WINNER IS …

Following the dazzling turns in ‘Black Mirror’, ‘Fast Color’, and ‘The Morning Show’, Gugu Mbatha-Raw is taking the crown playing the first black Miss World. She tells Lydia Slater about fighting for feminism, embracing her heritage, and the secret of hap

Photographed by Richard Phibbs. Styled by Leith Clark.

Opening the 1970 Miss World contest, the presenter Bob Hope was in a particularly ebullient mood. “I’m very, very happy to be here at this cattle market ... ” he leered into the tittering audience. “Moooooo!” His enjoyment was short-lived; moments later, the clatter of a football rattle resounded around the Royal Albert Hall, and the stage was invaded by outraged women protesters, hurling flour and stink bombs. They forced the obnoxious Hope to flee from the set and disrupted the BBC’s broadcast in what has come to be seen as a watershed moment for feminism.

“I watched the whole ceremony and it’s shocking, particularly the bit where the women all have to turn round to show their bottoms ... ” says Gugu Mbatha-Raw, over lunch at a smart Marylebone restaurant. “It definitely makes you realise quite how far we’ve come.”

This particular Miss World contest is the subject of Gugu’s thought-provoking new drama, Misbehaviour. She takes the role of Jennifer Hosten, who, as Miss Grenada, became the first black woman to win the Miss World crown. “I came to [the part] with an air of judgement, of oh you know, beauty queens,” she admits, “but I’ve become more open-minded as to what that represents. I think it’s very easy now to look back and say, ‘Why would you do that? It’s so superficial.’ What’s interesting is that the rebellion can often be a luxury.” For her research into the film, Gugu visited Grenada to talk to Hosten. “She’s in her 70s now, and she’s got such a regal presence, such posture, these bright, bright eyes—she’s very demure, quite proper but very centred.”

“It was amazing to meet her and find out about a moment in her life all that time ago that really informed all her opportunities and choices. She felt like she was an ambassador for her country, and she was breaking boundaries in her own way.” Hosten went on to be appointed Grenada’s High Commissioner to Canada. Meanwhile, just a few days before we meet, the Miss World title is awarded to Toni-Ann Singh of Jamaica, meaning that in 2019, for the first time ever, all major beauty titles have been won by black women. “Optics are so powerful: who gets to be celebrated?” says Gugu.

Distractingly beautiful herself, and appearing far younger than her 36 years, Gugu has an unselfconscious freshness that could not be further from a beauty queen’s manicured perfection. She has come to our lunch straight from a yoga class and arrives dressed down in a monochrome ensemble of jeans, a scarf, and an embellished rollneck from Sézane. “This is as jazzy as I normally get,” she confesses. “My wardrobe is mostly black because I dress up for a living, and it makes me feel calm and neutral.”

The waiter, who can clearly recognise the star quality when he sees it, rushes up with a menu, and she studies it with frank delight, eventually settling on potato ravioli and sea-bass with champagne sauce, and diving for the bread basket. “Ooh! It’s warm!” she exclaims, then complains vociferously about the inadequate dinner served at a celebrity event we both attended recently.

In short, Gugu is one of those rare people to whom it is easy to warm immediately. Perhaps this attribute is why she doesn’t shy away from less sympathetic roles; on the contrary, she appears to revel in them. “You can’t always be the goodie everyone’s rooting for,” she says, laughing.

Her nuanced performances as Hannah Shoenfeld in the acclaimed AppleTV+ drama The Morning Show was on such example. Starring alongside Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon, she portrayed a talent booker for a television show who comes across as chilly and judgmental. It is only towards the end of the series that we witness in flashback the sexual assault by a senior colleague that has traumatised her for years.

“This is a scene of surpassing discomfort, made worse by the fact that her violator, brilliantly played by Steve Carell, believes her silence means she is a willing participant. “We all think, ‘Just say no!’ But actually there is another instinct, which is to freeze, and that’s so primal. Obviously, it’s an abuse of power, but I think how Hannah responds to it is very real.”

Gugu is generous in her praise for her co-star Carell. “He’s so wellloved, but he has a dark side to his range,” she says. “I don’t know if any other actor would have been brave enough to do it, or they might have made it more two-dimensional or villainous or predatory. Ooh! It gets deep, it gets dark, it gets murky! It’s a modern morality tale: you sell your soul, what’s the cost and who’s to blame?” Indeed: Hannah later accepts a promotion in exchange for withdrawing her complaint. “What I love about the script is that you get to see the grey area,” Gugu says. “It’s not saying: this person’s a saint, this person’s a victim, this person’s a predator, it’s saying that we are all culpable.”

