Meet Wunmi Mosaku: The Nigerian film star in Hollywood's trends “Sünder”

From the moment you start watching sinners, there is something that feels intimate. Yes, it is a supernatural story that plays in the Mississippi delta of the 1930s and full of magic, ghosts and hidden truths, but at the core of the secret is a calm, pulsating essence. This essence is Annie.

It is not striking or loud. Annie, a Hoodoo priestess with a complex background and embodies the emotional weight of the film like a carefully kept thread, steadily, taut and adamant. She perceives what others miss. She listens when others scream. It bears a kind of grief that often escapes the description, and that is exactly why she linger in her thoughts. In a story full of twins, ghosts and gods, Annie is the one who feels real.

Wunmi Mosaku portrays them with subtle intensity. Wunmi comes from Zaria, Nigeria and moved to Great Britain at the age of age and was not surrounded by traditional Yoruba beliefs. However, the role of Annie meant more than memorizing lines or learning rituals, but developed much deeper. “Research brought me into part of me and my descent,” she said. “It reminded me of whom I come from where I come from.”

She had already made a name for herself in the film and on TV. After training at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (Rada), she received praise for her roles in Moses Jones (2009), I Am Slave (2010) and Damilola, our beloved boy (2016), the latter who won her a BAFTA. Her career includes the effective achievements in Luther, Lovecraft Country, Black Mirror, Loki and most recently Deadpool & Wolverine.

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However, sinners were not just another part for them. Wunmi had been studying Yoruba for five years during production, and finally everything came together. The language began to swing with her. Annie's character felt at home. “Now that I am a mother, I feel even more important with where I come from,” she said. “I want my daughter to grow up with this feeling of identity. Not only the stories, but the names, the language, the values.”

This feeling is deeply in Annie's character. Annie is seen and invisible between different areas, past and present between different areas, past and the present. Her silence bears grief and your gaze reflects the memory. While the film like Ifá deals with West African spiritual customs, it is Annie that enables them to grasp the meaning of the loss and to what is long.

“Horror is not just about ghosts,” says Wunmi. “Sometimes it affects the fear of forgetting their origins. The fear of losing their identity.” For this reason, Annie is important, not only as a figure, but also as an embodiment of cultural memory. There is resistance in their silence. There is preservation in their pain.

Wunmi doesn't spend much time reading online reactions. “I'm not looking for anything,” she said. And yet the audience and critics have noticed alike, their performance gives the film its emotional form. It is the weight, the memory, the pain under the magic.

When Mosaku was asked to list her personal heroes, she opened her grandmother Anike Adisa, whom she described as “taught me so many lessons”. Actor Albert Finney, who was her inspiration for participating in Rada; Your colleague and former trainer in Rada William Gaskill; Paul Newman, whom she admired not only because of his acting, but also because of his philanthropic efforts; And Oprah Winfrey, the Mosaku as a “super woman”.

Outside of acting, Wunmi Mosaku is also an ambassador for actionaid, an international charity organization that works with women and girls who live in poverty. She started supporting actionaid in 2018 and visited Ghana in March 2019 to meet with surviving domestic violence and to inform about the work of the organization in order to gain access to the judiciary. Her trip was also a personal trip to her family history when she thought about the history of her grandmother, who fought against a forced marriage when he returned to Nigeria.

And maybe that is why Wunmi Mosaku notices, not because she demands attention, but because she gives her roles so much of herself. In sinners she doesn't play Annie. She becomes her.