Schalk Bezuidenhout is best known as an award-winning stand-up comedian but he’s been quietly building an equally impressive showreel as an actor. He’s earned four SAFTA nominations in eight years, for roles like Johan Niemand in Kanarie, Attie in Taktiek, and Danny in Hotel, which won him the Best Supporting Actor – TV Comedy prize.
Even so, none of those roles prepared anyone for Schalk’s almost unrecognisable turn in Die Kantoor, the Afrikaans adaptation of The Office.
Die Kantoor stars 2025 Fleur du Cap and Woordfees winner Albert Pretorius (Niggies; Nêrens, Noord-Kaap) as Flip, the office manager at polony specialists Deluxe Processed Meats.
Inspired equally by Rassie Erasmus and Leon Schuster, Flip welcomes a documentary crew to record his rise to greatness … and his occasional pranks. He’s living his own Chasing The Sun. Everyone else is just trying to survive eight hours without throttling anyone.
Schalk plays Tjaart, Flip’s sidekick. Instead of Schalk’s trademark jerseys, moustache and furry afro, Tjaart has an army cut and beard. Think Gareth and Dwight in the British and American versions, completely reimagined by way of Kempton Park.
“He’s almost the opposite of Danny from Hotel, who was naive and cute,” says Schalk. “Tjaart is divorced with a kid, he’s a chainsmoker, and he’s never sitting. He’s lekker common; I really leant on my Kempton Park days, and some of the people I grew up with. I knew lots of Tjaarts.”
Schalk co-wrote seven of the episodes for Die Kantoor alongside multi-award-winning head writer and director Bennie Fourie, who was one of Schalk’s groomsmen in 2022 . “When I’m acting, I normally come in right at the end to help make some of the jokes a bit stronger, but this was actually the first time I helped write from the beginning with Bennie,” says Schalk. “He did the hard work: I was more the guy who threw ideas around over a glass of wine, and made jokes while he sorted out the story and the structure. So we made a good team.”
Schalk admits they felt the pressure adapting such an iconic mockumentary. “People have very high expectations. I’m a purist, so I always point out the British version is the original, but South Africans know the American version better and Michael Scott is so loved as the boss. We really wanted to make something that can stand alongside the American and British versions and be just as good and just as cringey and just as funny.”
Schalk says their biggest challenge was to win over fans of The Office. “The fine line we had to walk was that we needed to stay close enough to the original that it still felt like The Office but different enough that it felt like an original show. Even though it’s part of a franchise, we really wanted to make it an original series, that was full of our people and could only have been set in South Africa.”
He adds, “I do find it funny that people say, ‘Oh, The Office in Afrikaans. Can’t we make something original?’ But when it was Idols SA, everyone went, ‘Yay, Idols is here.’”
In November 2024, Schalk and Bennie sat in a guest house in Bellville and asked, “Who will the characters be?”
”We had a lot of freedom,” says Schalk. “We could have made the boss a Black man. Or a woman. But Albert was simply too good not to cast, otherwise we might have been more original.”
The ensemble cast also includes Carl Beukes, Daniah de Villiers, Gert du Plessis, Ilse Oppelt, Lida Botha, Mehboob Bawa and Sipumziwe Lucwaba, who were all encouraged to improv lines. “Bennie loves improvisation and so many of the best moments came from that spontaneity,” says Schalk.
He admits a lot of the jokes walk a fine line. “I’m a big fan of humour that pushes the boundaries,” he says. “The key is to make the audience laugh at these character’s ignorance, rather than with them. So a lot of the comedy comes from the reactions of the rest of the cast to the things Flip and Tjaart say and do.”
When they weren’t in scenes, the cast had to stay at their desks, almost like background extras, to maintain the feeling of a 9-5 office. “I played so much solitaire that Bennie actually had to force me to delete it, because it was taking so much of my attention,” says Schalk.
Die Kantoor releases on Tuesdays on Showmax and Sundays at 8PM on kykNET (DStv Channel 144). It’s also on DStv Stream.
Next up, Schalk will be touring in Australasia and Europe from February with his next stand-up show, Hey Hey Divorcé, inspired by his 2024 divorce. “It was really therapeutic,” he says of writing the show.
Watch the episode 3 promo:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?
NOTES TO EDITORS:
Bonus question:
South Africans are very familiar with mockumentaries now, from The Office to Tali’s Wedding Diary, but that wasn’t the case with the kykNET audience when Hotel came out in 2016. How was Hotel’s initial reception?
People were very confused. I was so proud of the show but I didn’t think we were going to get a second season, because the reactions on kykNET’s Facebook page were so overwhelmingly negative.
I remember one specific comment, that the camera work on the show was unprofessional because the camera kept shaking. Meanwhile the camera was on a tripod and the DOP was moving the camera for it to shake, to make it look like a handheld documentary.
It was annoying because I was like, ‘You all watch Modern Family. And here’s a show that is doing the same thing, with shaky camera interviews, and suddenly everyone doesn’t understand, just because it’s in Afrikaans.”
But you know what? Everyone had a lot to say about Hotel at the beginning the show, but in Season 2 it took off and we had won all those people over by Season 5, just because of its endearing nature. By Season 5, I didn’t see even one negative comment, and people were dressing up like the characters for parties and Halloween. The show really became a bit of a cultural phenomenon.
Even now, we still get people who tell us they were bored in December so rewatched all five seasons.
Rave reviews for Die Kantoor
Early reviews have praised Die Kantoor for capturing the cringe comedy that made the original series a global hit — while making it unmistakably South African.
“Holy polony, this is actually funny…. So many have tried to recreate The Office‘s success… but have turned out to be about as memorable as a potato. However, it’s South Africa’s Die Kantoor that feels closest to the original magic of the sitcom.”
Sergio Pereira, Fortress of Solitude
“Die Kantoor excels at its cringe comedy… ample laugh-out-loud moments… has come out the gate sprinting… Pretorius is virtually perfect as Flip, and so is Bezuidenhout as Tjaart, and Daniah de Villiers as Emma, and Sipumziwe Lucwaba as Nqobani, etc.”
Joel Ontong, News24
“Like many others, I was a little skeptical about an Afrikaans version of the international TV hit The Office. However, the first episode… allayed every worry and created a fan in me… There may be those who think, ‘I never liked the original series, so why would this be any different?’ I was one of those people. Yet I laughed out loud.”
Mizanne van Wyk, Maroela
“It really is so funny; I couldn’t stop laughing.”
Barry de Klerk, aka The Movie Guy.
“Hilarious!”
Smile FM producer and stand-up comic Phil de Lange