Sama­ki Fe­li­cian

Free­lance Cor­re­spon­dent

Reach­ing ten years in any pro­fes­sion is no small feat, es­pe­cial­ly in the ever-evolv­ing world of en­ter­tain­ment.

Isa­iah Cum­ber­batch, bet­ter known as Rodey the En­ter­tain­er, is no stranger to Trinidad and To­ba­go’s en­ter­tain­ment land­scape. At 46 years old, the cre­ator, co­me­di­an, and cul­tur­al voice is cel­e­brat­ing a ma­jor mile­stone—ten years of mak­ing peo­ple laugh and think.

But be­hind the char­ac­ters and skits that have be­come house­hold names is a jour­ney shaped by love, strug­gle, and au­then­tic­i­ty.

Grow­ing up in a sin­gle-moth­er house­hold sur­round­ed by women, in­clud­ing his three younger sis­ters, Rodey moved around Diego Mar­tin and Ari­ma be­fore fi­nal­ly set­tling in Pe­tit Val­ley, where many of his ear­ly mem­o­ries were formed. He even­tu­al­ly lived in Riv­er Es­tate and now re­sides in Val­sayn with his wife and chil­dren.

His love for cre­ativ­i­ty sparked ear­ly. He re­called be­ing a stu­dent at Fa­ti­ma Col­lege with­out ac­cess to a com­put­er.

“I had a friend who had a com­put­er, and af­ter school, I’d go by him and sit for hours on Pho­to­shop, learn­ing new things. I fell in love with cre­at­ing from scratch,” he said.

Pho­to­shop was his first on­line cre­ative plat­form, which even­tu­al­ly led him in­to pho­tog­ra­phy and videog­ra­phy. He took gov­ern­ment cours­es, in­clud­ing the MuST pro­gramme, to deep­en his knowl­edge.

In 2012, he en­tered a film fes­ti­val with a short film ti­tled The Re­turn of the La­dy La Di­a­b­lesse, star­ring his sis­ter.

“We went all over Trinidad shoot­ing this 15-minute film. That brought a lot of ex­cite­ment, and I knew it was some­thing I want­ed to pur­sue,” he ex­plained.

But in 2015, with a ba­by on the way and bills pil­ing up, Rodey had to piv­ot.

“I was al­ready the class clown and the sto­ry­teller in school, so mov­ing in front of the cam­era came nat­u­ral­ly.”

From there, the char­ac­ters we now know—like Wet­ty and Pinky— were born.

“These char­ac­ters were in­spired by re­al peo­ple in my life. Pinky is like 60 per cent my sis­ter,” he shared.

Now, Rodey is prepar­ing for a land­mark mo­ment: his first-ever one-man show ti­tled Love Is, set to run at NA­PA on June 21 and 22. The show, which marks his ten-year an­niver­sary in the busi­ness, will fea­ture a kids’ show and adult shows on the Sat­ur­day and Sun­day.

While Rodey has act­ed in pro­duc­tions writ­ten by Pene­lope Spencer, Nik­ki Cros­by, and Ce­cil­ia Salazar, Love Is marks the first time he is both writer and per­former. The show will fea­ture live the­atre, stand-up com­e­dy, and on-screen seg­ments with his beloved char­ac­ters.

He ex­plained the rea­son be­hind the theme of love:

“Ma­jor­i­ty of the top­ics that I touch is more based on the re­la­tion­ships that we have with our loved ones, our cowork­ers, strangers that we may come across on our jour­ney. My main fo­cus has al­ways been re­la­tion­ships and get­ting peo­ple to think out­side of the box, so the theme of love is re­al­ly to dis­cuss how you see love.”

The show re­cent­ly had its first in­ter­na­tion­al tri­al in the British Vir­gin Is­lands.

“I was blown away. It would’ve been the first time we did the show live. First time do­ing it out­side of Trinidad, and I was a lit­tle scep­ti­cal as to what they would think about it. But once I came out and the show start­ed, I re­alised that yeh boy, this show could be any­where be­cause it is so re­lat­able. Love is some­thing that every­one should ex­pe­ri­ence once in their life­time, and talk­ing about re­la­tion­ships is some­thing we should do more of­ten,” he said.

True to his fam­i­ly-ori­ent­ed brand, Rodey has made space for young tal­ent in the chil­dren’s show.

“Kids have been sup­port­ing the brand since day one. I do grad­u­a­tions, school vis­its, mo­ti­va­tion­al talks, so I couldn’t leave them out of this mo­ment.”

Rodey’s cre­ative suc­cess hasn’t come with­out chal­lenges. Bal­anc­ing busi­ness, men­tal health, and be­ing a present fa­ther re­mains a con­stant ef­fort.

“Be­ing in­ten­tion­al is how I man­age. I tell my wife that from Jan­u­ary to April, that is work mode, and from Ju­ly to Sep­tem­ber, there is a lit­tle gap where it is time that I know we can spend time to­geth­er and do things as a fam­i­ly. So just be­ing in­ten­tion­al and try­ing to plan and not be­ing all over the place. Tak­ing care of my men­tal health as well, in it­self to me is one of the key play­ers in why the brand has been around so long.”

Look­ing to the fu­ture, Rodey dreams of cre­at­ing films that show­case young lo­cal tal­ent on an in­ter­na­tion­al scale.

“One of the things I def­i­nite­ly want to work on is even­tu­al­ly do­ing movies, be­ing able to fea­ture young acts, be­ing able to be fea­tured on an in­ter­na­tion­al plat­form—not just be in­vit­ed to a project, but the project be­ing a lo­cal project that goes in­ter­na­tion­al and is re­spect­ed by dif­fer­ent cul­tures and com­mu­ni­ties,” he shared.

From edit­ing on bor­rowed com­put­ers to head­lin­ing a one-man show, Rodey’s sto­ry is proof that pas­sion, pur­pose, and love re­al­ly do go a long way.