.”

The character stayed with him long after filming ended. “It took me three weeks to switch him off because I automatically became isolated and introverted. Innately, that’s who Varshen was. He hid his life from his family.”

Kyle Clark and Rosemary Zimu-Mnguni in ‘How to Ruin Diwali: Meet the Parents’. For an actor whose public persona is so closely associated with his sexuality, playing a heterosexual romantic lead has also prompted renewed scrutiny from viewers. Clark, however, sees the role as an opportunity to challenge the limitations too often imposed on queer performers. “I feel like my career is a love letter to the community. It’s a showcase that we are unlimited and that we are unstoppable. No matter the construct that’s put on us, we don’t need to be typecast based on our gender and sexuality.”

He points to Jonathan Bailey, the openly gay British actor who’s become an unlikely heterosexual heartthrob through his performances in Bridgerton and Wicked. Bailey’s success, Clark believes, demonstrates that an actor’s sexuality needn’t determine the roles they’re permitted to play.

Nor does he believe that queer performers should be required to turn every public appearance into an exercise in activism. “I will say that there’s this automatic pressure to have to speak up as a queer community and to continuously advocate for who we are.” It’s a responsibility he takes seriously, but one that shouldn’t overshadow his right to be recognised simply as an actor.

Sexuality isn’t the only barrier Clark has had to negotiate. He’s equally outspoken about the limited opportunities available in a South African entertainment industry that remains relatively small, with established performers often occupying the same spaces for years.

Growing up, he was captivated by shows such as Backstage, which helped launch the careers of performers including KB Motsilanyane and Lorcia Cooper. Those programmes created opportunities for a generation of young talent, but Clark believes the pathways into the industry have become increasingly difficult to navigate.

He’s particularly critical of the racial categories that continue to shape casting and representation. In an industry where opportunities are often divided between black and white performers, he believes actors from other communities can find themselves stranded somewhere in between.

“For any coloured, Indian or demographic in between, our fight has been a million times harder,” he says. “It makes it hard for someone like me to feel like a part of the South African entertainment industry.”

Rather than wait for the industry to change, Clark decided to create opportunities himself. Through his company, Clark Media, he’s moved into talent management and creative entrepreneurship, working with personalities including Nambitha Ben-Mazwi and Zanele Potelwa.

He speaks enthusiastically about the glamorous women he represents, but there’s a shrewd businessman beneath the polished exterior. When he heard about an upcoming production featuring a mafia boss, he was initially told he was too young for the role, which had been written for an Indian man in his sixties. Instead of accepting the rejection, Clark arranged to meet the producers and pitched an alternative: surely a powerful crime boss would have a son, someone equally ambitious and hungry to inherit the family empire? The producers were sufficiently intrigued to begin developing a character inspired by his suggestion.

It’s a neat illustration of Clark’s approach to an industry that has repeatedly told him ‘no’. If the part doesn’t exist, why not persuade someone to write it? And he has no intention of slowing down. With interest from Los Angeles and potential representation in the US on the horizon, Clark is already weighing his next moves.

He doesn’t have one definitive dream role, although an Indian James Bond or a turn as Marvel’s Doctor Strange would suit him nicely. For now, he’s enjoying the momentum of a career that finally seems to be catching up with his ambitions.

After 15 years of auditions, disappointments, reinventions and sheer determination, Kyle Clark is no longer waiting for someone to give him his big break. He’s learning how to make his own.

And if he has his way, that bedroom poster is just the beginning.

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