By Monique
Stock up on your oranges! It’s time for a one-on-one with Our Flag Means Death‘s resident cook/doctor and 40 Orange Cake enthusiast Samba Schutte!
I had the pleasure of talking with Schutte this week as the fans wait with bated breath for HBO Max to announce the second season of the Rhys Darby-Taika Waititi starring comedy. Newsflash, however: Schutte, who plays the Revenge’s unhinged cook and makeshift surgeon is just as impatient as the fans are.
“I wish I did,” he said when I asked if he had any information on renewal. “None of the cast does. We’re all in this big group chat and we’re all asking one another, ‘Have you heard anything? Have you heard anything?’ I’m sure the excutives know because I think the delay has been in the merger between Warner Bros. and Discovery. That’s just taken time, reshuffling the positions and scheduling and whatnot.”
“I’m hopeful that’s what it is because from a business point of view, I would say it’s very smart if they do renew the show, just because of the immediate and incredible response from the fans,” he continued. “The fanart and creative generated and the buzz and the fact that we’ve been the most trending and number one talked-about show in the U.S., beating out, like, Marvel shows and DC shows. So hopefully they’re busy, speaking at the upfronts and hopefully they’re talking about how they can make it work, but I can you one thing…it’s just so frustrating.” He laughed at his level of frustration.
However, the wait isn’t stopping him from celebrating the show the best way he knows how–baking. Schutte has a YouTube channel featuring his bakes, and as an accomplished baker, he decided to put his talents to the test and create his version of the mythic cake with 40 orange cake with a 10 orange glaze as described by Roach and Captain Stede Bonnet (Darby). With the number of cakes made by fans growing every day (last count: over 550 cakes!), Schutte is amazed by the fandom’s excitement and love for the series.
“It’s incredible,” he said. “…I just wanted to create what the cake would be, so I came up with the recipe and posted the cake photo on Easter…and immediately fan art started to happen about the cake, because there was no visual of the cake in the show. And then after that, once I posted the recipe, like, cake after cake, people started baking it…I had no idea people were going to make it. How many oranges have been used in the past month to make 550 cakes?”
“It’s just so incredible and the fact that people are enjoying it and that each one is so different, it just goes to show that it doesn’t matter who you are or where yo come from, just to express yourself in your own creativity and uniqueness,” he continued. “And to see that beauty reflected in this wall of orange cakes on my Twitter timeline, it’s amazing.”
He also commented on the amount of fan-produced works by the fandom, thanking them for getting the word out about the show.
“My jaw drops every day. I’m on Instagram or Twitter…it’s still going,” he said. “And it’s just such an amazing fandom. And much love to all of them because they’re the ones who are sprading thw rold on the show and getting people to [ask] ‘What is happening? What is all of this art, what is it? I’ve got to check the show out now. And becasue of them, a lot of people are picking the show up.”
To hear more of our conversation about Our Flag Means Death, including the racial diversity and queer representation baked into the show, listen below!
Julian 