Igiza, the Showmax thriller series, is one of Kenya’s best television series ever produced, and a pivotal part of that contribution is supplied by Eddie Mbugua, who plays the criminal money laundering boss Chris Mugambi. Chris is a bit of a psychopath, a ruthless split between animal and businessman. When I meet him for an interview, Mbugua kindly corrects me and tells me that it’s just Eddie, the former being his father. On first impression, he’s completely diametric to Chris; he’s warm, sincere, and very funny. So naturally, the first thing I want to know is how a man like that gets into a character like Chris.
“I played a villain in Shakespeare’s version of King Richard III at The Phoenix Players Theatre. I say ‘Shakespeare’s version’ because having been raised in Yorkshire, King Richard is highly revered,” explains Mbugua. “James Falkland directed the play and we reached a compromise that I was to portray Richard as a charismatic villain and not a monster. The aim was to extract empathy from the audience and guide them into a form of Stockholm Syndrome. It worked. So I used the same template with Chris Mugambi and I believe it was also effective.”
Indeed, it was very effective. Chris doesn’t do anything anybody in a Scorsese gangster flick wouldn’t. But his intensity does place him in the more deranged echelon of Scorsese characters like Joe Pesci.
Mbugua took a gamble to not to portray Chris as a typical African villain – coarse and threatening. “Which is a fallacy as they would always be the first suspect in a crowd. Good criminals are able to blend into society and are even benevolent members of the community, so as to hide their true demeanour. It’s what Freud called Reaction Formation – projecting a completely different persona in public from the primitive self. There’s a difference between having power and cad behaviour. Chris has power so doesn’t need to show it off, except where necessary,” Mbugua explains.
I tell him that some viewers describe his character as a psychopath, and whether he could condense his character into a few words.
“I would describe Chris as a misunderstood genius,” he says. “I’ve heard references by others that he’s a psychopath or a sociopath (the difference is that psychopaths and born and sociopaths are created)… but he is ambitious, and determined to get what he wants and protect what he has, just in an avant-garde manner. As soon as I read the script during auditions I fell in love with the character.”
Mbugua started performing at Phoenix Players Theatre in 1996 and since then, he’s played a plethora of characters but Chris, by far, is his most interesting role to date. “Chris was an amalgam of Professor Higgins and Caligula, an intelligent monster, and getting into his character was a form of catharsis. I had to ‘search for the monster’ in me, although a few friends said I was Chris playing Eddie—I need new friends,” Mbugua says.
He adds: “As actors, we are artistically bound to project our characters as real as possible, even if so separate from who we are; that’s why it’s called acting.”
I’m curious how separate it was in his case, and whether he’s ever met any real people like Chris.
“I give credit to Showmax for venturing into such an audacious plot. White collar crime is rampant in our continent and there are nefarious characters such as Chris in various societies and they too require representation – not just burying our heads in the sand and creating an ideal fictitious world. A creative balance is necessary and audiences would also wish to have a glimpse of ‘how the other half live’ and this is supported by the vast interest in historical narco series that have mushroomed.”
For all his brilliance, a villain like Chris deserves his second outing on screen. And if he had the powers to be in the writers room, Mbugua knows exactly the direction he would want to see Chris go in Igiza season two.
“I feel the human side of Chris ought to be relayed. Every saint has a past and every sinner has a future so circumstances lead to changes in our persona and beliefs. We also experience turning points where things veer so far from our path that we are forced to introspect and adapt,” Mbugua says.
Being a psychology graduate, Mbugua is able to tap into this and dig deeper into the ‘human aspect’ of the characters he portrays. He describes it as “a psychoanalysis beyond the script that formulates the backbone of a character then supersedes dialogue.”
Igiza is available to stream on Showmax.
