Schalk Bezuidenhout trades stand-up for 9-5 in Die Kantoor

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 leaned on my Kempton Park days, and some of the people I grew up with. I knew lots of Tjaarts.”

Schalk co-wrote seven episodes of 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 characters’ 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). You can catch up on both Showmax and 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