“I need to be a world chief. What does that appear to be? I do not know proper now,” Lerai Rakoditsoe publicizes after I specific my awe at her evolution over the previous 4 years.
The 22-year-old TV presenter, doing her ultimate yr in politics and worldwide relations on the College of Pretoria (UP), laughs once I level out that she’s nothing just like the picture that made her well-known. She has turn out to be extra outspoken, confident, and animated. “I’m in an area the place I’m not taking myself as severely as to start with,” she replies. “I knew the one factor I had going for me coming in was professionalism. Now I need to have enjoyable with myself.”
Once I first met the starry-eyed Rakoditsoe in early 2021, she was the brand new child on the block. I did her first press interview when she made historical past as Nickelodeon Africa’s first African presenter on the age of 18.
“A number of months previous to me becoming a member of, Uncle Vinny had joined MTV Base and we have been nice associates,” she says, remembering how she ended up presenting NickMusic. “Someday, the Main League DJz have been having an Amapiano Balcony Combine near the place I lived and Vinny requested me to deliver him one thing to eat. So, I took him the skhaftin [lunchbox] and simply ended up chilling with them. That individual Balcony Combine is on-line, you’ll be able to truly see the second that modified my life on a rooftop. I despatched an audition tape to Paramount [the parent company of MTV Base and Nickelodeon Africa] after I’d been requested after which forgot about it.”
She is presently shaking issues up at MTV Base.
Subsequent, Rakoditsoe tells how she crossed paths with Grammy winner Tyla early in her profession earlier than the Water hitmaker discovered world superstardom.
“On my callback script, I feel that they had levelled it right down to the ultimate two and so they’d unintentionally given me the mistaken script,” she recollects. “The identify on high was Tyla. On the time, she had simply gotten her document deal and dropped Getting Late with Kooldrink. Much more loopy, simply earlier than that I had interned for her first supervisor. It was humorous to see her identify pop up once more. It’s loopy to see how a lot she has achieved.”
Rakoditsoe is now again at UP after taking a break final yr to concentrate on her psychological well being.
