Publications
Partners
Julia Anastasopoulos is best known for playing the quirky, DIY obsessed character Suzelle from the bite-sized YouTube series Suzelle DIY. This series has been a roaring local success with over 70 videos on different DIY projects from How To Make A Braai Pie to How To Make Slime and has gotten almost 22 million views. Suzelle is so familiar by now that it feels like you know her.
But Julia is a very different person in real life.
An actress, designer, illustrator and co-creator of a massively successful YouTube series, the talented star is now kicking off a new series with a brand new character.
Julia is currently filming the first of Showmax’s original series – a mockumentary called Tali’s Wedding Diary – an eight-episode, 20-minute series which will launch on the streaming service in December.
The basic premise of the show: a self-obsessed, Sandton princess who has moved to Cape Town has hired a documentary crew to film the build-up to her lavish wedding to her property-agent fiancé, Darren. Sounds like fantastic comedy fodder, doesn't it?
But how is Tali different from Suzelle, you ask?
“Very,” says Julia.
“The most obvious difference is that everyone loves Suzelle, since she's so sweet and creative. She's quite a tragic character in a lot of ways and we sympathise with her, and although Suzelle is self-centred, Tali is much more so.”
Apparently this character is one you love to hate.
"She's a bit of a bridezilla. She wants this to be the perfect wedding come hell or high water and we see the lengths that she will go to, to make it happen the way that she wants to. I think that's the biggest difference.
"Also they're from very different walks of life. Suzelle is very crafty and very DIY, while Tali is completely spoilt. She would never know how to DIY anything. She would pay someone to do it. She's never had to do anything her whole life. She's got cash and she probably doesn't know what to do with her life yet.
"She's still sort of floating around a bit, whereas I think Suzelle is much more focused and much more passionate about one thing. Whereas this character [Tali] is a little bit... lost. She doesn't know what her calling is and I think we learn that in the series. The reason she behaves the way she does is because she's actually quite insecure.”
And how is Tali different from Julia herself?
Julia laughs and says: "We joke about this all the time because I play all these different characters and I actually sometimes don't know who I am. [more laughter] I'm a total Gemini.
But me and Tali are very different. I'm (hopefully) much more grounded, much more centered, whereas Tali is much more self-centered. She's ambitious, but her motivation isn't really in the right place. But there are some similarities: she loves fashion and she's fun and I definitely identify with that side of her.
"She definitely wears a lot more daring clothes than I would ever, but it has been so fun to get dressed up for this show. She rocks the athleisure look a lot.”
For this character Tali, Julia wanted to make sure that she felt authentic above all else. How does one go about creating authenticity?
"I've released funny little Tali videos on Instagram just for fun to try and build a bit of a social media audience for Tali. But it really helps me with the character. Also I just to put myself in those situations. It helps me broaden the world of the character. In terms of getting into character before a shoot, it's quite quick for me. I can quite easily just go there. I don’t over learn any lines, otherwise it feels a bit rehearsed," says Julia.
Don't be fooled by the comedic roles she chooses. Like most good comedy actresses Julia actually has a serious background in drama and has done many Shakespearean plays. She says it definitely helped her confidence as a performer:
"I think it has a lot to do with confidence. Once you've tackled something as challenging as that [Shakespearean plays] I think that that is a huge confidence booster. ”
Julia recently wed Ari Kruger, co-creator and director of both SuzelleDIY and Tali’s Wedding Diary. She confesses that the planning her own wedding definitely fuelled a lot of the material for the new series.
"There's so much comedic material in my everyday life, and getting married was definitely one of those things. You meet the funniest people in the process. There are all these things that happen that you can't actually believe - from wedding registries to the dress.
"There's just so much drama and there's just so much material that we thought it would be such a brilliant place to put Tali in - this wedding situation. We also hadn't really seen a parody wedding story in a South African context so we were very excited to create that," she says laughing.
Tali isn’t a brand new creation, however.
Julia and Ari had the idea for the character a few years before they finally decided to go ahead and make a show with it.
"We had the character, but we didn't really know what to do with her. With Suzelle, she kind of organically found her groove. So we thought 'Okay, maybe we should make another web series with this character'. So we shot a pilot as an experiment just to see what it was like and we very quickly realised that it was the kind of show that needed a much bigger cast and a much bigger production. So, we decided we needed to go for it with Tali's Wedding Diary.
"We then sent off the pilot to a few places and Showmax quickly got back to us and said 'Let's make this show' and it's been the best thing ever. We've had this amazing opportunity to make it the way that we wanted it.”
On working with her significant other, she says it’s tricky not to take work home.
"It does happen, but it's always about a miscommunication. And it's sometimes frustrating because we're wearing all these different hats - he's the director, I'm the actress. He's telling me what to do, but at the same time we're co-creators of the show.
"And he's got an opinion of what it should be, but he's also my husband, so there's this constant juggling. It's funny because everyone who knows us, the Suzelle team [in particular], know our relationship and the way we operate.
"And sometimes I'll, quite tongue in cheek, give Ari a hard time, but I think the crew is probably thinking 'Oh my word, this chick. How does she talk to the director?' [laughs] But it's fun. It's cool. It’s more fun than anything. We joke around quite a lot which is great."
Julia and Ari have also started a production company called Sketchbook Studios, which produces SuzelleDIY alongside an array of new characters and online content.
Julia, Ari, and the crew are about halfway through shooting the first series for Tali’s Wedding Diary, but what does this mean for fans of Suzelle?
"We haven't been able to shoot any Suzelle for these few weeks, but before we began shooting [for Tali's Wedding Diary], we shot a few episodes so that we can release a few afterwards. Obviously Suzelle isn't going anywhere and we just need to keep it up, but because this project has been so all encompassing we just haven't been able to give any attention,” says Julia.
But that’s not all. Major fans of the series could be in for a treat if the creative duo gets their way. When asked about her next big project, Julia says:
"So there are a few things that we really wanna do. The one thing is the Suzelle movie. We feel like now that we know how to make a TV show, we can definitely make a movie..."
I don’t know about you, but I’d pay good money to see the Suzelle origin story.
If you want to see Julia Anastasopoulos in a way you’ve never seen her before, then make sure you’ve got Showmax in December to watch the original series of Tali’s Wedding Diary.
