Ever since I was a kid, I’ve been obsessed with penguins. I would collect penguin figurines, pillows, and sheets, and make penguins out of clay. Since there weren’t a lot of penguins in Macon, Georgia, I only got to see them occasionally—and only in zoos. Then, in December of 2016, I was offered a TV gig. I wasn’t super excited about the script, but I saw that it was shooting in Cape Town, South Africa, where there’s a large population of African penguins you can see in their natural habitat. I guess sometimes life is like that: You take the gig to meet the penguins.
The lead-up to the trip was really stressful. There had been all this drama about getting a rushed work visa for South Africa, with visits to the consulate in New York, and I didn’t get the visa until the very last minute. I was completely thrown by jet lag when I reached Cape Town, and the schedule had me shooting every single day, then getting on a flight home. I said, “No, you don’t understand—I’ve got to meet the penguins!” They ended up adding in a day off, so I got a driver, and we headed south along the coast toward Cape Point’s Boulders Beach.
The drive was spectacular, hugging the coastline of the South Atlantic Ocean, with the bluest waters I’ve ever seen and green mountains jutting up behind them, everything sunny, warm, and gorgeous. When we got to Boulders Beach, I got out of the car and started walking along this path, until I approached a corner where I started to hear a very funny honking sound—almost like a bunch of donkeys were nearby. I turned the corner onto the beach, and there they were: hundreds of penguins. Most were sort of bracing against the wind, but some were sunbathing, or diving in and out of this translucent water, or hanging out on the rocks in the distance. I was beside myself.
The penguins that live in South African waters have a slightly different look: a sort of prominent head with a cute black mask and little pink patches around their eyes. I expected them to be waddling around more, but mostly they were nestled down in their little feathery bodies, with their cute pink eyes slanted against the wind and sun, seeming so content and peaceful. I got so excited, and the guide was looking at me like I was crazy—like, Lady, they’re just penguins, sort of like a New Yorker looking at pigeons— but I was tearing up with joy.
Later that day, I was also able to take a chartered boat with some of the cast and crew of the show to Robben Island, which is where Nelson Mandela spent 18 of his 27 years in prison and where he wrote Conversations with Myself. It’s a stark place, and it gives you a sense of what he had to endure for all that time. When you first get there and go on this walk surrounding the prison, the penguins are there as well, and I remembered that penguins sometimes symbolize adaptability and survival through difficult conditions. I thought of what a beautiful parallel that made to this incredible man, who experienced such hardship on his way to rising above oppression and becoming a symbol of peace himself. The gig was pretty short—I was there for maybe 10 days—and it was a very serious role in quite a dark project, which made it especially nice to be able to get out and see the sunshine and have some celebratory experiences. Growing up, my best friend was obsessed with seals, and I was obsessed with penguins, and we bonded over it: I’d paint seals for her, and she’d give me little penguin figurines. We’ve remained friends to this day, so that first time seeing penguins on Boulders Beach, I took about a million selfies and was texting my friend all the photos. I didn’t know what time it was where she was, but it didn’t matter—I just had to send her these photos. The driver was very patient, but I could tell he was thinking, Wow, this lady is spending a lot of time here. But I had to capture the last little moment on video, and I went away happy.
