Wunmi Mosaku on Why ‘Sinners’ Is the ‘Greatest Love Story Ever Told’

“Sinners” is one of those strange modern box office successes that fans are dissecting at an almost literary level. There are leg paragraphs dedicated to their symbolism, social media threads on their cultural issues and hours of podcasts that deepen lines and scenes. Wunmi Mosaku is not looking exactly the shots.

“Porto to look for anything because I am very fog of the Internet and I am afraid of what I could see,” Mosaku said in a video call from his house in Los Angeles.

The moving mosaku performance as the Hoodoo Healer Annie is the moving core of “sinners.” The fact that it is Mosaku, 38, on paper, seems appropriate: the film is a drama of terror of the romance centered, as well as a meditation on pain and a musical. Its action curriculum reflects each element.

Mosaku has played a time space agent (“Loki”), multiple strong detectives (“Luther”, “Passenger”) and an immigrant mother in mourning (“Damilola, our beloved child”, who won a Bafta television prize in Great Britain). Some of his greatest roles, a singer who fights against the misunderstanding of the era of Jim Crow in the series “Lovecraft Country”, and a South Sudanese refugee who fights a night witch in the movie “His House”, both of the popular horror data: “Get evoces” are evoked “anxieties Hortararar toar to be able toar to give alarkarelm to be alarm.

Sometimes, Mosaku has been based on his own experience as a Nigerian who emigrated to a year from Manchester, England, and felt distanced from the Yoruba inheritance of Re -Family. To interpret Annie, he studied how to be a woman in the Mississippi delta, the preparation that finally led to learning more about her ancestry because Hoodoo is related to Ifa, the Yoruba religion.

“I discovered a part of myself, a part of my ancestry when looking at Annie,” he said.

Mosaku spoke more sailing through his Nigerian and British roots, playing afflicted mothers and differentiating the papers of Michael B. Jordan in “sinners.” These are edited experiences of the conversation.

The first piece of the script you read was the seven -page scene where the smoke meets Annie. Did that report how he approached the role?

First, my answer was, my God, Ryan Coogler is an incredible writer who understands humanity and the power of love, connection, forgiveness, pain, and joy and faith. I felt that I was so perfectly written. Then Ryan spoke to me through the history of “sinners.” I read this scene thinking that it was going to be one thing: the best love story ever told. “Sinners” is that. It has a lot of beautiful love, either Annie and Smoke or Annie and Elijah. Maria and Stack. There is so much love.

I was really a child or the tasks of this story that folded the genre that told me. I was excited. I was from the moment I heard that Ryan Coogler was making a movie. I didn’t need to read the seven pages.

I noticed in your answer that differences to Annie and Elijah and Annie and Fumas.

Because smoke is your representative. Smoke is its smoke and mirrors. It is your external personality. And Elijah is the person she knows and loves, and can see through everything.

At the end of the movie, she calls him again by name and says I don’t want anything Smoke To put on it. For me, that is the reason why there is a difference between smoke and Elijah.

You have some ghosts about navigating this role in the relationship with your Nigerian and Yoruba heritage. Have you had to navigate your British?

Culturally, you have to learn about the person you are playing. Louisiana, The Bayou, Hoodoo: this is what the form as a person. It will form the way he eats, the way he speaks, the way he walks, the way he sails around the world. I had to learn that. But I feel that unless you’re that, you would have to learn that, right? I think that, like a dark lineage woman who has grown up in the United Kingdom, there will be similarities of feeling.

Obviously, there is an ancestral cell memory that African Americans will have, but I have the ancestral memory of colonization and assimilation. These are things that are in the movie too. But I would never say exactly how it feels because I am definitely aware that my accent gives me some kind or privilege sometimes when people can listen to me. But you don’t always have the opportunity to advocate yourself.

After winning the Bafta, you spoke sometimes thinking that it could be the precipice of your career. You have a leg in a lot of projects since then. Does that ever feel disappear?

I don’t think the feeling ever disappears for me, and I don’t know that it is something bad that does not disappear. It makes me feel punished and not giving anything for granted. It is not the awards; Obviously it is about work. Bafta does not feel like the cliff that it is likely to be a long time ago. Now that feels like a milestone on a trip.

The idea of ​​assimilation appears several times in your work. How did you work that theme for “sinners”?

It is deeply personal, isn’t it? I was born in Nigeria, raised in Manchester. There are so many lost things because they only interact with my immediate family and my Nigerian community. Everything is diluted in some way.

My teacher Yoruba told me: “Oh, I’m not going to the market anymore.” I said: “What do you mean?” He says: “I am married now.” I am like, “What?” He says: “Oh, no, no. That is just a cultural thing.” Once he is married, the only men in the market are sellers, they are not married or his wife is not right. As if that were not something done. All these social rules and expectations and unwritten rules that I do not know. So, when talking about assimilation, my heart breaks. I wish I knew everything I have lost. I have lost my language. I do Yoruba twice a week. I’ve been doing it for five years. It is still difficult.

That is why I found Annie so deep because with Hoodoo, I didn’t know anything about Ifa, and Hoodoo is a derivative of Ifa. I discovered a part of myself, a part of my ancestry when looking at it and trying to fill its space. Actually, she filled a part of me because she had a deeper understanding of the people I am.

Your “Damilola, Our Love boy” characters (2016) and “Sinners” deal with the loss of a child. How have you changed among those roles?

Now I am a mother. Now I know more, only in general. I know I don’t know anything, and I know I know much more. I have lived more and I have experienced more. It would be interesting to see that performance, being who I am now, where I am now. I don’t know if that would be interesting or tortuous.

Some time ago, you have ghosts that your family is skeptical about acting in acting. Come?

My mother and sisters were never skeptical. They were like, “you do.” My dad has definitely come. But yes, this is all. This is what I do. There is no going back. They expand and transform, but there is no going back.