Wunmi Mosaku on how self-acceptance brought her to Sinners

0:00From KCRW Santa Monica and KCRW.com, it's The Treatment.

0:16Welcome to The Treatment. I'm Elvis Mitchell. I'm discussing inclement weather and its discontents with BAFTA winner Oscar nominee, Umi Masako. First of all, thank you so much for being here. I think of you as doing these roles where your character doesn't give much away. I think about I Am Slave. Well, I guess in so many things. You play these characters who have an interesting relationship to freedom. And she becomes in this weird way. I think about the way she became in this awful way the center of that house in I Am Slave. And those great scenes that you had at night and that cot. And just that you couldn't talk.

1:01or in Lovecraft Country. You have so much in those scenes. And it happens so often where you're waiting to speak. I hadn't linked them all in that way before. This is the first time I'm hearing it. For me, the private moments for any character are so enthralling, like to see what a person does on their own and then seeing how they transform with eyes on them. Because when I think about Ruby and Lovecraft Country, just that, the defense that she has to put up, the representative she shows up as in the world as a Black woman, and then just the, like, kind of strange, like, her freedom as a white woman, but she does things that I'm like, you went and got a job?

1:55You know, like so banal, but also so profound for this woman. But then it's also the stuff in between. Like in between her life as a Black woman outside and the stuff in between the life as a white woman outside. And then the inside, the guilt, the shame, the humiliation, the just the desire for freedom and you know I hadn't I hadn't linked them all together the desire for freedom and I and I'm thinking about his house too that's even we own this city it's the desire for freedom no one's ever said it to me before and I've never put the link between the characters before it's interesting just from talking to you before we got started and obviously you're an actor but you're so different from any of those characters that you play because at some point all these characters it goes back to we own the city they're all people who are basically keeping their own counsel in this way that you play them and we even see it in sinners she's very different with her man when there's nobody else around that's why the last scene is so powerful because it really is the most private scene that we're ever going to have with her and we can sort of see who she is in that moment i'm apparently this movie's made a lot of money but i don't want to give away that scene for me because it's talking about it makes me emotional because it's such it's such a catharsis i mean it's such it's the most relief you've ever shown on screen i mean she's really at peace in that moment and brings him into that piece you're clearly a big personality and these characters you play have these sort of epic statures that they have to hide from the world i was thinking back to one of my favorite scenes in I Am Slavery, that scene where she runs off and he catches her and he just says, I'm not going to tell anybody.

3:54You can just sense her relief, but you can also sort of see that he's impressed with her size in the car and not saying anything. I'm just thinking back to that scene, you know. I just haven't... Well, she says it's an incredible story based on a true story about a Sudanese, I don't want to say refugee because that's the appellation placed on her, but a woman who's been taken away from her home and systematically been taken away from her home. She's been trafficked. And then one home after another after another. I mean, her real home, these places that become homes in which she works, she's pulled from one after another after another.

4:28Right. It so explains why it's when she's on her back, literally her back against the wall, that she feels like she can sort of release some part of it. Not even when she's sitting, but when she's laying down. Yeah. I guess it's that tiny flicker of hope of the promise that life can be sweet. I mean, I think that's what lives in all of us. And that's what makes people get on these dangerous boats across dangerous waters with their children and their loved ones and leave their homes. That flicker of like, life can be sweet and you deserve it. and that fight, like, I can't, it's such a, it seems so bleak and that light must feel like a pinprick, but it's enough to ignite the courage and the heart and the blood flow to really just go for it and try.

5:43You're listening to The Treatment. I guess is the Oscar nominee for a role as Annie in Ryan Coogler's Sinners, Umi Masako. These are all people, all characters who have an enormous amount of pride in the way they move through life. Yeah, yeah. And I don't mean to keep going back to I'm still seeing it with an audience in Toronto. Oh, wow. And just sort of that gasp at the end when Isaac de Bancoli, I mean, it's in its way, it's kind of a mythic story. It's kind of realism in a fairy tale in the same way that Sinners is. As is Lovecraft Country. There are all these things that are these kind of almost mythic stories where she's telling the fairy tale about the cloud that her father told her.

6:27And again, that's a moment of her sort of claiming humanity and building a home in that moment. Then all these homes have been taken away from her. And when she takes his hand in Sinners, it's that same moment of, this is our home. does this make sense yeah it does the thing about I Am Slave for me though is that I'm scared to kind of mythologize it anyway just because she's a real person that's what I'm saying but even in something like Lovecraft Country where it's not a real person it's still the real world it's still the purchase of what it takes to be a personal color got it and what that takes from you yes and the part of your life you have to sacrifice.

