Wunmi Mosaku was almost immediately who Ryan Coogler wanted to star as Annie, the herbalist healer and estranged partner of Michael B. Jordan’s Smoke, in his Jim Crow era-set horror flick Sinners.
“He told me on my last day of filming that he had seen the trailer for [the HBO crime drama] We Own This City, and he said there was a scene where he was like, ‘Oh, there’s my Annie,’ and then he continued to write the role with me in mind,” reveals Mosaku, 39, of Coogler, who also directed the film. “But I still auditioned in the sense that we had to get on. It had to be a good working relationship. Because the thing about Ryan is that he creates family, so he’s like, ‘Can I bring you into the fold?’ ”
As a Louisiana-born hoodoo practitioner, Annie has a similarly protective temperament. She gifts Smoke a mojo bag filled with various ingredients designed to help keep him safe when he unexpectedly shows up at her shop in the Mississippi Delta, and teaches Smoke and his twin, Stack (also played by Jordan), how to handle haints and evil spirits when Remmick (Jack O’Connell) and his growing gang of vampires appear at their Juke Joint’s door, pleading to be let in.
“I had to do a lot of unlearning,” says Mosaku of her character’s spiritual beliefs, which she describes as “integral to my growth as a person and my connection to Pan-African and Indigenous wisdom.
“Witchcraft has always been painted as a negative, evil thing. But I realized, by playing Annie and seeing her purity and speaking to hoodoo practitioners and spiritualists who opened my heart and my mind to ancestral wisdom, integrity, love, protection, that the whole reason why it’s been painted as negative is because it’s so powerful. The colonizer needs us to be disconnected and fear ourselves in order to fall in line.”
Born in Zaria, Nigeria, Mosaku and her parents immigrated when she was 1 year old to Manchester, England, where she was raised. After earning an acting degree from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, she began her career in the theater before landing roles in such British TV series and films as Moses Jones, Vera and Damilola, Our Loved Boy, for which she earned a BAFTA TV Award in 2017, becoming only the second Black actress in 62 years to do so.
A starring role during the fifth season of Luther helped spearhead Mosaku’s transition to American TV and film, with the actress appearing on HBO’s Lovecraft Country — for which she received a Critics Choice Award nomination for best supporting actress in a drama series and a SAG Award nom for outstanding performance by an ensemble — the Disney+’s Marvel series Loki and the superhero comedy Deadpool & Wolverine.
Of the career she’s built in the U.S. since moving to Los Angeles in 2018, Mosaku says, “I don’t know if I’ll ever feel like, feet firmly under the table. But Marianne Jean-Baptiste said [at the celebration of Sinners in London], the nerves, the fear that we feel, it’s so necessary. Without the adrenaline and the ‘what if I never work again,’ ‘what if I can’t do this character justice,’ ‘what if I can’t live up to the other people,’ then it’s really not an enjoyable job. So maybe I’ll always feel like this.”
The night before her first day on the set of Sinners, Mosaku recalls having a dream that she says “felt really clear that this was exactly where I was meant to be.” That feeling of belonging stayed with the new mom — who was then seven months postpartum — throughout the duration of filming, recalling how production worked around her pumping schedule. Zinzi Coogler, Ryan’s wife and a producer on the film, also lent her her assistant to help her manage mommy duties when she accidentally cut her thumb the first week of filming and landed in urgent care with stitches.
Wunmi Mosaku as the hoodoo practitioner Annie in Sinners.
Courtesy of Warner Bros.
“I’ve had many an accident on set and I have never been treated like that,” says Mosaku, who adds that kind of care eased both her and her daughter’s adjustment to her return to work.
“It’s hard to say it’s worth the time away from her, but I didn’t regret the time away,” she explains. “I never was like, ‘Why the fuck am I here? I should be with my baby.’ I felt like I was being nourished so I could go home and nourish her.”
The response to the film — which grossed more than $360 million at the box office — and her character, specifically her and Smoke’s layered romance, has been equally affirming for Mosaku.
“Seeing dark-skinned women, full-figured women, feel so loved and seen by the film felt very embracing,” she says. “It felt really healing to hear people say, ‘I’m so glad,’ ‘I’m so happy,’ ‘I needed to see this, feel this, know that this is how we can be loved, should be loved, are loved,’ and not the stereotypes that we see continuously online or onscreen of whoever wants to paint us however they want to paint us.
“To see that kind of woman just fully loved and appreciated, the wisdom appreciated, the nurturing appreciated, the sexiness appreciated, the darkness, the naturalness, everything appreciated,” adds Mosaku. “I didn’t realize how lonely it felt until I felt like, ‘Oh, we are all feeling this love together.’ ”
The fervor around the Warner Bros. film, which opened in April and is now streaming on HBO Max, hasn’t translated into bigger opportunities for Mosaku just yet. “It’s been a really quiet year,” she notes. “Lots of stuff has come in, but it’s not been the right stuff.” However, she’s been putting into practice advice she received from her Sinners co-star.
“Michael said, ‘Just wait. Hold your nerve because things will come that you don’t necessarily want to do that you feel like you should because you should keep working and keep the momentum up.’ So it’s actually been my husband who’s [reminding me], ‘Don’t do it. Hold your nerve. We’ve got this. Just wait.’ ”
Two upcoming projects that Mosaku knows for sure are right for her are Aaron Sorkin’s The Social Reckoning, his follow-up to 2010’s The Social Network, and the Apple adaptation This Is How It Goes, a psychological thriller revolving around an interracial love triangle that reunites her with Luther co-star Idris Elba.
“Idris came in with this offer, and my husband had said, ‘What do you want to do next? I think this kind of genre would be great for you.’ And I hadn’t even thought about that because I hadn’t thought of myself in that world. I’ve never played this kind of role before, and I’d been like, ‘That would be cool, but is anyone going to cast me as that?’ And then Idris called,” Mosaku recalls.
That the opportunity fell into her lap as it did reinforces Mosaku’s philosophy about her professional journey: Nothing is linear, and the best course of action is to stay calm and not panic.
“I don’t want to trip myself up moving too fast,” says Mosaku. “That was a big lesson I learned from Annie. Don’t move too fast.”
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