\u2018I do love a Greggs,\u201d says Wunmi Mosaku, as she settles into a sofa in a hotel in London\u2019s Holborn. She\u2019s extolling the virtues of the high-street baker after I jokingly suggested that\u2019s what she could have for lunch, now she\u2019s back in the UK from her base in Los Angeles. Despite being Stateside for the best part of a decade, she has lost none of her Manchester twang or sense of humour.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou know what I love about Greggs?\u201d she asks, leaning in. \u201cIn each city, they have something specific to that place. So in London, they\u2019ve got the Tottenham cake. Manchester\u2019s got the Eccles cake. In Liverpool, they\u2019ve got the scouse pie. In Newcastle, they\u2019ve got \u2026 a ton of breads. You can\u2019t get them anywhere else!\u201d<\/p>\n
You don\u2019t appreciate the cost people pay to assimilate into a country, the tax on their spirit<\/p>\n
Mosaku learned all about Greggs\u2019 regional delicacies<\/a> while touring her first play, straight out of Rada back in 2007. She played \u201cthe World\u201d in The Great Theatre of the World, a 17th-century mystery play<\/a>, and it took her all over the country. As well as acquainting her with the magic of a stotty cake, it was the first step in a career that has reached incredible heights in the last 18 months.<\/p>\n The 39-year-old Mancunian is in the middle of a relentless awards season push, on board the bandwagon for Sinners<\/a>, Ryan Coogler\u2019s juke joint vampire thriller set in the American deep south of the 1930s. She\u2019s an outside bet for a best supporting female Oscar, meaning she is currently manically zig-zagging the Atlantic. Mosaku\u2019s performance as Annie, a Hoodoo priestess who gives the film its emotional centre<\/a>, has catapulted her into a new strata of stardom. She may be able to list regional Greggs menus but she also dazzled at the Golden Globes<\/a>, pregnant in a radiant yellow dress, and has become a regular magazine cover star. After we\u2019re done, she\u2019s off to chat with Graham Norton<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u2018This is where I\u2019m from. This is who I am\u2019 \u2026 Mosaku in Sinners. Photograph: Landmark Media\/Alamy<\/p>\n The fame has brought levels of attention that aren\u2019t always welcome. Mosaku announced she was pregnant with her second child in Vogue, to coincide with the Golden Globes \u2013 in part to put to bed growing speculation. \u201cIn my Nigerian culture,\u201d she wrote, \u201cwe don\u2019t really announce this kind of news. It\u2019s meant to be protected. Everything in me resists sharing it publicly \u2013 not because I\u2019m not grateful or joyful, but because this feels like one of the few things that truly belongs to me.\u201d<\/p>\n Mosaku managed to hide her first pregnancy while playing the lead in ITV\u2019s supernatural police procedural Passengers<\/a> (think Happy Valley meets The X-Files). But this time, with the heightened attention brought by Sinners, she was under pressure to announce. \u201cI was really against it,\u201d says Mosaku. \u201cBut then I thought, If I\u2019m gonna do it, I want to do it with the caveat that I say, \u2018I don\u2019t want to do this, but I feel like I have to because you all comment on our bodies.\u2019\u201d She\u2019d watched her Sinners co-star Hailee Steinfeld endure months of speculation before telling her Instagram followers she was expecting a baby with her husband, NFL star Josh Allen.<\/p>\n This is new territory for Mosaku, who broke through after winning a Bafta for her performance as Damilola Taylor\u2019s mother Gloria<\/a> in a 2017 BBC drama, before moving to the US, where she has oscillated between Marvel epic Loki<\/a> and grittier fare, such as David Simon\u2019s 2022 police corruption series We Run This City<\/a>.<\/p>\n It could all have been so different. Mosaku\u2019s parents, both academics, moved their family to Manchester from Zaria, Nigeria, when Mosaku was one. Later in life, she considered following their path by becoming a maths professor. She had a university place but decided to try acting, and auditioned for Rada instead. Her father wasn\u2019t too enthusiastic but her mother backed the decision. \u201cIf it wasn\u2019t for her, I wouldn\u2019t be here,\u201d says Mosaku matter of factly. Her mother gave her \u00a330, which was enough for her to get to London and back on the Megabus and buy some food.<\/p>\n But the pair made a pact: if Mosaku didn\u2019t get a place at Rada, she\u2019d be off to uni in Durham to study maths and economics. \u201cNo one thought I\u2019d get in,\u201d she says, but she impressed the panel by playing Helena from A Midsummer Night\u2019s Dream, Queen Margaret from Richard III, and various parts from Ma Rainey\u2019s Black Bottom.