SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Bobo's a little girl who seems to have a blessed life. She has the run of her parents' farm. But her family is white in 1980 Rhodesia, on the eve of the elections that made Robert Mugabe prime minister and established the country as Zimbabwe. That leads to big questions.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "DON'T LET'S GO TO THE DOGS TONIGHT")
LEXI VENTER: (As Alexandra 'Bobo' Fuller) Mom, am I African?
EMBETH DAVIDTZ: (As Nicola Fuller) No, Bobo.
LEXI: (As Alexandra "Bobo" Fuller) Are you?
DAVIDTZ: (As Nicola Fuller) No.
LEXI: (As Alexandra 'Bobo' Fuller) Is it because we don't have brown skin, Black skin?
DAVIDTZ: (As Nicola Fuller) It's complicated.
LEXI: (As Alexandra 'Bobo' Fuller) Is it because we weren't born here?
DAVIDTZ: (As Nicola Fuller) No.
SIMON: "Don't Let's Go To The Dogs Tonight" is the first feature directed by Embeth Davidtz, the American-born actress who was raised in South Africa, and she also plays Bobo's mother, Nicola. She joins us now from NPR West in Culver City, California. Thanks so much for being with us.
DAVIDTZ: Thanks for having me.
SIMON: This, of course, is drawn from the 2001 memoir by Alexandra Fuller. What made you want to bring this story to the screen?
DAVIDTZ: You know, I read that book many years ago. I read it in 2001 when it came out and just was dazzled by her writing, by the characters in it, by the way she described the complexity of that situation from the white point of view with such heart towards the Black point of view. And then I read it again much later when I was thinking about parts that I wanted to play and just thought, these characters are so alive. They're such a feast for anybody who would want to sort of try and bring this to life. So it really was the memoir. It was her writing that drew me to it.
SIMON: And what made you want to direct, not just star in it?
DAVIDTZ: That was sort of accidental because I at first thought, oh, this is a great part to play. Then I struggled to find a screenwriter and ended up writing the screenplay myself, adapting it right from the memoir, which took a very long time. I'm very slow. I'd never done it before. But by the time I had a complete screenplay, I thought, I'm really loathe to hand this over to somebody else because I don't know if they would understand what I'm trying to do, what I'm trying to say. So it was sort of accidental. I thought, well, I've been on enough sets. I think I know enough about a camera. Let me just try and do it myself.
SIMON: And I have to ask, so much of the material is complex and even difficult. So producers were lined up saying, boy, this sounds great.
DAVIDTZ: (Laughter) Nobody wanted to touch it, and that's also how I ended up just on the lonely road of writing, adapting and then directing it, because when I went to, particularly, producers in the U.S., nobody wanted to touch the race story, the going-back-to-Africa story. And so we just cobbled together a very small amount of money to make it.
SIMON: Let me ask you about the child at the heart of this film. Bobo - who narrates much of it - she is charming and funny. And she loves Sarah, who is the family's Black servant, who plays a kind of mother figure in her life. And yet, there's the scene, Sarah, played by Zikhona Bali, intervenes when Bobo is playing with some Black children on the farm.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "DON'T LET'S GO TO THE DOGS TONIGHT")
ZIKHONA BALI: (As Sarah) Go, go, go, go.
LEXI: (As Alexandra "Bobo" Fuller) Why do you chase my boys away?
BALI: (As Sarah) They are not your boys. They are children, just like you. Are you grown up? Are you grown up like this? Look how small you are. You are too young to be bossing.
SIMON: Help us understand that term - bossing - in the context of the people in those times.
DAVIDTZ: So this scene actually came straight out of the memoir. She wrote the bossing scene - the lines - exactly the way Sarah speaks to her. You're too young to be bossing. It was the entitlement of the white child to boss Black children around on these farms. There was no one who said, you don't treat other children that way. And Alexandra Fuller painted this picture - a very painful one - of remembering herself as that character doing that. And as uncomfortable as it is to tell the story, you see this little white kid who feels filled with power - at the start of the film at least, she does. And this is part of this power that she's learned, that the grown-ups around her have shown her is hers. It's an illusion, and it's certainly an illusion as history plays out, as the events unfold, where they lose their white supremacy, so to speak. So she begins to gain some insight towards the end of the film, but this is the height of thinking she's just invincible.
SIMON: How did you find Lexi Venter, who plays Bobo?
DAVIDTZ: She's quite a find. You know, I wanted a child that had not acted, and I put that brief out, and still some children were sent that were - bless them - acting their hearts out. And I said, then I must put out a post on social media basically saying, is there a child that is carefree and barefoot and unspoiled, has never acted, doesn't know what acting is, that has a cinematic face and a sort of a spirit to her. And this child popped up. Somebody saw I said it, and I know a kid like this. And so that's how I did.
SIMON: That's amazing.
(LAUGHTER)
DAVIDTZ: It's the only way I could have done it. You know, when I saw these wonderful little children coming in who had been skilled and learned how to act, it became performative. And I said, I've got to have a kid who's not performing.
SIMON: And let me ask you about your own portrayal of her mother. Mama drinks too much from the moment - first moment we see her. God bless, she's kind of hard to like, isn't she?
DAVIDTZ: Now, that was a choice, but it was also because I only had a certain amount of time given, you know, the span of the memoirs is over many, many years. But I picked the moment where the war is coming to an end to portray. So the book gives a much fuller picture of who this woman was - what her tragedies were, what her failures are as a human being. And I just thought, I can't - I don't have room really to paint in sympathy because she was a certain way. She behaved in a certain way, and it's the way that's most important to show here. There's one scene where you maybe begin to understand her background and what has driven her to hold onto the land and to hold on to her power as much.
SIMON: When she says I have children buried.
DAVIDTZ: Yes, yes. So that's her - you know, that's her reasoning behind wanting to hold on. It's not an excuse for trying to keep the scaffolding of colonialism in place.
SIMON: What was it like to make this film, set in Rhodesia 40 some years ago in South Africa, today?
DAVIDTZ: I always distinguish between the Zimbabwean situation - existence versus the South African - we're going to make it on South African soil - very different countries, very different histories, very different places. So I always felt a little bit like I have to tread so lightly because I'm not in Zimbabwe, but I didn't have the money or the infrastructure to film it there. Returning personally to South Africa to make a story that unearthed some of this was actually painful, difficult. You know, there were moments of shame, right? I'm playing this awful person. I'm telling a story that shows a parallel story to what happened in South Africa. But in a strange way, there was some completing of the circle because I had this wonderful Black crew and this incredible cast around me. And we were telling the truth. No one said, you're not telling what happened.
SIMON: And I have to ask. You've been acting all these years - "Matilda," - personal family favorite - "Bridget Jones's Diary," "Mansfield Park," "Mad Men," too, as I recall. So have you been storing tips to use as a director?
DAVIDTZ: You know, I think I was doing it but unconsciously. I never was sitting on Steven Spielberg's set thinking I'm going to direct one day. But I definitely was absorbing stuff and watching. And I think all the directors that I worked with, I must have been gathering - like a magpie - sort of gathering bits and pieces and fluffing out, creating a nest somehow that I didn't even know yet I was going to one day sit in. So I'm so grateful for that. I love the acting part of my life. But when it came down to doing it from, you know, being a director, I think more had gone in than I was ever aware of that I then had in my wheelhouse, so to speak.
SIMON: Embeth Davidtz has directed the new film, "Don't Let's Go To The Dogs Tonight." It is in theaters now. Thank you so much for being with us.
DAVIDTZ: Thanks for having me.
(SOUNDBITE OF JEREMIAH FRAITES' "CHAMPAGNE") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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