Mbatha-Raw as Claudia with Sheldon Shepherd as Cudjoe East in Possession. Photograph: Des Willie<\/p>\n
From playing the lead in Charlie Brooker\u2019s acclaimed queer Black Mirror episode San Junipero<\/a> and starring in Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon\u2019s workplace #MeToo drama The Morning Show to leading Apple TV\u2019s identity-bending psychological thriller Surface<\/a> in which she plays a woman recovering after a suicide attempt, the 43-year-old has consistently chosen projects that are intellectually and politically ambitious \u2013 roles one might summarise as having \u201csomething to say\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t want to do the same thing all of the time,\u201d Mbatha-Raw tells me. \u201cIt\u2019s fun for me to go from a period drama to a romantic drama to a comedy \u2013 it keeps me\u00a0stimulated.\u201d<\/p>\n That instinct is precisely what drew her to Possession, Sky\u2019s new supernatural thriller. Mbatha-Raw plays Claudia, a Bristol lawyer dispatched to Jamaica after a white plantation owner\u2019s wealthy descendant dies suddenly, leaving his fortune not to his family but to a Jamaican man nobody can seem to track down. Claudia is assigned the case partly because, as one colleague bluntly puts it, having a Black, half-Jamaican lawyer would be \u201cbetter optics\u201d. But the legal work slowly gives way to something far more unsettling: the ghosts of Britain\u2019s colonial legacy \u2013 both literal and metaphorical \u2013 intrude upon the present.<\/p>\n \u201cI was fascinated by Claudia because she\u2019s caught between her professional obligations and her own personal history,\u201d says Mbatha-Raw. \u201c[She goes] from this relatively detached, brittle, ambitious career woman who was quite numb to her heritage and disconnected from her Jamaican background to becoming more grounded and rooted.\u201d<\/p>\n The story slips between modern Jamaica and the brutal realities of plantation slavery. But the enslaved do not remain confined to history: the enigmatic Cudjoe East, the man at the centre of the inheritance dispute, claims to be an enslaved man cursed centuries earlier to wander the Earth. In the past, a plantation mistress keeps grisly relics \u2013 locks of hair, severed ears \u2013 to perform magic on the bodies of those she enslaved. Present-day characters find themselves possessed by the spirits of enslavers, while Claudia struggles to resist being claimed herself.<\/p>\n Filmed on location, much of the show\u2019s richness comes from the vision of its Jamaican director, Storm Saulter<\/a>, whose work has long explored the country\u2019s layered histories and identity. The island is rendered in full polyphonic Technicolor: music and traditional masquerade rituals punctuate the narrative, while Obeah \u2013 the African-Caribbean spiritual practice of contacting ancestors, long feared by colonial authorities for its association with resistance and rebellion \u2013 becomes one of the show\u2019s recurring motifs.<\/p>\n \u201cWe wanted everything to feel as real as possible \u2013 the beauty of the colour, music and smells of Jamaica, but also its darkness,\u201d says Mbatha-Raw. \u201cWe filmed at a real plantation house \u2013 all the scenes in the grounds, with enslaved people working on the land \u2013 real people lived and died there. Driving up the hill towards the house, you could really feel the weight of history.\u201d<\/p>\n Legal action \u2026 Mbatha-Raw in Possession. Photograph: Des Willie<\/p>\n The show belongs to the same lineage as Jordan Peele\u2019s Get Out<\/a> \u2013 racially conscious horror, in\u00a0which\u00a0the supernatural is merely\u00a0a conduit for the far more terrifying legacy of racism. It is a provocation about reparations, colonial wealth and Britain\u2019s historic relationship with slavery. In one pointed exchange, Claudia and the son of the plantation owner discuss the fact that the British government compensated former slave owners after abolition \u2013 a debt underwritten by taxpayers until 2015<\/a> \u2013 while those who had been enslaved received nothing. These are conversations that feel particularly pointed with the rise of far-right nationalism and racism in the UK and beyond. Is this something she was conscious of when making the show?<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s uncomfortable to talk about reparations, it\u2019s hard to talk about slavery and how we make peace with that history,\u201d she says. \u201cI think that\u2019s what makes [the show] so compelling,\u201d she continues. \u201cYou can\u2019t just paper over the cracks of history. If we don\u2019t deal with it, it will find ways of haunting us.\u201d<\/p>\n More than a decade separates Possession and Belle, but the two projects feel in conversation with one another in their meditations on empire.<\/p>\n Mbatha-Raw with Sarah Gadon in Belle. Photograph: Cinematic\/Alamy<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s funny because it wasn\u2019t like a huge blockbuster film,\u201d she says when I ask how the movie changed her life. \u201cBut it was my first lead role, and it opened up lots of opportunities for me. And it was an important story to tell. A lot of people didn\u2019t know that mixed-race characters existed in history \u2013 certainly not of any status, because you never saw them in movies unless they were a slave or being brutalised in some way.