7:12Right. And that, you know, in some way, it's people of color always like secreting some part of ourselves away. Yes. No, 100%. And that truly is the thing that always like has connected me to all of these pieces is the humanity in it. I can see myself. Like playing Ruby in Lovecraft Country, I had to ask this really dark question that I have never been brave enough to ask myself. I don't even want to say it would I want to live as a white woman ever you know and it's really like I've never said that I've never asked myself that I've never it really was a very confronting question because my whole identity has been about loving and accepting myself through all like every time I have felt like I have not been enough or that the world was telling me that I needed to look or do or be a certain way that I could never possibly be without really hurting myself I have just chosen to love myself and I say that even not truly knowing if I have ever truly truly I truly loved myself, but I have accepted myself completely.

8:33These are all characters you play who have, even in those moments of really existential question, there is a respect that these characters all have for themselves. Yeah. And that respect is sort of like asking these questions. Yeah. Where is my happiness? Right. I mean, I think there's this sort of fundamental kind of self, I don't want to say self-regard, but self-esteem because these circumstances, these people find themselves in, they're so dire. that they have to sort of respect themselves. Yeah. But then, and it's like, when I say like the doubt of like loving yourself, because there were just moments where you're like, oh, I wish I was more like this.

9:13I wish I was more like this. You know, obviously that's not loving yourself fully in that moment, but it is accepting yourself in that moment. And that's what I think I've always done. And like, as a child, I would just like, I don't know where this came from. I had never heard the word affirmation before, but I would give myself affirmations every single morning from like age 13 during puberty when everything was changing. And I didn't understand and I couldn't quite love myself, like actually, but I told myself I loved myself. And I told myself that, like I literally would say, I love you hair.

9:48I love you eyes. I love you skin. I love you teeth. I love you. I love you pot belly. I love you stretch marks. I would just say, I said it every single. no one told me to it just came from the divine and I truly accepted myself and in moments I've loved myself and in moments I was like I'm gonna work harder at this and I'm gonna work harder at this but I never I never I do feel really proud about this is that I feel like I've never hurt myself especially when i think about annie i do think that acceptance and and love because i do think acceptance is love that's that's the reason why i got to play her that's what i feel like like yeah i i felt like every single affirmation that i gave myself took me to to her this is a good place to take a break.

10:45We'll talk more about self-respect with my guest, Oscar nominee Wumi Masako.

10:52Welcome back to The Treatment. We're talking about self-regard with my guest, Oscar nominee and after an Oscar nominee for Sinners, Wumi Masako. But it's funny you talk about not wanting to be other people, but the great thing about your life is you get to be other people all the time. All the time. There's all these sort of things bouncing around, but I just find that there's this core of, and I'm not going to He's a shopper in the world, like dignity. But there's sort of these characters sort of trying to command a space because they're so compromised in their lives. And again, I just found, and I can imagine your first conversations with Ryan, Ryan Googler, were something about, well, in effect, I need somebody to be in a grown-up in this world.

11:30Because at some point, there is an act of confrontation in almost every scene, verbal or physical, in the movie. and I've had this discussion with Ryan when he's here and said part of the movie is about what will you accept from people you love? And there's so much she's asked to accept from him because there wouldn't be anything wrong with him putting down roots in this place and running away from this place is what he's been doing all of his life. And there's something about her, I think, and I said Ryan's theme in all his movies is the protagonists are always trying to go home. They almost, they never get there, but they're always trying to go home.

12:10And Annie, I think, is that character who is the representation of home. Mm-hmm. Trying to get home, that's just, that feels like a profound thing, especially as a Black person in America, like, just trying to get home, make it home safely. Yeah, I think her home is, obviously her home is it's higher it's with she's not just talking about the here and now she's talking about the home that her ancestors have built to me that's the thing that I hold on to more than anything now is because of this film is remembering that there is more to it, there's more to just like what I can see and feel and here it's that the ancestors are waiting, you know, and that you will get to join them and, like, it'd be peace.

13:16But, yeah, that's the thing that I really try and hold on to, especially in all of this, the awards season and the chaos and the excitement and the disappointments and the emotion and the rollercoaster is that this is here. This is here. And then there's more. There's more to come. Like, keep grounded because that's the thing. That's the thing is, like, getting home. Make sure you get home. The fact that you have to remember where you came from, I mean, to get home in the first place, to remember where your home was. And you never, you don't strike me as somebody, Again, this gets these characters who always have the entire journey of their lives in their head, which is, again, see that kind of performance of somebody as young as you were in that film.

14:09And even as young as you were in Lovecraft Country, somebody who has this incredible presence of mind, but also has to communicate so much in silence. I mean, there's been a lot of that. There's a part of you, because I wonder if you, clearly you've done a lot of stage because you have to know how to be quiet on stage. Yeah. But there's also this part of you that really almost luxuriates in the silences and knows how to use that and make a part of that. And that's a wonderful part of the command in so many of these things you've done, especially in Sinners, how much she rules by silence. I like that.

