Naomie: I thought only family and friends would watch Moonlight
OSCAR-NOMINATED STAR SAYS SHE HAD NO IDEA FILM WOULD BE A SMASH HIT
NAOMIE HARRIS says she did not realise Moonlight would be a hit — and credits her role in the film with changing her career.
The British star, 40, has been nominated for a best supporting actress Oscar for her portrayal of a drugaddicted single mother in Barry Jenkins’s breakout film, which she shot in only three days.
“Barry always talks about how he was just making this movie for his friends and some family who would see it and that would be it,” she said. “And that was the feeling on set, it was very low-budget, it was very intimate film-making, collaborative. But there wasn’t a sense that this was going to be seen by millions and millions of people and be a huge hit, not at all.”
Despite missing out on a Bafta this month, Harris said merely being nominated had changed things for her. “It’s hugely important,” she added. “I had no idea because I haven’t really done this before, so I didn’t know what an impact it would have on my career but it’s really made a very big difference. There’s a lot more interest so it does have an impact and for a film like this, a tiny movie that doesn’t have a publicity budget, it’s enormously helpful.
Harris was unable to be on the Moon- light set in Florida for long because of visa issues and her promotional schedule for Bond film Spectre, in which she starred as Moneypenny. But she spent a month researching drug addiction on YouTube to play her character, Paula. She said: “You’ll be like, ‘Oh my gosh I just want to find this character’ so you give yourself, body, mind, soul over to this other person and so I think sometimes it can become very difficult [to leave a character].
“I was lucky with Paula because in those three days it was like I’d exorcised her completely. I just felt, when I was done I was satiated, I completely feel like she is gone and I’ve got everything she needed to get out of me.”
Harris believes the film has touched so many people because it draws on the human need to connect with others. She said: “Life, particularly modern life, is really quite lonely so I think we put up all these barriers and defences like, ‘I’m self-sufficient, I can do this on my own, I don’t need people’.
“I think this movie is one that doesn’t speak to your head, that it just somehow connects with your heart and that yearning you have for connection. It’s the kind of movie that stays with people for weeks, if not months afterwards.”