From 'Aladdin' reject to 'Silverton Siege': Thabo Rametsi's journey to success

Africa Melane speaks to actor Thabo Rametsi on how failure became the major key to his journey to success.

There is something freeing about failure. Contrary to popular belief, failure is not the inability to succeed or a test of one’s worth - it is a test of resilience and endurance.

Failure has the ability to teach us more than success can sometimes – especially retrospectively.

Actor Thabo Rametsi’s story, who joins stand-in host Africa Melane for The Upside of Failure feature, is testimony to this and an exceptional example of how life’s lemons can turn into lemonade if you really want them to.

Rametsi is no stranger to failure. If anything, failure has been an important theme in the star’s life.

He had one of his first tastes of failure when he auditioned to be Aladdin in his school’s production of the iconic character but lost the lead role and was given a smaller role.

Though this loss could have been a derailment to him, it introduced him to acting and gave him a taste of what was to become a fulfilling career before he even knew it could be.

Once he discovered that being an actor could be a job, he dropped out of law school to fully pursue his dreams regardless of any obstacles or failures that may come his way.

It is this stubborn determination that became the cornerstone for his resilience and immovable persistence to achieve his wildest dreams, something that has proven to be a the biggest key to his success.

Failure, here, resulted in more than just a stumbling block - it became a key ingredient to his recipe for domination.

No matter how often it happened, how big the failure was or how often people told him he should quit and wasn’t good enough, the actor’s sheer persistence, determination, and uncanny ability to grow from his shortcomings turned his vivid dreams into a sprawling reality.

Because Rametsi was able to fail, he knew how to succeed, which as the headline suggests, turned failed lead role in a school play into a starring role in the second biggest movie on Netflix.

I've seen the darker side of the public. I've seen that they can be just as vicious as they are loving. So, then I detached myself. I really pick roles for selfish reasons, so they freed me, and I don’t do things for public display or public approval. I’m very free as an actor, so I pick whatever I want to do, I dress how I want to dress, I walk where I want to go, it’s very freeing.

Thabo Rametsi - 'Silverton Siege' Actor

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