She shows me a message sent to her on Instagram by a victim of sexual assault, who writes that Gugu’s performance had changed her own perspective on the experience. “Thank you for bringing this story to life and helping our society understand ... how varied women’s experiences with rape and assault can be. You’ve helped me immensely in my healing process.” Gugu looks thoughtful as she puts her phone away. “It’s exciting for me to realise that the work can create conversations and help people to look at things differently. Obviously, it’s just TV, it’s not therapy, but I think it could spark a shift in someone ... I hope Harvey Weinstein is watching The Morning Show,” she concludes. A vocal supporter of the Time’s Up campaign since its launch, she has never experienced any inappropriate behaviour herself, but knows many who have. “Even since that episode, friends I’ve had for a long, long time have been reframing an experience they had in the light of it,” she says.

I suggest to her that a lot of her films have a campaigning edge. For one thing, she seems to make a habit of working with female directors, despite their being a minority in the industry. And rarely does she take a role without a message. Last

“It’s so funny, isn’t it, that your parents are just mum and dad. year’s Motherless Brooklyn saw her play a lawyer

You don’t think of them as real people till much later,” says Gugu. and community activist working to prevent

“Our dinner-table conversations were often about South Africa, Harlem slum clearances. In her first major film,

but I was too young to understand it. It would be more: ‘Groan! Belle, directed by Amma Asante, she portrayed

Why is Daddy talking about politics again? I just didn’t get it. But it the illegitimate daughter of a British admiral who

probably has given me a more questioning mind and a more global attempts to combat the slave trade. Beyond the

perspective. I’m always looking for the complexities, I’m not satisfied Lights tackled misogyny in the music industry,

with the conventional version of a story.” and the Emmy award-winning Black Mirror

A keen performer from childhood, she won a place at Rada aged episode ‘San Junipero’ drew critical praise for its

17, and started her career in television with roles in Spooks and Doctor positive portrayal of a lesbian relationship. “Oh

Who. It was starring in Belle and Beyond the Lights that inspired her to no!” says Gugu, a little dismayed by this analysis.

visit South Africa for the first time, at the age of 30. “I thought, I’ve “I hope they don’t feel overly worthy ... With ‘San

done two films that in different ways deal with identity, and often I Junipero’, that script pinged off the page. The

feel the stories that gravitate towards you are the ones you need to twist of it was nothing to do with being gay or

heal within yourself,” she says. “So I visited family in Pretoria and bisexual, I just loved the characters. I didn’t really

Johannesburg and Soweto, and because it was my first time, everyone anticipate the impact it would have.”

rallied and met up with me. They jokingly called me ‘the Unifier’ Nevertheless, she agrees that she needs more

because some of my cousins hadn’t seen each other for years.” than just a pay cheque to inspire her to accept a

Being mixed-race, she says, “There is always a complexity about role. “There are many things I could have done

identity that you bring. It’s not a riddle that needs to be solved, it’s a with my life,” she says. “You do have these dark

duality that’s part of your nature. It’s interesting as an actor because nights of the soul when you think, ‘Why am I

you’re always taking on different identities.” doing this?’ And it really helps if there’s a bigger

All the same, though she is now based in Los Angeles, she remains reason. Otherwise, I think you would get very

intensely British at heart. She talks wistfully of the national sense of jaded, very quickly, with the long hours and the

humour and the ‘grounded realism, which is good for the soul’, and intensity of it all.”

has a daily relaxation ritual involving lying in a bathful of Epsom Campaigning may be in her genes. Her

salts, sipping tea, and listening to a soundtrack of thunderstorms. “I father Patrick Mbatha is South African and grew

miss the rain so much in LA,” she confesses. “I’m rock ’n’ roll, me!” up under apartheid. As a student, he joined the

In 2018, Gugu played Ruth, a woman with supernatural abilities ANC, and later, fearing imprisonment on Robben

in the critically praised yet underappreciated sci-fi thriller Fast Color. Island, fled the country, assisted by the UNHCR,

Later this year, she will star opposite Gemma Arterton in the period with which Gugu now works as an ambassador.

drama Summerland, and she has just been cast alongside Tom (“My cousins would say it’s an ancestral call,” she

Hiddleston in the Marvel Studios project Loki. There is also talk says.) He ended up working as a doctor in Oxford,

of a biopic about Mary Seacole, the pioneering Jamaican nurse and where he met Anne Raw, a nurse. They named

businesswoman. “For me, success is freedom and being stimulated their daughter ‘Gugulethu’, meaning ‘our pride’

and staying curious. I want to be proud of my work, and to feel in Zulu. it’s doing something to help the culture evolve, but also, I want to keep myself interested.” So she eschews contracts that would tie her into multiple films before she’s read a script, and doesn’t even dream of an Academy Award. “You can’t have that as your end game, because what are you doing to do the day after the Oscars?” she points out reasonably.

The Americans must find her a real enigma, I say, as she gathers up her coat and prepares to head back out onto the chilly London streets. “Good!” she declares. “I hope it stays that way!” ‘Loki’ is expected to be released in spring 2021.

J