A decade ago, Dean Goldblum was a contestant on SA's Got Talent, and today he's one of the country's rising acting talents.
A decade ago, Dean Goldblum was a Grade 10 student with the hopes of making it in the industry by entering the competition, SA’s Got Talent.
In 2025, Goldblum is one of the rising young talents in South Africa’s entertainment industry.
“Thinking back… I think those environments, like SA’s Got Talent, and my early days at the SABC, allowed me to fall in love with a whole bunch of things to do with performing,” Goldblum tells The Citizen.
On SA’s Got Talent, he auditioned as a singer; today, he is a fully fledged actor with a body of work on screen and on stage.
“…it was also the first time in my life that I felt a very strong tether between myself and the camera. It really was where that first initial spark for working in film and television came from,” he shares.
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Dean Goldblum, the actor
Goldblum has always had a passion for acting, evident in his shooting movies with my friends on weekends and in watching Bruce Lee movies as a kid.
Today, he is part of the popular South African TV show Scandal.
The baby-faced actor has been part of Scandal for the last five months, and he describes being part of it as special, considering that it’s the show’s final season after e.tv chose to cancel it.
@etvscandal Just when you think you have figured out De Wet, boom Ockie shows up! 🤭 #etvScandal ♬ original sound – Scandal!
“It’s genuinely been beautiful in a million ways! From a craft and life perspective! Working with the whole team – a team who is so deeply uplifting, and incredibly skilled is always an absolute privilege, and of course – being able to witness the deeply impactful effects that Scandal has on the viewers has been really inspiring,” he shares.
“We’re really so grateful that we were able to join the Scandal family in its final chapter, and will definitely cherish every second shooting in the City of Gold.”
In addition to his work on TV, Goldblum has also worked in film.
He has appeared in Tubi Original feature Match, The Kingdom mini-series, and his first US feature film, Hulu/20th Century’s Darby and the Dead.
In one of his most recent projects, Goldblum appeared in the Netflix production No One Saw Us Leave, in which he performed in Hebrew.
“It was awesome to work with the team from Netflix and Mexico, and of course, the whole crew in South Africa! In terms of the part that I was playing, it’s always such a privilege to act in a foreign language because it adds a further element to the transformation process,” he says.
He says some parts feel closer to home than others, and, from an acting practice and theory perspective, each part an actor portrays is about allowing oneself to immerse oneself in the circumstances of another person’s life.
“A foreign language element always makes me feel like we’re expansively transforming! So speaking Hebrew was immediately a transformative process as we take on the rhythms, sounds, behaviours, and cultures of the humans who speak those languages.”
He is only fluent in English but can understand a range of South African languages.
“I’ve also been very grateful to have been afforded the opportunity to learn various language essentials from an array of regions due to parts that I’ve played on an array of projects! I’ve played characters that speak Zulu, Afrikaans, English, Hebrew, and South African Sign Language! A whole bunch, which is such a huge huge huge privilege.”
Having dabbled in different forms within acting, Goldblum says it’s essential for an actor to be flexible and not be boxed in one sphere of acting.
“Being able to exercise one’s acting muscles for the stage always feels like placing a sharp blade over a whetstone is the most expansive and specifically growth filled ways, and naturally that absolutely fine-tunes the actor’s body, voice and approach to relational drama in a hyper-specific way that absolutely bleeds into the approach to screen acting in the best ways,” he says.
“The same goes for working in film and television – every medium offers us an opportunity to shift our technical capacity as per the demands of what the project needs.”
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The year that was and looking ahead
He says his 2025 has been a special one, considering the body of work he produced and was part of.
“I can’t resist the glass half full analogy,” he says.
“And I’m just flipping grateful for the glass! Naturally, we’re definitely always trying to nourish growth and gentle groundedness in every sphere of life – and 2025 was a year of all of that and more.”
2026 will seemingly be a busy one for the young actor. At the start of 2026, Goldblum will be shooting a new film for a US streamer, and he’ll be busy on that project while shooting Scandal.
Part of the projects he’ll be part of includes a film called Pretty How Town, directed by Alan Shelley and produced by Bench films, which will be coming out next year.
“As well as a very exciting project that we are attached to called David: King of Israel for Fox, a TV show about King David’s life! So we’re very, very grateful to be able to serve all you beautiful humans across all the movie magic next year and beyond.”
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