Oprah Winfrey interviews Thuso Mbedu

this is what you really look like oh my goodness and it's and we can see you smiling here first of all let me just say i have never ever in this lifetime seen a consistent performance as you have given in the underground railroad and i have to ask you how are you because psychologically mentally emotionally spiritually how yeah you do that uh i'm good now i'm good um after we wrap the shoot i went to see a therapist because i felt i really needed to debrief from the character because the character and i have a lot of similarities in terms of our foundation so i had to differentiate between the two so i'm good now yeah first of all i i said say this to barry that after episode one i mean i read the book i chose the book as a book club so i know i know what's going to happen and during episode one i didn't know if i was going to make it through i was sitting in my screening room watching and i looked down at my apple watch and my uh heart rate was 101 and then by episode three it was 110. when i'm just sitting in the chair until literally yeah i gotta go out i gotta take a walk i gotta you know do this in a measured way but you weren't doing it in a measured way every day in almost every scene you are there so how did you prepare yourself i honestly had to do a lot of research i told myself that whatever i thought i knew about you know the enslaved people in the 1800s i must forget about and just take everything anew basically and so i i read a lot i consumed a lot of material barry sent me stuff to read he sent me stuff to listen to like audio testimonials of former enslaved people and i remember hearing them for the first time and something really shifted in me because when they spoke they spoke of very very broken english right because they were taught english for instruction and not for conversation and what struck me is that the english that they spoke is in english that if you were to go to south africa today or different parts of africa you hear people speak like that and so it stopped being this african-american story but became a story about africans in america and so then i had to go for myself and sit with my dialect coach and said yes we're working on the accent but i want to and need to track cora's vocal journey because again i did physical theater as a course as a major in university but we also did something called voice movement movement therapy which tracks the your your your own vocal uh journey and how you you store away traumas and experiences through your voice so i had to prepare her emotional mental physical and vocal journey from episode 1 to episode 10 but shooting out of sequence so i had to you know keep careful note of what was happening but then barry was also there supporting and guiding me along the way what did you learn about yourself in this journey i mean i as a viewer first of all as a reader uh when i first chose this as a book club this is before it became pulitzer prize and everybody was giving it all the attention that it deserved i i mean i was measured in my reading and i learned so much about our history and i've you know been in a slave movie myself uh beloved tony morrison's beloved and thought i learned a lot then but you cannot i know this for sure go through a process like this and not come out changed so what changed in you i think a lot changed within me because again and this is something that barry after having met him for the first time um and having had a con a casual conversation with him he had looked at me and said you are the character and i didn't get it i didn't see what it what it is that he saw but going through the journey with korra korra is one who is isolated within her own community you know um she's had her own great share of traumas having been you know gang raped within the community and then those same men going out spreading rumors about the fact that she sleeps with animals and she howls at the moon so she's ostracized even within that community and she's built you know a world in her head where she is safest there and then her mother had left at a young age so she has this foundation of great loss rejection and abandonment on my end i lost my mother at the age of four to a brain tumor at the time i didn't understand what was happening i remember even being told that when we you know as at the funeral when you walk through and people's uh see the body for the last time apparently i was you know talking to my mother telling her to wake up because i really didn't understand what was happening so i carried that loss abandonment and rejection for majority of my life um becoming very hard you know keeping people at a distance not forming relationships in any way shape or form and i had to face that in playing horror um i had to heal from that in playing horror and again there was another instance where having arrived in savannah georgia during my preparation process i i was 28 years old at the time in 2019 and that was the very first time that i dreamed of my mother in my in my entire existence and in it i'd walked into the apartment that i was living in and she looked at me and she said everything's gonna be okay there happened to be a scene that we shot with barry in the show that was that wasn't initially scripted in a particular way it's a scene between cora and caesar that we only see in episode 8 and it was dire it was exactly what had happened in my dream of my mother and again with that it gave me a performing in the scene gave me a closure that i did not realize i need it for myself i remember even watching it i wrote barry and along which was something that was supposed to be a short note just saying thank you a very long note of just reflecting and saying thank you barry for allowing me to go through this journey because this character has healed parts of me i didn't even know were wounded cora challenged me in many different ways and i am a different person because of her you know one of the things i always say is that everything that's happened to you also happened for you if you are open to receive what the for was and i can see for sure in my own life how that has happened i see in the life of my south african daughters how that has happened and i now as you're telling the story it's like wow one of the reasons all of the pain and sense of abandonment that you suffered you are now able to pull up the energy of that for this role and that is why you feel that is why as we the viewers are watching it feels like you are cora honey i don't know who else is korra or could have been korra you are korra honey yeah yes how did you protect your own mental health through this because you know from you know episode one you endure whippings and you watch a man get burned alive and you survive a mass shooting and