With post-production on the second season of Apple TV+’s Presumed Innocent wrapping up, Brandt continues to pursue complex, challenging roles in an industry where, she says, talent alone does not always determine success.
But beyond the screen, one of her most meaningful commitments is supporting the Kay Mason Foundation (KMF), which helps young people access education and develop the potential to become future leaders.
That commitment was in focus at the foundation’s Hummingbird Ball, held at Zeitz MOCAA on 7 October. Brandt addressed guests from South Africa’s business, finance and cultural communities by video, highlighting the importance of creating opportunities for young people.
Born in 1981 and raised in Athlone, Cape Town, Brandt left South Africa for New Zealand two weeks after matriculating. Her career has since taken her into international television and film, with roles in productions including Lucifer, Spartacus and The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live.
Despite her growing international profile, she remains interested in roles that challenge expectations and allow her to explore characters beyond conventional stereotypes.
“I’m just really interested in dynamic, layered, complex stories,” she says. “Sometimes women can be written one-dimensionally, but there are such incredibly juicy roles in television, particularly for women.”
Brandt says she looks for characters with different perspectives and avoids judging the people she portrays. In a recently completed film, Bender, she says she advocated for greater complexity in the story’s matriarch, while helping bring the social context of Ireland in 1979 into the character’s experience.
Her ambitions extend across genres, from period dramas to action and romantic comedy. She describes herself as a chameleon, pointing to her role in The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live, in which she used her Capetonian accent while playing a military officer.
“I think I just want to keep people guessing,” she says.
Asked about her most meaningful role, however, Brandt’s answer is personal: being a mother to her son.
Brandt’s commitment to the Kay Mason Foundation is rooted in her understanding of how access to opportunity can shape a young person’s future.
She says her own life has taken a different path from the one originally envisioned for her, largely because opportunities and resources can determine which possibilities become reality.
That experience informs her view of the foundation’s work, which focuses on developing young people’s potential rather than defining them by their circumstances.
“When we look at charities in Africa there’s an association of poverty, and that’s all you see,” she says. “While there are socioeconomic obstacles for young people, what, for example, the KMF programme is doing, is tapping into potential, allowing children to grow and to be real changemakers in the country.”
For Brandt, education has implications that extend beyond individual achievement. In a country facing high unemployment and persistent social challenges, she believes investing in young people is part of building a stronger society.
“When you invest in a child’s education, the long-term value for a country is invaluable,” she says.
“We do have a responsibility as a wider community to create those opportunities for them.”
The foundation’s Hummingbird Ball provides a platform to introduce its work to a wider network of potential supporters, bringing together people from business, finance and the arts around the role of education in creating opportunity.
The Cape Town event followed the previous year’s London ball, which Brandt describes as a glamorous occasion that also helped generate support for the foundation. One highlight was meeting actor Jeremy Irons, whom she admires, and his subsequent donation of a Bvlgari watch for auction at the Cape Town event.
For Brandt, events such as the Hummingbird Ball offer a way to connect people who may not otherwise have encountered the foundation’s work with an initiative focused on young South Africans and their future prospects.
She believes the emphasis should be on what young people can achieve when they are given the right support, resources and encouragement.
Brandt’s own career has involved navigating uncertainty, rejection and the realities of an international entertainment industry in which opportunities are not always awarded on merit alone.
Her advice to the foundation’s scholars reflects those experiences: setbacks should not determine how they see themselves or what they believe they can achieve.
“To use every ‘no’ as a fuel to the fire of their journey,” she says. “The ‘no’s’ and the lows and the disappointments — those are where the diamonds are formed right in the middle of that fire.”
She is also candid about the challenges of building a career in Hollywood, where casting decisions can depend on factors beyond an individual’s ability.
“The most talented person doesn’t always get the job,” she says. “But that can’t determine how you see yourself as an artist.”
Her message is to remain focused, keep developing one’s abilities and understand that progress requires sustained effort.
“Be prepared to do the work every single day,” she says.
As Brandt continues to pursue international projects, her work with the Kay Mason Foundation provides another way to use her public profile: helping bring attention to the opportunities education can create for young South Africans.
Her journey from Athlone to international screens is not a template that every young person will follow. But her experience reinforces a point central to her work with the foundation — that talent and ambition need opportunities and resources to flourish.
For Brandt, supporting young people is about helping them develop the confidence and capabilities to shape their own futures.
In an industry built around visibility, recognition and performance, it is a reminder that some of the most meaningful work happens away from the cameras.
