Now a date with Oscar

TWO days after being Oscar-nominated for Moonlight, Naomie Harris picks the place for us to meet – a large brasserie near her north London, UK home. It’s teatime and the staff are exceptionally attentive: one waiter seats us, a different one takes the tea order, another one brings it, and a fourth the bill. She smiles a little more blushingly on each pass, and when we leave an hour later, doesn’t notice the entire workforce drawing into a semicircle for a gossip.

Harris, who turned 40 last year, is clearly used to being recognised by now, and may even have learned to quite enjoy it. While her name was well-known before Skyfall and Spectre , taking on the iconic role of Miss Moneypenny has raised her to a new stratosphere of celebrity. But it’s Moonlight that has brought her, for the first time, into the flashbulb fever of awards season.

Nominated for eight Oscars, including best picture and director, for the stunningly talented Barry Jenkins, Moonlight is one of those small-scale success stories that any actor feels lucky to be a part of. You can tell Harris feels this way, even if her own contribution is invaluable.

Moving consecutively through three timeframes, it’s the story of Chiron, a gay, black kid in Miami, who grows up to be a gay, black teenager, and on into adulthood, struggling at each stage with accepting his identity and living an open life.

Three different, unknown actors – Alex R Hibbert, Ashton Sanders, and former sprinting champion Trevante Rhodes – play this part, and Harris is the only actor who appears in all three sections, as Chiron’s single mother, a crack-addict and some-time prostitute called Paula.

Ever since it premiered in September, the critical acclaim for the $5-million film has been overwhelming – yes, even exceeding this year’s Oscar front-runner, La La Land.

Along with her fellow nominee, Mahershala Ali, Harris has stood out in the awards conversation, shortlisted by almost every group going. Despite all this, she didn’t consider the Oscar nomination a done deal at all. In fact, she was so nervous about not getting one, she couldn’t bring herself to watch the announcement live.

“I was with my mom, and was following it initially,” she says. “And then I couldn’t do it. I was like, ‘Let’s just switch it off, let’s pretend this isn’t happening!’ I knew either way that my agents would call me and let me know. And then there was this phone call. It was my brother, and he was like, ‘YOU’VE BEEN NOMINATED!’. And then Mom – who’s always as cool as a cucumber – started screaming, my brother was screaming. It was really amazing.”

Harris talks a lot about her mother, Lisselle Kayla, who raised her alone in a Finsbury Park council flat, having separated from her Trinidadian father before she was born.

Kayla, who now works as a faith healer, was a TV scriptwriter on for many years, and it was under her aegis that Harris made her screen debut, aged nine, on the BBC children’s series Witch .

After this, it took more than two decades for her to seek more roles: she says she was “very, very shy” when starting out, and admits that “naturally, I wouldn’t choose to be in front of a camera, weirdly enough”.

In the meantime, she used the income from her child acting to put herself through university – Pembroke College, Cambridge, where she read social and political sciences – and then got support from “20-odd charities” to pave her way into the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School.

She credits the “incredibly generous” Dawn French with stumping up for her first Equity card, while warning her that she would need a thick skin to survive in the industry.

“It’s the best advice anyone’s ever given me.”

In the past – and this has a lot to do with her mother’s influence – Harris had ruled out ever playing a particular kind of role.

“I didn’t want to play a crack addict,” she confides. “I feel that there are enough negative portrayals of women in general, and black women in particular. I grew up with this really strong mother – really intelligent, powerful, independent – and I’ve always admired her.

“She was part of a group of strong, powerful women as well. I very rarely saw those women represented on screen. When I started my career, I set out to represent them. So I initially said no to the role.”

When she saw the director’s first film – a lovely microbudget indie called Medicine for Melancholy (2009), made for just $13 000 – it made her reconsider.

The script for Moonlight, adapted from an unstaged, semi-autobiographical play by Tarell Alvin McCraney, then moved her enough to give it serious heed.

“I just thought – look, here is someone who wants to show the full complexity and humanity of this woman and how she ended up like this. They’re not gonna reduce her to just her addiction. That’s what I had an issue with.”

The original shooting schedule, which coincided with Harris’s Spectre publicity tour, involved three weeks of back and forth between Miami and London.

But this was squeezed down to a mere three days by an unforeseen visa crisis.

“I think someone ticked the wrong box on an application,” she remembers, “and I got stuck in the system. It meant that the clock was ticking constantly, and it was getting closer and closer to the wire for filming.

“They were having to condense the shooting schedule, as much as possible, until the very last minute.

“I got a call just after midnight one night, and had to get out of bed and sign a release form right then, or I would never have got to do it.”

In contrast with last year’s Oscars, which was criticised for neglecting non-white talent, Harris is part of a groundswell of black artists nominated for Academy Awards this year.

In best supporting actress alone, Harris is pitted against Octavia Spencer for Hidden Figures and Viola Davis for Fences , both of which, with mainly black casts, are up against Moonlight for best picture. Davis is tipped to win, which Harris says is a relief: it’ll lessen her nerves, and let her enjoy the moment.

Harris is quite bullish on the subject of diversity. “The award shouldn’t have anything to do with race, at all,” she sighs.

“I know the Academy has taken steps to make the playing field fairer, in terms of voting, adding people from ethnic backgrounds to the membership. I don’t know if that’s really what made the difference this year. I hope it’s not.”

The talk about casting a black Bond, too – or whoever might replace Daniel Craig – can’t have passed her by. She admits she’s “constantly asked” all these questions.

“My feeling is, Daniel is a brilliant Bond. Both Skyfall and Spectre have been the highest-grossing Bonds of all time, and I think that’s testament to him. People love seeing him as Bond. So I hope he stays.”

Harris is rumoured to be single, but doesn’t like to talk about her love life. She describes herself as a “real family person” and lives on the same street as her mother, younger sister, 18, and brother, 21.

Between films, she enjoys unwinding with her nearest and dearest. “After doing a job, you want to soak up real life again, chill out with your friends, do nothing.”

One of the challenges she enjoys is mastering a character’s accent – the ravaged, sandpapery vocal work in Moonlight is far removed from her real cut-glass diction.

“I prefer to act with an accent. The more layers I have to hide under as a character, the happier I am.” — The Daily Telegraph

I just thought – here is someone who wants to show the full complexity and humanity of this woman