Years active 1986–present Name Casper Vries | Role Actor | |
 | ||
Occupation Actor, comedian, entertainer, composer producer, director Movies Oh Shucks! Here Comes UNTAG, Alec to the Rescue Profiles | ||
Education Stellenbosch University | ||
Casper De Vries does William Smith
Fifty shades of NATELLA with Shaleen Surtie-Richards and Casper De Vries
Casper Johannes De Vries ( [ˈkaspər də ˈfris]; born 1 June 1964) is a South African actor, comedian, entertainer, painter, composer, director and producer. He has gained a significant following among South Africa's Afrikaner population as well as Afrikaners living abroad. More recently due to his work on Comedy Central Africa he has also gained popularity among English speaking South Africans. He has both South African and Dutch nationality. Besides Afrikaans, he is fluent in Dutch.
Contents
- Casper De Vries does William Smith
- Fifty shades of NATELLA with Shaleen Surtie Richards and Casper De Vries
- Background
- Comedy Style
- Live shows
- Characters
- Television
- Controversy
- Filmography
- References
Background
He was born and raised in Pretoria where his parents owned a toy shop. He attended Hoërskool Silverton where he was known as Cassie, and went on to study drama at the University of Stellenbosch. His shows are very popular amongst Afrikaans-speaking white South Africans and he even held shows in the London Palladium, a city where a lot of Afrikaners reside. Recently Casper has also started to perform in English to appeal to a larger fan base both local and international.
Comedy Style
Casper de Vries uses satire, blue, character, observational, sketch and word play comedy styles in his stage performances, and he is very outspoken on topics such as humanity, religion, social norms, language and politics.
Live shows
His professional career started in 1986 with Hallo Suid-Afrika (Hello South Africa), and has been on-stage year after year until he started performing his one-man shows in 1997 where he started gaining major success. Here is a list of Casper's one man shows:
Characters
De Vries has characters that he portrays himself in his live shows and on TV:
Television
Casper's Live shows have been featured on South African television channels like SABC 2 and kykNET and more recently Comedy Central Africa since 1986.
He wrote, produced and starred in a 3-series comedy variety show, Die Casper Rasper Show (2001–2003) and a soapie-spoof Haak & Steek (2003/04). More recently he became the host of Doen met 'n Miljoen!, the Afrikaans version of Deal or no Deal. In the early 1990s he also hosted an America's Funniest Home Videos-style show called Devries. In 2009 he guest starred in South Africa's longest running soap, Egoli.
In 2010 he appears as a guest artist in the Afrikaans improvisational TV-show Proesstraat and as judge on the popular Afrikaans reality show Supersterre alongside Shaleen Surtie-Richards and Theuns Jordaan.
He has appeared numerous times on Comedy Central Africa in the stand-up comedy show, Comedy Central Presents…Live at Parker’s, in 2013. Several of his stand-up, one-man comedy shows have also been featured on the channel including "Mondig", "Broeders, Ancestors" and "Mondig deel 2".
On 31 October 2013 during an exclusive interview with Herman Eloff on Channel24, Casper announced that he was going to retire from doing his one-man stand-up comedy shows, after his latest tour "Casper Goes Khaki" is over. "Now I can concentrate on my painting and I can do movies and TV shows. I’ve done the one man show thing for 27 years now and it’s time to stop now," Casper told Channel24 during the interview.
Controversy
In 2004 a radical right-wing activism Afrikaner group called the Boeremag was on trial for terror attacks in South Africa. During the trial plans to blow up De Vries together with eight other individuals was revealed. The group is quoted for saying that the reason for this plan was because De Vries "was not on the right path".