THUSO MBEDU

The Underground Railroad

The lead of Amazon’s limited series, based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Colson Whitehead, carried an entire show on her shoulders with her performance as Cora, an enslaved woman who journeys north to freedom. The whole production took an emotional toll on the young Mbedu, but there was a moment early on that made the project an extremely personal one for the actress.

In a dream sequence in the eighth episode, Cora encounters Caesar (Aaron Pierre), who had helped her flee at the beginning of the series. “She’s at a point where she can choose to embrace this new life that she has — but she can only do that by accepting what’s happened to her and the people that she’s lost,” Mbedu says. “She sees Caesar in that dream form and she asks him, ‘How long will this last for?’ And he says, ‘As long as you need.’ ”

Unbeknownst to creator and director Barry Jenkins, the moment hit home for the actress. “I lost my mother at the age of 4, and I had never dreamt of her,” she says. “I arrived in Savannah to begin shooting the series, and I dreamt of my mother for the very first time. In the dream, she told me that everything was going to be OK. And so to see that moment in the show and have us shoot the scene so early [in production] was a lot for me. I remember saying [to myself], ‘I pray that whatever healing I’ve gained from this moment is what audience members who are in need of the same type of closure will gain from watching it.’ ”

Thuso Mbedu on The Underground Railroad