“Sinners” is one of those rare modern blockbusters that fans are dissecting on a near literary level. There have been paragraphs dedicated to its symbolism, social media threads about its cultural themes, and hours of podcasts delving into lines and scenes. Wunmi Mosaku isn’t exactly seeking out the takes.
“I haven’t gone searching for anything because I’m very mistrustful of the internet and I’m scared of what I might see,” Mosaku said in a video call from her Los Angeles home.
Mosaku’s stirring performance as the hoodoo healer Annie is the soulful core of “Sinners.” The fact that it’s Mosaku, 38, in the role seems fitting: The film is a period horror-drama centered on romance as well as a meditation on grief and a musical. Her acting résumé reflects each element.
Mosaku has played a time-space agent (“Loki”), multiple strong-willed detectives (“Luther,” “Passenger”) and an immigrant mother in mourning (“Damilola, Our Loved Boy,” which won her a BAFTA Television Award in Britain). A few of her biggest roles — like a singer fighting Jim Crow-era maledictions in the series “Lovecraft Country,” and a South Sudanese refugee battling a night witch in the film “His House,” both from 2020 — are part of the post-“Get Out” strain of popular horror that evokes racial anxieties.
At times Mosaku has drawn on her own experience as a Nigerian who immigrated at a year old to Manchester, England, and felt distanced from her family’s Yoruba heritage. To play Annie, she studied how to be a woman in the Mississippi Delta, preparation that ultimately 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 through looking into Annie,” she said.
Mosaku spoke more about navigating her Nigerian and British roots, playing grieving mothers, and differentiating Michael B. Jordan’s roles in “Sinners.” These are edited excerpts from the conversation.
The first piece of the script you read was the seven-page scene where Smoke reunites with Annie. Did that inform how you approached the role?
First of all, my response was, my goodness, Ryan Coogler is an incredible writer who understands humanity and the power of love, and connection, and forgiveness, and grief, and joy and faith. I just felt like it was so perfectly written. Then Ryan spoke me through the story of “Sinners.” I read this scene thinking it was going to be one thing: the greatest love story ever told. “Sinners” is that. It has so much beautiful love, whether it’s Annie and Smoke or Annie and Elijah. Mary and Stack. There’s so much love.
I was really kind of taken aback by this genre-bending story he told me. I was excited. I was in from the moment I heard that Ryan Coogler was doing a movie. I didn’t need to read the seven pages.
I noticed in your answer that you differentiate Annie and Elijah and Annie and Smoke.
Because Smoke is his representative. Smoke is his smoke and mirrors. It’s his outward persona. And Elijah is the person that she knows and loves, and she can see through it all.
At the end of the movie, she calls him by his name again and says, I don’t want any of that Smoke to get on her. For me, that’s the reason there’s a difference between Smoke and Elijah.
You’ve spoken a bit about navigating this role in relation to your Nigerian and Yoruba heritage. Have you had to navigate your Britishness?
Culturally, you have to learn about the person you’re playing. Louisiana, the bayou, hoodoo — this is what forms her as a person. It’s going to form the way she eats, the way talks, the way she walks, the way she navigates the world. I had to learn that. But I feel like unless you are that, you would have to learn that, right? I think as a dark-skinned woman who’s grown up in the U.K. there will be similarities of feeling.
There is obviously an ancestral cellular memory that African Americans will have, but I have the ancestral memory of colonization and assimilation. These are things that are in the film, too. But I would never claim to know exactly what it feels like because I’m definitely aware my accent gives me some sort of privilege sometimes when people can hear me. But you don’t always get a chance to advocate for yourself.
After winning the BAFTA, you spoke about sometimes thinking it might be your career’s precipice. You’ve been in a bunch of projects since then. Does that feeling ever go away?
I don’t think that feeling will ever go away for me, and I don’t know if it’s a bad thing that it doesn’t go away. It makes me feel grounded and not to take anything for granted. It’s not about the awards; obviously it’s about the work. The BAFTA doesn’t feel like the precipice that it probably was a long time ago. Now that feels like a milestone in a journey.
The idea of assimilation pops up a few times in your work. How did you work though that theme for “Sinners”?
It’s deeply personal, isn’t it? I was born in Nigeria, raised in Manchester. There’s just so many things lost because I’m only interacting with my immediate family and my Nigerian community. Everything gets watered down in a way.
My Yoruba teacher said to me, “Oh, I don’t go to the market anymore.” I said, “What do you mean?” He’s like, “I’m married now.” I’m like, “What?” He’s like, “Oh, no, no. That’s just a cultural thing.” Once you’re married, the only men at the market are either sellers, they’re not married or their wife isn’t well. Like that’s just not a done thing. All these rules and social expectations and unwritten rules I don’t know. So when talking about assimilation, it breaks my heart. I wish I knew all that I have lost. I’ve lost my language. I do Yoruba twice a week. I’ve been doing it for five years. It’s still difficult.
That’s why I found playing Annie so profound because with hoodoo — I knew nothing about Ifa, and hoodoo is a derivative of Ifa. I discovered a part of myself, a part of my ancestry through looking into her and trying to fill her space. Actually she filled a part of me because I had a deeper understanding of the people I am from.
Your characters from “Damilola, Our Loved Boy” (2016) and “Sinners” both deal with the loss of a child. How have you changed between those roles?
I’m a mother now. I know more now, just in general. I know I know nothing, and I know I know so much more. I’ve lived more, and I’ve experienced more. It’d be interesting to go back and watch that performance, being who I am right now, where I am right now. I don’t know if that would be an interesting thing to do or would it be torturous.
You’ve spoken a while back about your family being skeptical about going into acting. Have they come around?
My mom and my sisters were never skeptical. They were like, “You do you.” My dad has definitely come around. But yeah, this is it. This is what I do. There’s no going back. There is expanding and there’s transforming, but there’s no going back.