14:47I like the stuff in between, like I said, the private moments. and I like the stuff that's not said and I like the thoughts that you think before you say your line. Like I like to live in those moments. To me that is, those are the truest moments because it's your instinct, it's before you put your filter on. Like I think about all the things that, like the thoughts that crossed my mind when Smoke asked why my hoodoo didn't work on our daughter. The things that crossed my mind after he asked that question. But then my answer, the two very different things. you have to feel them all and then make a decision to say what you think needs to be said or heard.

15:52You're listening to The Treatment. My guest is the Oscar nominee for her role as Annie in Ryan Coogler's Sinners, Wami Masako. There is so often that pause before these characters speak. But I've attributed that to often playing characters who are wary and so aware of the situation around them that it becomes a sort of act of kind of selflessness to not sort of occupy too much space. In a lot of these cases, I mean, even in Loki, where the fun of it is like, again, you're playing it for comedy that she's the one person who doesn't like to talk too much. She's around the most talked-to person in the entire Marvel universe, and she's holding her silences.

16:33But it's interesting that you say that that's a part of who you are as well. I kind of thought everyone was like that. I did and then you know it's something that comes up a lot the pause between my answer it comes up a lot in in at home it's like did you hear me I'm like oh I did but I didn't hear you um or like especially in a noisy room I'm looking at your mouth and if someone's talk if someone else's talk tries to get my attention and I'm I have to be locked in with whoever I'm talking to if there's a lot of sound around. So then if someone calls my name, I don't hear you because I'm locked into the person, the thing I'm talking about right now.

17:17Like, so generally, if you need my attention, you have to touch me. Like, I can't, I don't hear, I don't hear things, especially if there's a lot of noise around. And then also there's the process of like hearing the question. Like, well, then you go, well, is that the real question? Or do they have an answer themselves? Do they want my answer? There's lots to process when someone asks you something too. Because how many times have they asked you this before? Like thinking about Smoke and Annie. How many times has he asked me why didn't it work before? All the conversations we've had in that grief, his question in that moment, it might be the first time.

18:02It might not be the first time. he might have given many different hypotheses of why and how and blame and guilt so you hear it and then and then you process like what you think they're asking where you think it's coming from you process what that what the how that feels in you like and then there's your answer and And for me, my answer is I'm so terrified of hurting people, saying things without acknowledging my own privilege. That's the thing that I'm most anxious about in life is like just talking and not acknowledging that I have a privilege and my opinion comes because of whatever privilege.

18:56that's why I pause a lot is because I want to make sure that if I'm going to say something that it doesn't hurt anyone and if I'm talking about my own experience that I preface it with like acknowledging my privilege you know Some of these characters that you're playing are characters who are asking questions by their silence about privilege because they're around people who have privilege. Right. These men who can come and go as they please in Sinners. These people around her in I Am Slave. The world around her in Lovecraft Country. Right. I mean, being a hunter in Lovecraft. I mean, these characters are all dealing with this privilege of these people.

19:44It's funny how incredibly autobiographical in its sort of Saravocci way your work is. Well, I guess. I mean, they're all black women. and that that's where i move from that's the genesis of all of my interaction and opinions and that's how i move through the world that's it that's the genesis of every impulse is that i'm a black woman in this world and i have certain privileges and i definitely am underprivileged in so many of the ways but i can't acknowledge i can't not acknowledge the fact that i have privileges I can't thank you enough for being here. And this has been a great time. Thank you so much for doing this.

20:27My guest, of course, is Oscar nominee this year for her role in Ryan Coogler's Sinners, Umi Masaku. Please come back and say. I absolutely will. This was great. Thank you.

20:45a BAFTA award winner Bumi Masaku has made herself known for roles in the HBO series Lovecraft Country and the film I Am Slave she is now in the running for best supporting actress for Ryan Kugler's film Sinners which is the recipient of a record-breaking 16 Oscar nominations including best picture Previous conversations with Oscar nominees such as an epic one with Ryan Coogler for Sinners at the archive kcrw.com slash thetreatment You'll also find thoughts on inspiration at kcrw.com slash thetreat where this week Joel Edgerton star of Best Picture Oscar nominee Train Dreams opens up about a musician he admires This month we're asking you to go to kcrw.com slash surveys and say what you like about the treatment and when and why you listen.

21:44Your answers are totally anonymous. Thank you. My thanks to Rebecca Mooney, who edits and produces the show, and Katie Gilchrist, who mixes it. To better days, everyone. I'm Elvis Mitchell. It's The Treatment.