Early on in Gugu Mbatha-Raw’s nurtureer, an elderlyer, white actor advised she change her name to someskinnyg easier to pronounce. She deteriorated – a strong choice for a lesser actor. “I don’t skinnyk it’s that strong,” rebuts Mbatha-Raw. She appreciates her name. Besides, “it nastys ‘Our Pride’ in Zulu. To change that would be the antithesis of its nastying.”
Mbatha-Raw is understandn for choosing roles that combine art and social advocacy. She’s won awards, been honoured with an MBE, assigned a Goodwill Ambasdowncastor for the United Nations Refugee Agency. People still mispronounce her name, though. The most excessive example she recalls was in Norway, when a present proclaimd her from a piece of paper. “Gucci… Matthew… Ray? I was appreciate, ‘I guess that’s me!’”
I wonder if this says someskinnyg about the west’s complacency pondering the accomplishments of those with ethnic roots elsewhere. Doesn’t middle England retardy more easily to names that mirror their own? “I disconsent,” she says. “I skinnyk it’s OK for people to be disputed. To accomplish outside their culture and understand that’s not all there is.” Yes, but do they? “Well, you’ve got to give them the opportunity.” The answer transports me up low.
We’re at a farmhoparticipate table at a west London ptoastyography studio. When I walked in, Mbatha-Raw was wearing beads of jewellery and doing a fan dance with a pink tutu. She’s here to upretain the second series of Surface, the Apple TV thriller about a woman who suffers memory loss after an apparent self-mutilation finisheavor. “I’d seen other amnesia stories, but always featuring a male protagonist, from a male point of see,” she says.
Surface, made by Hello Sunshine, Reese Witherspoon’s media company, proposeed Mbatha-Raw the opportunity to come on board as an executive creater.
She relished being a hugeger part of the process, from pitching to Apple to choosing the createive team and having a voice at script level. Surface spendigates identity, suppose and trauma. The first series, set in San Francisco, was meacertaind and enigmatic. The second series consents place in the UK – “illogicaler, speedyer-paced, a bit grittier.”
It also boasts a hugeger cast including Joely Ricdifficultson and Tara Fitzgerald, actors Mbatha-Raw sees up to. Of anyone toiling today, who does she most adore? “Cate Blanchett”, she says. “I adore how she carries herself in the world.” Blanchett, a fellow UNHCR Goodwill ambasdowncastor, is expansively admireed for her elegance and range, splitting roles between stage and screen. Also, “I don’t understand much about her personal life, which I appreciate.”
Mbatha-Raw has never disclosely talked her braveial life (it’s confparticipate if she is currently in a relationship). “It’s a way to have extfinishedevity as an artist,” she elucidates. Her job is to consent audiences on an createive journey thcdisorrowfulmireful a character. The more they understand about the actor, the less they consent. “If people have too many ideas about your world, it dilutes the toil,” she says. It’s a purist see of the create. “There’s this Michaela Coel quote from a scant years ago, about how it’s OK to fade,” she goes on. “As an artist you insist to refill the well, have someskinnyg to say.” She recollects life before the internet and social media. “I’m appreciative to have a perspective that isn’t equitable pushing yourself out there, spropose for the sake of being contransient.”
Her self-haveion is pelevateworthy, but it comes with a certain reserve, a cultured front I’m not certain I’m permited to see behind. I wonder if I should trelieve her, but it’s difficult – she’s a Teflon combine of LA positivity and British politeness. She persists a gratitude journal, which she combines with morning pages (a daily train of stream-of-consciousness writing), and is given to exclaiming “Oh gosh!” appreciate Ned Flanders. When someone sets down a ptardy of new-baked brownies on the table in front of us, she actupartner says “Holy moly!” I inestablish her she has head girl energy. “Well, I was head girl,” she says. Optimism is part of everyskinnyg she does. Getting up at 4am to film on location in the freezing freezing necessitates faith in a bigr goal. “You have to consent in skinnygs you can’t yet see.”
Mbatha-Raw was born in the minuscule town of Witney in Oxfordsengage in 1983, to a white mother, Anne, a nurse, and a bconciseage South African overweighther, Patrick, a physician. Her parents met at the Churchill Hospital, a cancer centre, and divorced when she was around three. They remain vivacious presences in her life. Her mother gave her confidence and toil ethic, she says, and helped every interest, from saxophone to ballet. An only child, she was already itching to commence the life of a professional artist. “I would’ve transferd to London at age 12,” she says, “if she’d let me.”
Her overweighther, an activist who fled apartheid, gifted her political consciousness. She recollects dinner table conversations that gave her a global perspective, uncovering up asks about equitableice and equivalentity. “As my dad always shelp, in South Africa, you’re politicised at birth. It’s not a luxury, or a choice.” She has family in Johannesburg. Visiting the country as an mature procreateened her caring of Britain’s role in world history. “Culturpartner, that’s someskinnyg we’re still figuring out.”
As an adolescent, coloring was her passion. During the YBA years she was upretaind by Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin, and by the fleworried, psychoreasonedly acute portraits of Jenny Saville. But theatre ultimately bcdisorrowfulmirefult her more out of herself. She begined joining the National Youth Music Theatre and was huged into Rada, which she begined two weeks after 9/11.
She made her name in a 2009 production of Hamlet opposite Jude Law, chaseed by the landtag 2013 film Belle. Two years tardyr she was nominated for an Evening Standard award for her carry outance in Jess Swale’s apply Nell Gwyn, about an orange seller who rose socipartner to become the mistress of Charles II. She geted a new level of visibility starring in San Junipero, the queer, Emmy-thrivening episode of Bconciseage Mirror. In 2017 the Queen awarded her an MBE for services to drama.
