Bond girl shaken and stirred by the enigma that’s Winnie
Naomie Harris tells Julia Llewellyn Smith she was dead scared of meeting the famous ex
NAOMIE Harris was in Turkey filming the last James Bond film,
when the call came asking her to prepare for a completely different role.
“They said the Mandela movie’s been green lit, you’re going to be Winnie and we start filming two days after you finish Bond,” she recalls.
The surprise was that the film in which Harris co-stars alongside Idris Elba, was actually going into production. It had been 16 years in “development”, with various directors and actors attached at different points.
“When I came on board they were thinking of Denzel Washington for Nelson Mandela,” says Harris. “When they asked: ‘Would you like to play Winnie?’ I said: ‘Great!’, because, firstly, I thought: ‘I’m never going to hear from these guys.’ And secondly, I just thought Winnie was Nelson’s wife. I had no idea,” – Harris stresses these words – “how controversial she is.”
Controversial is an understatement. Now 77, Winnie Mandela is simultaneously an adored icon and a loathed figurehead, an initially apolitical innocent who became a defiant demagogue, crying for bloody revenge.
“While I was filming Bond, I had to do all my Mandela research and I was terrified,” says Harris. “I thought: ‘What? This woman is like seven different women in one.’
“Everyone had such different ideas about who Winnie was. One biography painted her as a demon, another as a saint and I thought how can you create a cohesive character from all that?”
But then Elba arranged for Harris to meet Winnie. “It was nerve-racking. She’s a formidable woman, so it was scary to sit down with her. But she was completely different to what I imagined her to be. She loves gardening and has found peace.”
Harris expected to be given a “laundry list” of suggestions. “I would, if someone was playing me. But Winnie was really cool. I said ‘How do you want to be seen?’ and she said: ‘I trust you. Come up with the character as you see fit’.”
Harris’s performance allows us to understand how years of intimidation made Winnie mutate from optimistic young woman into a furious leader.
“She’s so hugely complex, this mixture of tremendous warmth and compassion as well as anger and rage,” says Harris. “She’s a warrior as well as a nurturer.”
The work paid off: Winnie pronounced herself delighted with the performance. “She made a speech at the South African premiere and was hugely complimentary, which was a relief because if Winnie didn’t like something, she’s not the sort to be polite.
“In person, she told me she was moved to tears, that it all felt too real and she wouldn’t be watching it again.”
Since then, Harris, 37, who made her name with roles in the
films and has been consumed with promoting the film, and attending a private screening at the White House. “Michelle and Barack are so down to earth. You expect them to be great but you don’t expect them to be so personable. At the buffet, Obama came up to me and said: ‘You need to eat more, come on, fill up your plate’.”
Dazzling in miniskirt and vertiginous heels, displaying her endless legs to full advantage, Harris would appear to be at ease in any surroundings. But she was, she insists, a socially awkward young woman.
“I didn’t look like this when I was younger!” she hoots. “I wore glasses, hand-me-downs and was very shy. Most actors are – we’re hiding behind a character and finding a cathartic release from that.”
She grew up in north London, where she still lives. Her Jamaican-born mother is a screenwriter turned therapist, her Trinidadian father left before she was born. She attended stage school at weekends and always wanted to act, but first studied social and political sciences at Cambridge. As a comprehensive kid, she felt out of place.
“Mum never wanted me to go to Cambridge. I always put incredible pressure on myself in terms of achieving, so she wanted me to go somewhere less work-oriented, where I’d have more fun. But I said: ‘I want the pressure’.” She laughs.
“In hindsight, my mum was right. But going to Cambridge is one of the things I’m most proud of. In this industry, it’s difficult to be taken seriously as a woman and that really helps.”
A lack of decent women’s roles have had far more bearing on her career choices than any racism, which she claims never to have experienced.
“Obviously there are roles that [as a black woman] I just haven’t been put up for, like in Downton Abbey, but really the film industry’s progress in terms of race has been extraordinary.”
Harris has been a pioneer in changing women’s roles, not least in transforming the traditional simpering “Bond girl” into a gun-toting “Bond woman”, as she insists she’s called. This year, shooting begins on the franchise’s 24th film, where she’ll play a 21st-century Miss Moneypenny. “I don’t know anything about the script, which is great, because I can’t reveal anything,” she grins.
Harris is laying foundations for a more settled existence.
“Recently, I rented a little cottage in Hertfordshire for six months; I could have stayed there for the rest of my life. But in the end, I came back to London. I was worried I’d end up as the crazy woman down the lane. The neighbours would whisper, ‘I say, she used to be a Bond girl. And now she’s got cats.’ So I’ve decided when I go back, it’ll be with a family.”