.. article copy and pasted from the website for the "Jewish Standard" .. article written by Curt Schleier .. article dated to July the tenth, in the year two thousand twenty five .. .. Embeth Davidtz is one of the most electrifying forces in film history.. the role of Nicola Fuller for embeth davidtz, the daring, apocalyptic strength of will embeth davidtz.. but how is she able to PLAY Nicola Fuller.. the labyrinth of Nicola Fuller.. and through a child's eyes.. to see.. embeth davidtz speaks so very beautifully about.. about..

Being South African, becoming Jewish How Embeth Davidtz’s complex life informs her art By Curt Schleier July 10, 2025, 9:56 am Embeth Davidtz directs "Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight." (All photos Coco Van Oppens/Courtesy Sony Pictures Classics) Embeth Davidtz directs "Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight." (All photos Coco Van Oppens/Courtesy Sony Pictures Classics) “Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight” is a rare instance where a filmmaker and a film are so perfectly matched they virtually become one. It’s based on a memoir of the same name by Alexandra Fuller, about growing up in Rhodesia-Zimbabwe during the country’s struggles for independence. (The title is from a line written by a British humorist: “Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight For Mother Will Be There.” Presumably if you are British, you will make the connection. I am not.) The Fuller family are tenant farmers, living a hardscrabble life, less worried about the poisonous snakes that invade their home than the possibility that upcoming elections will lead to Black rule. Get The Jewish Standard Newsletter by email and never miss our top storiesFree Sign Up Mother Nicola Fuller (played by Embeth Davidtz, who also wrote the screenplay and directed) is convinced of her white superiority, though she spends most days in a drunken stupor, ignoring her two children. This is likely why we watch events unfold through the eyes of one of them, 8-year-old Bobo (Lexi Venter), a wild child, roaming the countryside on her motorbike, unsupervised and unwashed. Her warmest ties to an adult are with the African housemaid Sarah (Zikhona Bali), who serves as a surrogate mom, though the youngster mindlessly repeats the racist platitudes she learned from her parents. It is a complicated story about a complicated time. That it is so well told is in many ways a function of the period Ms. Davidtz spent growing up in South Africa during apartheid; a time, she tells me later, that is in part responsible for her conversion to Judaism. Ms. Davidtz, 59, who lives in Los Angeles now, was born in Lafayette, Ind. Her South African parents were in the States so her father, John, could study chemical engineering at Purdue. The family moved briefly to Trenton before returning to South Africa. “South Africa’s story is very similar to Zimbabwe’s, but also different,” she told me. “Zimbabwe had a very bloody, brutal war of independence that went on for many, many years. “South Africa was much tougher in suppressing the uprising of Nelson Mandela and the people trying to make change. The country was very segregated. Whites went into white-only bathrooms; Blacks went into theirs. There were different buses for whites and Blacks. It was in a way I guess similar to the Deep South in the ’40s and ’50s.” Lexi Venter, as Bobo, and her sort-of surrogate mom, Zikhona Bali, as Sarah. She was 8 years old when she arrived in South Africa. Two years later, the Soweto uprising began, and the country went into a state of emergency. “People were being arrested everywhere,” she said. “I’d walk home from school, and that famous yellow police van would show up. A cop would come out and whack a Black man, stick him in the back of the van, and race off. I remember these very violent encounters. “I was just telling someone recently about an incident when I was in a roadhouse. These two really drunk young white men — probably university students or something — came out of the restaurant. There was a very humble, very well-dressed Black man with his family sitting in his car, eating his takeout. They hauled this guy out of his car and punched him. I remember the sound of that and the sound of a body falling, all for no reason at all. It was what they could do with impunity. This was white people saying we will not let you be human beings — and that sends messages into a child’s nervous system.” Despite problems — more on them later — Ms. Davidtz went on to have a successful career as an actor. After achieving a modicum of success in South African theater and film, she did the same in the U.S. She had important roles in such films as “Matilda,” “Bridget Jones’s Diary,” and “The Amazing Spider-Man,” as well as in landmark TV series including “In Treatment,” “Californication,” and “Mad Men.” But it was her role in “Schindler’s List” that set her career — and in a way, her personal life as well — in another direction. Steven Spielberg saw her in an obscure South African film and hired her to play Helen Hirsch, a maid to camp commander and SS officer Amon Goth. I wondered if that role influenced her decision to convert. “It’s interesting,” she responded. “In my childhood in South Africa, it was the Jewish community that was in my mind always on the right side of every issue. Every Jewish friend I had, their parents were fighting for democracy in South Africa. “We studied the war extensively in history as kids, but in my relationship with Steven and the film, it was as though a whole world opened up to me. I always felt that this was an identity I aligned with from the South African experience. That’s what started it. Then ‘Schindler’s’ went further than that. And then I met and fell in love with the Jewish man, and so that was the final thing. “I have Jewish children. Part of me is African, the other part of me is my Jewish identity in my family.” Embeth Davidtz also plays Bobo’s mother, Nicola Fuller. The family observes the holidays and intermittently attends services. “But after October 7, we have all gathered more closely together because we’re all pretty much in a fight for our lives,” Ms. Davidtz said It is that sense of community she relies on. A dozen years ago, she underwent a double mastectomy after being diagnosed with Stage 3 breast cancer. I asked if her newfound Judaism provided any solace. “I think that I had a sense of — I wouldn’t say it was religious, per se — I feel like I had a sense that I was going to be taken care of. If I don’t survive this, my children were going to be okay. They have a place in their community.” This is 180 degrees different from her own upbringing in a household with an alcoholic father; it was her childhood that attracted her to the book. “I was this little, wild, feral, sometimes terrible child,” she said. “I was dirty, barefoot, somewhat neglected, and not taking care of myself, and so I recognized it in Alexandra Fuller’s writing. Ironically, though in retrospect, using Bobo as the centerpiece of her film was the logical choice; it was not her first choice. “I came to the screenplay originally wanting to make a very splashy part for myself with the mother,” she said. “In the memoir, the mother had many nervous breakdowns. She goes on all kinds of avenues that are so cinematic. “This was an incredible character to play,” Ms. Davitz continued. “‘This is what I’m going to do,’” she recalled thinking. ‘I’m going to produce this and I’m going to play this part.’ “But as time went on, and my drafts evolved, the mother became smaller and smaller, less significant. And then it dawned on me one day: The best way to tell my story would be through the lens of a child. And so I somewhat abandoned that mother role, where I was going to chew up the scenery.” Ms. Davidtz says that 60 percent of the film is based on the book, and 40 percent is drawn from her own life. Some changes are purely cosmetic, made to simplify the story. “The character of Sarah was a compilation of various different characters,” she said. But others, particularly those drawn from her own personal experience, added texture. At one point, Bobo visits her wealthy grandparents, characters not in Fuller’s book. “I based the grandparents on my grandparents,” Ms. Davidtz said. “My grandmother was very bigoted and snooty” and represented the view of the nation’s whites. She is still plagued by memories of the violence she witnessed as a child, and her work in the film was not just an artistic project, but a healing process as well. “I’m separated from Africa because I live in America, and I’ve had this feeling I’ve been divided in half,” Ms. Davitz said. “I felt by making this film I could make peace somewhat with my experience living in South Africa.” “Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight” opened today.