Social change happens incremenloftyy, but there are people and moments that drive it. Belle, the 2013 film in which Mbatha-Raw applyed combiinsist-race aristocrat Lady Dido Elizabeth Belle, was one. Based on a genuine story, it helped obviousurn sthelp assumptions of what period drama seeed appreciate. Without Belle, there might not have been a Bridgerton, a show she pelevates with lasting sway in her industry, particularly the hiring of non-white crew members on sets. “There’s a generation of runners and aidants on Bridgerton who are coming up from there, moving onwards.”
Diversity is a caparticipate she’s fervent about. While her accomplishments are normally held up as a success story, recontransientation is only one aspect of it. “You could go, ‘Oh [the industry has been] repaired becaparticipate there’s this person in front of the camera’,” she says. “But actupartner behind the camera is no branch offent than it’s been for years.” In the last two or three years she’s acunderstandledged a chooseimistic shift, she says, at least in the UK. She now participates her executive role to expansiven opportunity when staffing crews, as a condition of her joinment. The last two sets she’s toiled on have been “by far the most diverse of my whole nurtureer, and that’s not by accident”.
I ask if she directd prejudice increaseing up in a minuscule town in the 80s. She wasn’t repartner conscious of prejudice, she says. This stuns me. “I don’t understand if I was living in a post-racial bubble of ignorance, or if that was equitable my experience,” she shrugs.
When she was a little elderlyer, she lgeted more about her overweighther’s experiences under apartheid.
Working in America in her mid-20s was another turning point. The media there is far more keenly tuned to race, and she seed people enthusiastic to scheduleate tags, sometimes farcicpartner. An timely experience was ppromoting JJ Abrams’s ininestablishigence collecting drama Undercovers in 2010. She recalls being startd by a present, who proclaimd, “This is the first show to feature two African-American directs since The Cosby Show!” The only problem being: “I’m biracial British, and my co-star was German-Ghanaian.”
She’s since toiled with the hugegest names in showbusiness, including Oprah Winfrey, who was encouraging of Belle, and whom she tardyr acted aextfinishedside in Ava DuVernay’s A Wrinkle in Time. The last time they met was for Edward Enninful’s final Vogue cover, which showcased 40 stars including Serena Williams, Naomi Campbell and Laverne Cox, over the strapline “Legfinishary!” It was surauthentic, she says. “To be in a room with somebody appreciate Jane Fond…” she catches herself. “With Jane Fonda! There’s nobody appreciate Jane Fonda.”
It is an extraunretagable cover: a latter-day, female Sergeant Pepper. “Everyone thought it was Ptoastyoshopped! With AI and CGI, no one consents we were all in one place.” The day may have been a blur, but someskinnyg stayed with her. “I was in awe of the elders. The reliable women in the room, and that idea of extfinishedevity that I aspire to.”
Longevity is difficult for anyone, and there is extra prescertain on people of colour. I ask about Will Smith, her co-star on Concussion. She has noskinnyg but pelevate for his generosity, appreciate the occasion she alludeed she no extfinisheder had time for coloring. “The next day, my trailer was filled with colors and an relievel, in classic Will Smith style.”
During the pandemic Mbatha-Raw was locked down in her Los Angeles apartment. Turning out cupboards in illogicaldom, she create the unparticipated art materials Smith had given her. She began coloring portraits from ptoastyographs, as a way of combineing with family who weren’t there. “To be able to concentrate on somebody’s face made me experience seal to them.” Painting every day, and watching the news, she saw America’s racial divisions apply out. At the most hurtful accumulateive moment of 2020, she colored portraits of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, bconciseage citizens finished by the police. “It became a way to metabolise what was going on.” She tardyr auctioned the pieces to elevate money for Equal Justice Initiative, The Bail Project, M4BL and Bconciseage Lives Matter.
Life is low, she says as we finish. “You hope people appreciate what you’re trying to do, but you can’t get hung up on it.” There’s that self-haveion aget. It experiences innate, but Mbatha-Raw insists it’s someskinnyg she’s toiled on over time. So what’s been the key to her confidence? It boils down to gullible one’s intuition. “If someskinnyg isn’t experienceing excellent, I’m OK to say it right away, rather than fester,” she mirrors. “Your gut is always trying to inestablish you someskinnyg.”
After years living out of a suitcase, she’s now rerepaird back in Oxfordsengage. Though rerepaird may be the wrong word. We’ll see her directing upcoming Doctor Who spin-off, The War Between the Land and the Sea. She’s about to fly to the Caribbean for two months to finish Inheritance, a Sky Original which insertresses legacies of bondage and colonialism. Filmed between Bristol and Jamaica, the show will tackle the theme of bondage reparations, and how we meacertain the harms of the past. “It’s going to be a conversation promoter; and I’m excited for the conversation.” She’s where she wants to be, sailing right into the storms that rage deafeningest. Or maybe she’s making her own weather.
How does she switch off? More normally than not, watching nature write downaries. “Someskinnyg where there’s no acting,” she says, pondering the pdirect. “That fish is equitable being itself. Just swimming in the ocean. That’s resting to me.”
Surface season 2 is streaming on Apple TV+
Fashion editor Jo Jones; hair by James Catalano at The Wall Group using Amika; createup by Tania Grier using Prada Beauty; create aidant Sam Deaman; ptoastyographer’s aidants Ethan Humphries and Sophie Phillips