<\/p>\n Moving to London wasn\u2019t easy. Chorlton-cum-Hardy, the south Manchester suburb Mosaku grew up in, might be characterised as a leafy middle-class enclave today, full of BBC execs pushing up house prices, but that wasn\u2019t her family\u2019s experience. Although Mosaku\u2019s parents were academics in Nigeria, in the UK life was very different. Neither could find work in their desired fields of architecture and chemistry \u2013 so made do with what they could. Money was in short supply. \u201cWe were on the council estate,\u201d says Mosaku. \u201cMy mum worked really, really hard. We were definitely one of those families that, if someone rang the doorbell, the kids all hid, because you couldn\u2019t say mum was out at work.\u201d <\/p>\n Superpowered \u2026 Mosaku with fellow Rada alumnus Tom\u00a0Hiddleston in Loki. Photograph: Chuck Zlotnick\/\u00a9Marvel Studios 2021. All Rights Reserved<\/p>\n All this made the move to Rada fraught. Mosaku was the only black girl in her class, something that wasn\u2019t easy at an institution which, in 2020, admitted it was institutionally racist<\/a> after pressure from former students<\/a>. Mosaku was one of many talented young actors: her future Loki co-stars Tom Hiddleston and Gugu Mbatha-Raw were there at the same time. But she remembers an environment where some teachers struggled to see her as anything more than a bit player. \u201cI never got a lead role,\u201d she says, recalling the time she was cast as a 50-year-old ship captain. \u201cNever got to play an ing\u00e9nue.\u201d<\/p>\n She asks: \u201cWhy restrict how I imagined my career? I think teachers are the most important people in a person\u2019s life. They make you either bloom or shrivel away. I was really lucky that I had teachers like Bill Gaskell<\/a>, who made me believe I could bloom, but I had so many people along the way that made me feel like, \u2018Oh, this isn\u2019t for you.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n In Ryan Coogler, she found a kindred spirit. After seeing Mosaku in We Own This City, he thought she\u2019d be perfect as Annie and the pair set up a 30-minute Zoom call that ballooned into an hour-and-a-half heart-to-heart, during which they discussed their motivations and the people who inspired them. \u201cWe bonded on our first Zoom about those teachers, the ones who really put you on the path and the ones who nearly got you off it.\u201d (Coogler brought his college professor Rosemary Graham, who told him he should write scripts in Hollywood, to a recent awards show<\/a>.)<\/p>\n Actors often peddle the same few well-polished anecdotes on the awards-season merry-go-round, heaping praise on colleagues. But when Mosaku is asked about Annie, she speaks about it as a transformational experience, like a religious convert testifying to the unanointed.<\/p>\n Dazzling \u2026 Mosaku on the red carpet at the Golden Globes earlier this month. Photograph: Amy Sussman\/Getty Images<\/p>\n To prepare for her role as Annie, who loses a child with one of Michael B Jordan\u2019s twin characters, Mosaku studied Hoodoo, which has its roots in the traditional Yoruba religion brought to America by enslaved Africans. This led to a deep connection with her Yoruba roots \u2013 and the language she began learning five years ago finally started to click for her. She likens the experience to an archeologist slowly unearthing a long lost civilisation during an excavation. \u201cOh,\u201d she said to herself. \u201cThis is where I\u2019m from. This is who I am. This is part of my survival.\u201d The other thing that dawned on her was just how detached she had become from her own culture.<\/p>\n Mosaku puts this down to her upbringing in Manchester. She should already be fluent in Yoruba, but her parents were discouraged from teaching their children the language because it would give them \u201cfunny accents\u201d. For Mosaku, who has played immigrants throughout her career<\/a>, that is the steep price new arrivals pay: people are asked to cut off parts of their own culture to \u201cfit in\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s the stuff that\u2019s really important,\u201d she says, becoming noticeably moved. \u201cYou don\u2019t appreciate the cost to people, the tax on a person\u2019s spirit in order to assimilate into your country \u2013 and for what? It\u2019s superiority. It\u2019s ego. It\u2019s brutal. It\u2019s a cultural genocide.\u201d<\/p>\n Does she see herself ever coming back to the UK? \u201cA lot of people make me excited about working in the UK,\u201d she says, listing director Akinola Davies Jr, Joan Iyiola\u2019s Apatan Productions and Bolu Babalola. \u201cI never take my eye off the UK for work,\u201d she adds. \u201cArtistically, I do feel like the work in America has been more satiating. I just want to make sure that in the UK I\u2019m not always playing a police officer, you know?\u201d<\/p>\n Ahead are roles in Apple\u2019s This Is How It Goes, alongside Idris Elba, and a part in Aaron Sorkin\u2019s The Social Reckoning, his follow-up to The Social Network<\/a>. The jury is still out on whether the UK can keep up, but if she does decide to come back, Greggs will be waiting.<\/p>\n