‘The Penguin’: SA actress Marié Botha on international role

MARIE BOTHA ON HER ROLE ON ‘THE PENGUIN’

Tell us more about your role in The Penguin?

I play Magpie, a villain with a split personality and a penchant for shiny things. When we see flashbacks of Sofia Falcone in Arkham Asylum, we meet Magpie. She befriends Sofia, but eventually paranoia takes over and Sofia starts to see Magpie as a threat and a spy. This is the first time we see Sofia truly pushed to the edge and the outcome is dire.

Playing Magpie was like walking a tightrope. In one way, she is this beautiful, dreamy, childlike creature, and on the other side of her sits darkness, trauma and vengeance.

It’s a gift to get to play characters that call on me to transform and put myself in parts of a psyche very unlike my own – Magpie is like that. She is troubled, haunted by childhood trauma, yet still trying to maintain positivity and look for beauty in her life. It’s sort of sweet and deeply sad. She is very dear to me.

What can you tell us about the experience of playing in a big-name series?

Watching Cristin Milioti navigate the role of Sofia Falcone, the female lead in The Penguin, was awe-inspiring. The work she was doing allowed me to see what it takes to lead a show of this size and calibre, and I am so ready to step into that space one day soon. I was extremely fortunate to have her as a compass and to be able to play opposite such a legend. I hope to work together again in the future.

HOW MARIE BOTHA LANDED A ROLE ON ‘THE PENGUIN’

How did you land the role? 

I was visiting my family in South Africa at the time and had just extended my trip when I got the callback. It was to be on Zoom with the director of episode 4, Helen Shaver. I logged on at midnight, 6pm New York time, and the most intense callback of my life ensued. We worked for ages on the first Magpie scene, doing it this way and that, almost to a point where I thought, “Am I messing this up? I don’t know which way is up anymore.” Right after the audition I was certain that was the end of the road on this one. But the next day I got a call from my agent that I had booked the job and needed to be on a plane back to New York the next morning for a hair and makeup test!

Are you a New Yorker or a South African?

It is lore that you have to have lived in New York for 11 years before you can call yourself a New Yorker, and I’ve done 14. However, recently on a film set, a born-and-raised Brooklynite told me that, because too many people were claiming the title, it is now a new unspoken rule that you have to do 15 years. Shh, don’t tell him, but I know I am a New Yorker in my soul. In my heart, though, I will always be South African.

It’s impossible to let go of the Afrikaans “boeremeisie” in me, and I would never want to. The moment I step off the plane in Cape Town and smell the sea air, hear the melting pot of languages, step through immigration like a local and see my parents waiting to take me to Hermanus, I know I’m home, always.