Former Machachari actress Natasha Ngegie, also known as Stella, has narrated how she narrated being beaten and humiliated at school following her inability to attend weekend activities due to her acting commitments.

Speaking on Monday, October 5, 2026, Ngegie said trouble started in 2009 and raged up to early 2010 when Ngegie was juggling between school and filming before Machachari became a prime-time show.

“Since 2010, Machachari became big. But prior terms and the previous year, 2009, I used to go to two schools. At those two schools, I used to get beaten up because I used to act on weekends,” she said.

The actress said the teachers did not understand why she would miss weekend activities because of her commitment to acting, saying some of the punishments were performed in front of other learners.

“Sometimes it would be humiliation. They used to take you away and later you would report back to school on Monday morning after going back from filming on the weekend,” she said.

Ngegie said the problems got so intense that she had to leave school after being beaten up severely with her mother confronting the school for what had happened.

“There was a time I was beaten up so bad, nikafukuzwa shule, and then my mum goes back to school asking why they would do that to me,” she said.

Ngegie said her mother was advised to transfer her to a school that was more flexible with her right to pursue her acting career. She said they were considering home-schooling due to the constant disruptions that her acting was causing her studies.

“It was bad during those periods as at one point they (her parents) were considering home-schooling,” she said.

The actress was referring to the period of high-profile work that she was undergoing at the time to play Stella in Machachari, which chronicled the lives of children and their families in Citizen TV. Reflecting on the difficulties that she faced, Ngegie said although it was great that she could balance between her career and her studies, they could have been much more straightforward if she had joined a school that was willing to offer her a more flexible timetable.

“There were times when we used to get calls from the previous schools asking why I was not going back to school because I was absent from Monday to Friday. It was because I was in Machachari,” she said.

Her mother reported that she used to receive many phone calls from the previous schools after Machachari had become a serious television show.