Gugu Mbatha-Raw covers the latest issue of British Vogue. This is her first-ever Vogue cover! And she’s working it. I love this cover image – my only complaint is that it’s possibly a little bit TOO cropped on her face. I want a better look at what she’s wearing! Anyway, Gugu is promoting her role in A Wrinkle In Time. She plays Dr. Kate Murry, the mom to the lead little girl, and wife to Chris Pine’s character. Gugu talks to British Vogue about AWIT and the other role that made her famous, the lead role in Belle. Some highlights:
A Wrinkle In Time, working with Ava DuVernay: The film marks the first time a black woman has helmed a $100 million film, and seems a fitting summary of Mbatha-Raw’s own boundary breaking career trajectory so far. “The chance to work with Ava again, and what it means for a woman of colour to be directing something of that scale and budget for Disney – I wanted to be in that line.”
Bonding with Oprah? “We were both on the set on the same day and she came and hung out in my trailer for a little bit and we had a chat, in her full character regalia, which is just goddess-like. I hope we actually get to do something where we work together in a scene because that’d be incredible. I feel so thankful to have her in my life and to have had her guidance. She’s a very special human.”
Her role in Belle: “I didn’t really see how I could be in a period drama without playing a slave, necessarily, or a character in a very subservient or brutalised role. As a biracial woman born in the 1980s, if you let popular culture dictate it, you’d think mixed-race people were like a new thing. And that’s absolutely not the case. People of colour have existed throughout history – it’s just who has been able to tell the stories. And that to me became really important: to illuminate that. To show that Dido Elizabeth Belle is as valid a story as Elizabeth Bennet… And, you know, Elizabeth Bennet’s fictional.”
OMG, I’m feeling her so much on “if you let popular culture dictate it, you’d think mixed-race people were like a new thing.” Exactly. As much as I enjoy the very recent increased visibility of mixed-race celebrities and people of color in general, I do have moments where I think: where was all of this when I was growing up?? Why did I feel like such an oddity, some kind of “exotic” biracial person who had never been seen before?
Photos courtesy WENN, cover courtesy of British Vogue.
“it’s just who has been able to tell the stories” yes yes YES.
She was good in Wrinkle, I hope to see her in a lot more. Does anyone else remember the short lived TV series she did with Boris Kodjoe? What a smoking hot couple they were on that show!
I remember it. They were smoking hot.
The show was so bad, but OH MY GOD were they hot!! We watched every episode–something for both me and my husband.
There’s a new-ish lame romantic comedy with her on Netflix.
I’m in my 40s and I feel like we’re really seeing actors who unapologetically *don’t* look heavily mixed for the first time in a long time. Lighter complexioned or racially ambiguous stars have always been given top billing.
It’s nice isnt it? Im sure others can attest but it’s not as simple as you are either white or non white but like a spectrum of being ethnic/black/brown whatever you want to call it and mixed race and more “white” minority people are much more socially acceaptable and palpitable but it be so wrong and offensive.. like how how should 100 percent black or brown suppose to feel? I’m sorry Im too ethnic? Discrimination is now much more subtle and it’s really time for this
Fdff
Reminds me of the Jim Crow mantea : If you’re black stay back, if your’re brown stick around, if you’re light you’re all right.
Really glad things are changing though
She is so talented and lovely. I have been rooting for her since Mr. Sloane; she made almost as big an impression as Jessica Chastain in that film, in a much smaller role.
Love her! She is so beautiful and talented. Belle was amazing.
You might have felt you were an oddity because mixed race people/people of colour are still the minority. I say this as a mixed person. I’m from the UK and it’s an 87% white majority.
“Where was all this when I was growing up?”
Yes! As a multi-ethnic woman of color, I am
So happy we are seeing more diversity right now. Belle was a revelation for me. We need to tell these stories. I wish I’d grown up with more of this.
Hey thanks, I’m Puerto Rican, well…”sorta-rican” because I pass as “white” an now live a very homogenous culture. My father was a super white skinned man, so while my brothers look nearly African American, I was the “honey child” of the family. I didn’t “own” my ethnicity but was thrilled to look like a “surfer girl” in 80s California. All that hiding, all that envy for my blue eyed bottle blonde barbie…so much wasted time not loving/appreciating myself. While culture has gradually borrowed the tans, big lips and hips, it’s been a gradual awakening.
