“I need to be a world chief. What does that appear to be? I do not know proper now,” Lerai Rakoditsoe declares after I categorical 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 change into extra outspoken, confident, and animated. “I’m in an area the place I’m now not taking myself as critically as at first,” 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. “Sooner or later, the Main League DJz have been having an Amapiano Balcony Combine near the place I lived and Vinny requested me to convey him one thing to eat. So, I took him the skhaftin [lunchbox] and simply ended up chilling with them. That exact Balcony Combine is on-line, you may 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 at present 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 international superstardom.
“On my callback script, I believe that they had levelled it all the way down to the ultimate two they usually’d by accident given me the fallacious script,” she recollects. “The title on prime was Tyla. On the time, she had simply gotten her report 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 title 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 give attention to her psychological well being.