\u201d<\/p>\n Before we meet, she tells me she took a walk through Hampstead Heath to Kenwood House, once the stately home where Dido lived. \u201cI wanted to immerse myself in that history again before speaking to you,\u201d she says. Looking back now, she believes Belle helped widen ideas about who gets to exist in Britain\u2019s period dramas.<\/p>\n \u201cI do think Belle helped pave the way for a show like Bridgerton,\u201d she adds. \u201cJust having Black and brown people visible is a huge change in the last 10 years or so.\u201d Belle also marked the beginning of her friendship with Oprah, who was an early champion and offered to help with its US marketing; the pair have remained in touch ever since.<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n Sign up to What’s On<\/p>\n Get the best TV reviews, news and features in your inbox every Monday<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Politics has never been optional in Mbatha-Raw\u2019s life. She was born in 1983 in Witney, a town just outside Oxford. Her father was a student anti-apartheid activist and ANC campaigner who fled South Africa to avoid imprisonment on Robben Island, eventually rebuilding his life with support from the UN\u2019s Refugee Agency.<\/p>\n \u201cI remember we would talk about politics at the dinner table, but when you\u2019re South African, you don\u2019t know any different,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n She grew up an only child, living with her mother, a British nurse. Her parents split when she was young, but her father remained in her life. Ballet was her first love, as well as music \u2013 she trained with the National Youth Music Theatre before going on to Rada.<\/p>\n As a young, biracial aspiring actor \u2013 particularly one growing up outside of London \u2013 has she ever felt held back by her race? She demurs.<\/p>\n \u201cThere were certainly some roles\u00a0that would have been closed off to me, like those early Regency-era roles, but the industry is changing in a really positive direction,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n She does mention that early on in her career, an older \u2013 white \u2013 actor suggested she change her name to something easier to pronounce. It was advice she politely ignored.<\/p>\n \u201cI love my name, it\u2019s what makes me who I am,\u201d she says. \u201cI don\u2019t think it\u2019s that hard to pronounce. Plus, it translates to \u2018our pride\u2019 in Zulu, so changing that would feel so wrong \u2013 the opposite of what it means!\u201d<\/p>\n Mbatha-Raw with Boris Kodjoe in Undercovers. Photograph: Chris Haston\/Everett Collection Inc\/Alamy<\/p>\n After graduating from Rada in 2004, Mbatha-Raw built her career the old-fashioned way: on stage. In 2005, she appeared in Antony and Cleopatra before landing one of her first major roles opposite Andrew Garfield in Romeo and Juliet at Manchester\u2019s Royal Exchange<\/a>. Supporting screen roles in Bad Girls, Marple and Doctor Who followed, before a celebrated turn as Ophelia opposite Jude Law\u2019s Hamlet in the West End<\/a> and on Broadway. JJ\u00a0Abrams saw the production and cast her in his American spy drama Undercovers, opening the door to Hollywood. For years she lived peripatetically, dividing her life between sets in the US and London. For now, she is\u00a0London-based again.<\/p>\n Her move coincided with a broader exodus of Black British actors across the Atlantic. Daniel Kaluuya has spoken about not getting roles in the UK \u201cbecause of the colour of my skin\u201d; David Oyelowo has talked of being \u201cpushed out\u201d because of the racial \u201cglass ceiling\u201d, as has David Harewood. Blockbuster names such as Cynthia Erivo and Damson Idris have found some of their biggest roles in the US, fuelling a long-running debate about whether\u00a0Britain\u2019s film and television industry truly nurtures its Black talent.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s definitely something I\u2019ve heard, but it hasn\u2019t been my personal experience,\u201d she says when I ask about this. \u201cI didn\u2019t go to the US looking for opportunities; I got offered a role in Hollywood because of the work I\u2019d already done here \u2013 and that\u2019s not really something you turn down. I was very lucky.\u201d<\/p>\n Mbatha-Raw is thoughtful and politically engaged, but I get the sense she would rather speak through her characters. \u201cI wouldn\u2019t ever want to tell people what to think or experience,\u201d she says. \u201cMaybe Possession will inspire people to think about the more thought-provoking conversations around slavery, the idea of reparations and the complexity of\u00a0that. But mostly, I just hope people find it entertaining.\u201d<\/p>\n Possession starts on 6 August on Sky\u00a0Atlantic at 9pm.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Gugu Mbatha-Raw seems blissfully immune to the heat. 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