I spent most of my childhood wishing I was white, sadly. It didn’t help that my too older sisters were fair-skinned, while I was an awkward, lanky bronzed girl. I realized from a young age that I was perceived and treated differently to my sisters. But, I’m comfortable with myself now. I no longer hide from the sun just so I can get as pale as possible.
It is fairly new where I live, in Vancouver Canada. There is a whole new generation of half Asian and half Caucasian here due to the large amount of asians that have lived here since Hong Kong went back to China. Half the population moved here or resided here 30 years ago are having kids with white men! It’s a real thing bc I take my son to drop in classes everyday and I see how interesting and mixed they are specifically in downtown Vancouver. Otherwise in the suburban areas not many mixed babies there still.
Having kids with white men? What?
Mixed race babies aren’t necessarily fathered by white men.
@ella – I think she was just speaking to her experience in Vancouver – that it’s primarily Asian women and Caucasian men having bi-racial children, not that white men are the standard.
@nacho_friend I have to disagree with you a bit. I am from Vancouver and turning 50 this year. I grew up around the Burnaby/Port Moody/Coquitlam area and knew quite a few mixed race kids of which I was one. In our cul-de-sac there was our family where my Dad was Asian and mother white, our neighbours 2 doors down who were exactly like us and people across the way who were Jamaican/Asian/Swedish. I went to a small girl’s school in Burnaby MRHS (now closed) that had quite a large number of mixed race kids. I felt very much at home and didn’t feel that I was an oddity at all.
Yes the influx of Asians after Hong Kong went back to China made it even more visible, but I have always felt that Vancouver was far more multicultural than other parts of Canada eg. the prairies (where I have also lived), and it has been that way for quite some time.
I think at least in the US, mixed race women are the vast majority of faces in movies, the music industry and pop culture but they are just referred to (or used in place of) full race Blacks, Asians and Hispanics. To take on the title of mixed race is to have opportunities drop down to the slim margins of the full race minorities. You are going against the programming that society, Hollywood and the music industry has set up as the model of beauty standards for WOC especially. You will break the illusion.
This is true but what bothers me is how mixed race has replaced European when it comes to beauty standards for non-mixed woc. In movies everyone loves a strong, commanding, obviously black male lead but 9 times out of 10 his love interest will be a woman who is racially ambiguous. It’s like they can’t have two black people on screen and in a fulfilled relationship. In addition, racially ambiguous woc are definitely considered accessible and safe bets for white consumers.
“I think: where was all of this when I was growing up?? Why did I feel like such an oddity, some kind of “exotic” biracial person who had never been seen before?”
You and I felt like the oddities growing up because people of obvious mixed raced backgrounds were the minority amongst the minority. People of color on a tv show or in a movie were decidedly different. They had brown skin, they had thick accents etc.
On the rare occasion that someone of clear multi racial background was portrayed or not even portrayed but merely part of the group of POC then they were the flaky flighty ones or even arrogant I use as an example, Denise Huxtable, her sister Sandra Huxtable and Sandra’s husband Elvin. Let’s follow Denise to college where she met Whitley Gilbert. Or better yet leave the Huxtables and go across country to the Winslows where there’s the aunt who is living with her sister family because she had yet to get it together even with a child to raise. One that she apparently abandoned. Yes I’know that was most likely an actor/contract issue but that was not how it was handled on air.
I came to this realization many years ago (long before Cosby’s “habits” became public knowledge) and I stopped watching those shows in reruns because they made me angry.
Exactly. Mixed race is not a new thing. Being acknowledged is.
Just came here to say that Gugu deserves superstardom. I am tired of seeing her in boring supporting roles in Concussion or Beauty and the Beast (how awesome would it have been if she had been the lead in that? though slightly gimmicky perhaps to play another character called Belle). She showed such tremendous depth and range in Belle, Beyond the Lights and her Black Mirror episode.
She’s the female lead in a new movie currently on Netflix. With a Dan Futterman lookalike, for those who remember Dan Futterman.
Love her, serious girl crush. She was sublime I’m Belle and I saw the Netflix original she starred in and thought she and Christopher were excellent. She’s a real talent and want to see more of her.
I’m mixed and agree with her.