While Clint Eastwood was in South Africa shooting Invictus, wife Dina decided to adopt the six-member Joburg boy band, Overtone. Debashine Thangevelo enjoyed a tête-à-tête with the vivacious former TV news reporter and gained insight into her decision to turn manager and have her journey documented for E! Entertainment’s reality show, Mrs Eastwood & Company…
BEING in the limelight – especially as Clint Eastwood’s wife – is a full-time job for Dina. Not that the Oscar-winning actor, director and producer, who is famed for his Dirty Harry flicks, is demanding, rather it is his schedule. And Mrs Eastwood is a hands-on mother to 15-year-old daughter Morgan and 19-year-old step-daughter Francesca.
Dina met Overtone, the Jozi boy band, during Eastwood’s shooting of the film Invictus.
So what prompted her to take on the challenge of managing a band and footing the bill to relocate them to the US?
“Literally, they were so broken when I met them. They were breaking up and ended up being extras in Joburg for a huge rugby scene that Clint was shooting in the stadium and they had signed up to do that months before I met them.
“They were in that crowd scene and one of them texted me saying: ‘Hey, remember us?’ So I said to Clint: ‘Go find those cute boys with the spiky hair and go say ‘hi’ to them’. He did find them and said: ‘Would you like to cut a demo for my soundtrack?’ They said: ‘Sure’, and then we started working together.
“Clint’s son was scoring the soundtrack and the boys did the vocals.
“The next thing I knew, I had to fly them over to finish the vocals and just said: ‘No, I’m going to keep them here; I’m going to make them pop stars’. And Clint just said: ‘Whatever makes you happy dear’, but he was rolling his eyes I’m sure because, trust me, it wasn’t cheap. But they are still here, we have a record on the radio, we have a TV show. If it all ended tomorrow, we did more than we could have dreamed off.”
With tabloids inadvertently lending prominence to celeb-centric reality shows like Keeping Up With the Kardashians, Brandy and Ray J: A Family Business, Braxton Family Values, The Simple Life, The Osbournes and Britney and Kevin: Chaotic, TV networks have found it rather advantageous to capitalise on the interest.
On agreeing to have cameras in her home, Dina explains: “I got to tell you, I never meant for it to be about my family. I only wanted viewers to know how amazing Overtone was. The production company has taken it in a different direction.
“If anything, I want people to know we are an average American family like everyone else out there. We have been on air for several weeks in the States, and we have been getting good comments.”
But how did her husband feel about it?
“Yes, he did object at times. He thought it was a great idea to just promote the band – when it was about Overtone, my brother and myself. When we added our children to the mix, he was a bit hesitant. Then once we taped a show with the kids and he saw it was pretty cute, then he was okay again.
“It’s been a tough call for him, you know? He’s not really of the reality generation and I think it has been a bit of an adjustment for him to have to give us his blessing to do it, but he has done that,” she explains.
Touching on the controversy around Francesca and the Birken bag, she explains: “There’s nothing you can understand until you watch the episode and, if anything, it’s pure gossip.
“Francesca had it for a day and brought it home. I lectured her for 48 hours straight on how stupid it would be to carry a bag of any name that costs more than $100 because you could be building a school in Africa or helping 100 homeless people. But it wasn’t her bag.”
As this is a reality show, I asked Dina if she had any conditions about what she was comfortable with having aired and what was a definite no-no.
“I’m kind of an old-fashioned mom and would always tell the crew and the kids there will be no sex talk in front of me. I don’t want to hear it and I don’t want the kids to hear it. And I don’t like the F-word… even though I say it – quite a few times.
I ask for just respectful behaviour. But that was not always honoured because real-life is not structured and things happened that I didn’t want on the show such as arguments, crying, one of the band members gets very drunk and does something stupid and it is all on camera,” shares Dina.
With this reality series more of the wholesome variety, viewers might not get the melodrama and tittle-tattles they are accustomed to.
Dina says: “God, if anything, I think we are a little boring. I think the production company wishes we had more conflict and chaos because it’s a lot of love going on and a lot of love doesn’t sell sometimes on television.”
Thankfully, curiosity does help. But viewers can decide if this show merits a watch – after all, it gives local band Overtone a fantastic platform!
• Mrs Eastwood & Company airs on E! Entertainment (DStv channel 124) at 10pm on Sunday.