adminNomvete, who was popularly known, loved and equally hated by her fans for her bitchy role as Ntsiki Lukhele, published the book this week in London, where she is now based.
In it Nomvete discloses for the first time her love affair with the soapie’s other ex-kingpin, veteran actor Sello Maake ka-Ncube – but she stresses that their sizzling relationship was before she joined the king of soapies.
A coy Maake ka-Ncube declines to discuss the contents of the 181-page book.
Nomvete, who is now starring in Britain’s favourite soapie, “Coronation Street”, lays bare her secret of aborting at age 23 and the pain of having a miscarriage more than a decade later.
Impregnated by a “committed” producer she refers to as “Forbidden Lover”, she was keen to keep the baby this time around.
The details of how she got pregnant having sex in the back of a car and how she lost the baby makes this an unputdownable read.
She is also scathing about the “Generations” management and some of the fellow cast members, saying the producers were incompetent and heartless.
She also exposes a culture of alcohol abuse that engulfed the soapie during her six-year stint.
“One morning . . . they told me that one of the actresses had turned up drunk and the day was made up mostly of her scenes.
“It was so bad the producers had told her to sleep it off, so they would see what she was like in the next couple of hours; consequently, the rest of us just had to wait and see,” she writes.
“Furious, I stomped off to the studios to see if I could catch one of the producers, but I bumped into the actress who was playing opposite the drunk one that day.
“This woman was swaying and reeking of alcohol. When I asked her what the hell was going on, she responded, ‘If you can’t beat them, join them’.”
Fellow cast members at that time, Sophie Ndaba-Harrington and Themba Ndaba, say they did not experience anyone drunk on set, but Ndaba says that some actors were treated better than others “because of race issues”.
“The narrative is hilarious!! I recognise some of the individuals she is referring to. My view is that ‘Generations’ is a TV production and not a psychiatric ward,” the soapie’s founder, Mfundi Vundla, commented on Nomvete’s tell-all.
About the night on which she got pregnant, Nomvete writes: “I was very drunk and very tingly, having consumed a fair amount of champagne.
“Forbidden Lover at some point in the evening whispered in my ear that he and his girlfriend had split up and she had moved out. He suggested I follow him home . . . my libido rocketed through the stratosphere.”
She crashed her car behind a police van as she was speeding to his bed that night.
“I woke up to this woman staring down at me and telling me to get out of her bed. I felt like a whore,” writes Nomvete.
She’s not shy to go into detail about her failed marriage to Zimbabwean Farai Sapiens who was seven years younger than her.
She says Sapiens once proposed a threesome with her and his other lover, made her take ecstasy and abused her emotionally and financially.
Nomvete was born to South African exiled parents in the UK. Her father was a UN economist while her mother was a nurse.
They have both died.
She grew up in, among other countries, Ethiopia, the US and Zambia. – Sunday World.
Online Reporter