Diamond Platnumz Needs His Own Show

What haven’t you heard of Diamond Platnumz? Since the third installment of Young, Famous & African premiered, his name has lingered ceaselessly on the lips of fans of the show. He’s been doted on and disparaged in equal measure. To his detractors, he’s a duplicitous, morally abhorrent, philandering character. His fans see him differently. To them, he embodies the best qualities of the archetypal dandy; a modern-day reincarnation of Zeus; flawed and rough around the edges, yes, but also as sleek as a panther at night, wreathed in a halo of smoldering machismo, and authentic despite his many shortcomings. Despite the stark contrast in the opinions from both camps, which has stirred up many quibbles on social media, both sides seem to agree on one thing; the man is entertaining. 

The season opens with Zari and Shakib’s wedding. The event has yet to start. The show’s cast members saunter in one after the other. Nadia. Fantana. Naked. Kayleigh. Luis. Swanky. The whole gang, almost. They exchange greetings and compliments and wrap each other in warm embraces. Sizzling gossip wafts around the picturesque garden they are seated in as they catch up with each other. Annie Macaulay arrives in grand style, wearing an elaborate floor-length white dress and gigantic dark shades. Before long she begins to intersperse their conversation with gratuitous snide remarks, her trademark move, and the atmosphere takes on the tense energy of a space suffused with unresolved tensions. Amid this drama, the presence, or rather, the absence of one man saturates the air. “Where is Diamond?” “Is he coming?” “Do you think he’s coming?” He doesn’t show up, but when he eventually makes his entrance, much later in the show, it becomes apparent why his absence weighed so heavily in their conversation; he’s a natural performer, and his antics will often chafe at your good nature but he’ll leave you with a smirk on your lips, your eyes fixed on him. 

Moments like this pepper the show. His absences take up space; a black hole sucking light and matter into its gravity. When the boys—Naked, Swanky, Luis, and Shakib—meet, Diamond is a favorite topic of discussion. Among the girls, the situation is hardly different. His specter haunts the newly formed union between Shakib and Zari. In one memorable scene, Shakib, driven to delirium by Diamond’s endless mind games, lashes out against his wife, departing from his typical calm affect. Diamond’s presence on the show offers an even greater spectacle. He has the least screen time, and yet he delivers some of the show’s greatest moments, wasting not a single minute. 

If the show wasn’t made up of celebrities, his magnetism would have perhaps been attributed to the sheen of stardom. But even in the company of stars, he gleams like a lone comet cutting through the night. Followers of the show typically ascribe his charm to his tendency to stir up drama. Such as Zari’s pregnancy scare and his resulting amusing reaction, the many times he sows seeds of malice in Zari and Shakib’s marriage, or how he wiggles out of his botched date with Kefilwe. While this has some truth, it hardly provides the full picture. After all, Annie similarly stokes drama, but where Diamond is met with indulgent adulation, Annie is forcefully scorned. Why then does Diamond enthrall cast members and fans alike with deft ease?

For one, far from being just a tumbleweed of uncontrollable lust drifting aimlessly, he taps into the timeless iconography of Casanova, providing fans and cast alike with a glimpse of a life unencumbered by the strictures of society, the codes we enact to define proper behavior. He completely ignores the set of rules between men commonly called “The Bro Code,” going after romantic interests his friends have indicated interest in. He shows little regard for the sanctity of marriage, which to him is a little more than a ruse. Fidelity is a silent joke to him, his loyalty lying entirely to his hedonistic ways. Naked in particular is one cast member besotted with his free-spiritedness, mirroring all of us as he lives vicariously through Diamond. On the surface, he’s the perfect contrast to Diamond; soft-spoken, even-keeled, and faithful to Kayleigh, whom he’s been engaged to for three and a half years. His temperate nature allows him to play the distinct role of chief mediator in their anxious friendship circle. But beneath his gentle demeanor is a deep admiration for Diamond’s roguish tendencies; an admiration that simmers in the background, accidentally jumping to the foreground in heated moments.

Another aspect of the spectacle Diamond ceaselessly supplies is his outsized delusional nature, interwoven with shafts of megalomania. It’s a delusion so grand as to be hilarious. He’s not the carefully calculated philanderer, his stratagems are typically deficient, often caving in on him, as in the case of his botched date with Kefilwe. His strategy is simpler; unbridled delusion. The whole cast sees through his schemes easily. Ironically, he’s the only one who buys into his deception. But almost like a parent indulging the whims of a mischievous child, they go along with it. This makes for a supremely comical dynamic. Fantana, by her admission, is in on his schemes. Shakib has asserted one too many times that he’s not to be trusted. And yet they are all sucked into his orbit. His greatest strength however is that he thrives on entertaining people. Every moment for him is an opportunity to entertain whoever is next to him. Whether it’s his love interests whom he regales with flowers and fancy dates and smooth talk, or viewers who he so fastidiously peppers with memorable moments, especially through behind-the-scenes commentary when he directly addresses them, he inhabits the gaze of his audience and takes the business of keeping them transfixed very seriously.