Wunmi Mosaku
English-Nigerian actress
Oluwunmi Mosaku (born 1986) is a Nigerian actress. She won the BAFTA TV Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role as Gloria Taylor in the TV film Damilola, Our Loved Boy (2016). In 2019, she starred in the fifth series of Luther. In 2020, she starred as Ruby Baptiste in HBO's Lovecraft Country, and starting in 2021, starred as Hunter B-15 in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) television series Loki.
Quotes edit
- It would have been in the Royal Court Theater in Manchester. I was watching Patrick O'Kane in Shoot the Crow. I was right up against the stage, and he looked down at me. I remember thinking, 'He's looking at me, but he's not really looking at me at the same time.' The fourth wall really blew my mind. I just thought, 'This is magical.
- I really love working with new directors. I've been reading a lot of stuff from new writers, and it's really exciting. But so is working with someone as brilliant and exciting as Sigourney. It's great to sit in both of those worlds.
- I think the acting in Annie (1982) is just brilliant. The music is, obviously, brilliant, and so is the story. But I also think there’s something really relatable about Annie's search for home. As an immigrant, I definitely felt connected to her when I first saw it.
- I am a huge, huge fan of Whoopi Goldberg. I watched everything she did when I was younger, and Sister Act (1992) just brings me joy. When it's on, I can't stop singing or dancing. I can't watch it sat down, really. My husband might even have a video from the other week of me singing a song from Sister Act at my mom's house. It just brings me such joy.
- Black Panther (film) was the first time I had seen Africa depicted in such a way onscreen. I saw me, mine, and ours represented in a comic book world, and I didn't think previously that comics and superheroes had a place for someone like me. I had never really watched comic book movies, so Black Panther (film) was literally my way into the genre. It was my introduction to the MCU, and I loved it. My husband's also African American and I'm African, so I love the sense of kinship in the film, as well as the arguments that w:Killmonger and T'Challa have with each other. I loved the film's ideas and its approach to discussing them. It was very, very Pan-African and clever and interesting, and I didn't expect something like that from Marvel.
- Moonlight (2016) has a special place in my heart, because of the timing of when it came out and where I was in my life at the time. Beyond that, I love seeing Black men be vulnerable and get to really explore a whole spectrum of emotions onscreen. I had never seen that before. The film is so sensitive. It's like love exposed. It's so raw and beautiful.
- When Shoplifters (2018) came out, my husband and my auntie kept telling me, "You've got to watch this film," and I kept putting it off. I'm quite bad in the cinema, honestly. Generally, if you put me in a dark room, I'll want to go to sleep. I'm dyslexic as well, so reading the subtitles in foreign films can be really hard for me. But watching Shoplifters was, for me, like the first time I actually read a novel. I usually just read plays or short stories, but when I read a novel for the first time, I felt like I finally got to experience the full breadth of a story.
Shoplifters was the first time a foreign film really opened me up like that. Reading the subtitles wasn't a chore, and my heart really broke open. I wasn't expecting that. I thought the subtitles would create a separation between the film and I, but they didn't. It’s a perfect film. The acting in it is really human and really honest, too. There's no frills in those performances. It's just, this is who we are, how we feel, what we’re doing, and how we're living. - It was quite emotional to be hearing the stories from passersby telling us what it felt like, and what hasn’t changed, and what needs to change.
- It feels so necessary to tell this story right now. There’s a rot in the system that a lot of people are shouting about, but a lot of people are deaf to.
- It’s very different living here now and being Black in America, being married to an African American, knowing that my future is here and therefore, my safety is in the hands of the people in charge. It’s very sobering and scary. It does feel different, being in a country where police officers have guns. That’s not a thing in the UK.
- [It’s] extraordinary… that the word ‘police’ doesn’t evoke the feeling of safety in you. That’s so profound; I feel like so many people just ignore that. They just don’t relate to that. And I have to acknowledge that I have a privilege – in the UK, as a woman, I’ve never really encountered the police, whereas all of my Black male friends have. And then in the US, when we get stopped by the police, the way they interact with my husband? Very, very intimidating. Very, very scary for me. We’ve made a little thing, where I make sure I say something… in a very, very English accent, and the crazy thing is, the next thing that generally comes out of their mouth is like, ‘Oh, hey, where are you from?’ The interaction completely changes because my accent now makes them interact with my humanity. I don’t know what it is, but all of a sudden, they’re like, ‘Oh, she’s British.'
- Whether or not you feel safe, if the police, and policing, and the justice system and the society is corrupt, we’re not safe. If there is that kind of pain being inflicted by the people that you deem safe, you’re not safe. This needs [to be] addressed and fixed and cut out, and replaced and reimagined, so that there is actually room for hope. ‘Cause we’re all here, sharing it, and some people get the luxury of feeling hopeful. And some people just… don’t.
- It was just really nice coming back. It's very rare for me to come back to a show. I think I've only ever come back to Vera, and I only came back for one episode. To come back to season 2 to see everybody and be like, 'Oh, we did this' – that was really fun. That was just really new. I think I felt a little bit more... I think I felt a little bit more nervous. I hope we live up to season 1, because... that obviously went down well, because we're here at season 2.
- Web Desk, 'Loki' star Wunmi Mosaku reflects experience in filming season two, Geo News, February 12, 2023.
- Sometimes in interviews I get asked a lot of questions about the whole MCU, and I'm not there yet. And I don't have all the answers. But I don't actually feel that outside of the press junket... You know, everyone's just full of love. All the fans are full of love. And then I don't have the pressure of playing a character that already existed. They get what they're given, and I don't have to live up to anything, other than the show and my character. Me – and what I want for the character. But, yeah, I feel like everyone has been really cool. I haven't felt this frenzy. I've never been to a Comic-Con, though, so I don't know what that's like.
- Web Desk, 'Loki' star Wunmi Mosaku reflects experience in filming season two, Geo News, February 12, 2023.
