When Wunmi Mosaku realized she wanted to be an actress, she googled the cast of her favorite film, Annie, to gain insight into their path to the big screen. Last night, the Sinners star returned to that same movie with her young daughter to ground her ahead of the fury of this morning’s Oscar nominations.
“I have found this whole thing very emotional, so I was trying to keep calm and not think about it all the time, but it would pop up in my mind, in my dreams, and I couldn’t really avoid it,” Mosaku tells The Hollywood Reporter. “Last night, in order to make the anxiety quell and feel good and feel reconnected to why I do this, I watched Annie with my daughter for the first time, and I must say, she loved it. She was absolutely enthralled. And I was like, ‘I’m so glad I did this because this was the film that got me into this industry. And this moment right now with my daughter is allowing me to be able to go to sleep joyful, remembering what I love.’ ”
This morning, Mosaku was woken up to the news that she’d been nominated for an Oscar — her first — for her role as Annie, a hoodoo practitioner and partner of fellow first-time Oscar nominee Michael B. Jordan’s Smoke, in Ryan Coogler‘s Sinners.
“I thought it was at 8:30. I got the East Coast time, so I was asleep,” she admits. “My husband came in. I was like, ‘What is going on? Why are you on the phone at 5:30 in the morning?’ He’s like, ‘You’ve been nominated for an Oscar!’ “
Sinners made history with a record 16 nominations, the most of any film in Oscar history. The best supporting actress nod for Mosaku is an added bonus to the way portraying Annie onscreen and reading reactions from audiences to her character affected the actress, who both studied hoodoo and perfected a Louisiana Creole dialect for the part of the herbalist.
“I felt loved and seen and heard and excited and remembered when I read Annie. And just knowing how a lot of Black women felt when seeing me represent her, just feeling lovable and soft and strong and powerful and loving and all of our humanity and our mystique and power and spirituality and our ancestors and our connection and our purpose — seeing the response, hearing the response from other Black women felt really healing. So just knowing that this character is being celebrated in award season feels really good. I don’t take it lightly,” Mosaku says.
“I always say more than anything, I’m so grateful for the people who poured into Ryan to give him this gift and see us in all of our humanity and our gentleness and how much he loves Black women because he wrote that role and he cast me. He hasn’t been tainted by capitalism and the ideas of what femininity is and what beauty is.”
Just two weeks ago, Sinners composer Ludwig Göransson expressed his gratitude for Mosaku as he accepted the Golden Globe for best original score in a motion picture, saying, “Every time you were on screen, the music was just coming to me; it was so inspiring.” Mosaku says that was the first time she learned of being Göransson’s muse.
“The Brit in me was like, ‘Oh, no, no, no, no, no, don’t do that,’ ” she says of watching his speech. “I can get a bit embarrassed when people talk about me or give me my flowers. My husband keeps telling me to stop doing that. I love that he really took his moment as a creator, an artist, and as a white man to stand on stage and really elevate the rest of his crew. Everyone has their speeches prepared, and you don’t always get to say it, so him saying something was really, really beautiful.”
It was at the Golden Globes that Mosaku also revealed she’s pregnant with her second child. With the Oscars nearly two months away, she’s looking forward to walking the red carpet with a full baby bump on display.
“The only reason I wouldn’t be able to attend is if, I guess it would be a bad thing, like I don’t have any mobility, and I’m not wishing that,” says Mosaku. “I should be fine.”