one hardship after another after another after another just trauma trauma trauma building on trauma what did you do to protect your own mental health so i had at the beginning i had you know little tricks that i i put in place like walking into set i remember the first time i walked into set and seeing people in wardrobe um was very hard for me to take in so i developed this thing where if i walked into set i literally kept my eyes on the ground until i could look up to the eyes of korra because taking the environment in as tuso was too much i would only allow myself to live in that environment when action was called and then when i got the chance to step away i would consciously step away because it would be too much to carry outside this world and then on weekends we as a cast and crew you know we'd go bowling we'd have games night we had karaoke night we'd completely completely detach from what it is that we were doing on set um i'm also fortunate enough to have friends that i really trust and who really understand me as a person that when i'm acting out of character they would go too so you're not being yourself what is the root of um of your reaction of how you or or how you're acting in the moment and then that forces me to introspect and to go okay you're not speaking from twoso but it's the residue of the character bleeding into your everyday life now how do you separate you know and then conscious even just that that's that moment of being conscious that this is not me was a difference maker but then we also had a guidance counselor on set who would consistently check in with me whether i asked for her or not she'd be like are you good are you here you know she physically touched me just to ground me barry was always there as well checking in are you okay let me know if you're not okay i was surrounded by a cast and crew that i really felt that i could lean on at any point in time i never felt like i was alone throughout this journey and i think that really helped me in the process well i'm wondering what were your reactions you were saying that the cast and crew really let go of themselves on the weekend is this also with the villain i mean are you are you kicking it with ridgeway on the weekends i mean how did you interact with actors like joel edwards who did also an incredible job here and i'm sure that he has his own psychological stuff yeah to do this way yeah yes yes we were we were hanging out it's funny because um it's something that barry spoke about in an interview we did a couple of days ago because joel and i really really got on got on very well he was very clear from you know before we started that as someone who's been in this industry much longer i could i could call on him for anything you know life on set life out of set if i felt like i was uncomfortable with something but couldn't voice it out he could be you know that voice for me so we had a great relationship to the point where sometimes depending obviously on the scenes or on the day because you want to respect everyone at all times it would be action we're a hundred percent in character bickering butting hits fighting cut chuso and joel are joking and you know having a grand all time but yeah we we would we hung out with joe wow that's good to know that's that's at least good good good to know that you took care of yourself how do you recommend viewers uh take care of their own mental health while watching and after watching i mean i i am a person who knows that i have a very sensitive countenance and so yeah i'm very much aware all the time of what i let in and what i don't live in and so i have to to take it in in in measured ways you know literally like leave take a walk come back i mean after the first episode literally i'm sharing this very literally i had to go outside i was watching one of my daughter girls from south africa we both were like whoo and said man came out and said what are you all doing trying to remind yourself that you're not on the sleeve plantation exactly we're trying to remind ourselves we have a life here yeah yeah so i i i really do recommend that people pace themselves uh when i got the footage as well barry told me to pace myself he said too so it's not easy to take in pace yourself but i made the mistake of allowing myself to go with it i i watched it over three days but it was a lot to take in in a very short space of time i remember i had like this big migraine afterwards and i couldn't fully process my thoughts and feelings afterwards um so people i do recommend that people pace themselves like barry says you're watching it at the comfort of your own home you can pause you know you're not forced to watch everything all in one go take a walk you know get some fresh air but also verbally process what is happening with someone that you trust if you can do that because having it just be in your head as well and and trying to deal with what is happening internally can mess you up so if you have someone that you can talk to talk about your feelings that that really goes a long way i really think i advise people to actually watch it with other people if they can because i think it makes a big difference if you can watch it with somebody or have somebody to talk to or some way to like integrate all of the things that you are are receiving you know there's been a lot of conversation in recent years in hollywood about doing more movies about black joy instead of stories that retell our painful history i remember when i was doing beloved you know this was 21 years ago and the first thing particularly the black journalists would ask is why do we need another story like this and i was like do we have a lot i mean i only know so what's your response to to that and why did you want to sign on for this so for me when i read the book again at the time i couldn't put my my finger on it but i felt heard or seen because of the character and encore's journey and then having shot it again we're shooting it in 2019 and a whole lot was happening you know to the black body even in 2019 and i realized how relevant it is that we cannot run away from what the story is telling and what is still actually happening like there are direct parallels that you can pull from the story to what is happening in 2021 like you can literally go from episode to episode and draw parallels because again they like to say people like to say you know it happened such a long time ago you should get over it but it's like that that is not true and because we have you know 10 episodes to follow uh to as we follow this this character and we're seeing different parts of the nation you know experiencing people in different ways it's which is longer than a movie and what a movie allows it affirms something that for me it was like all the pain the the the hurt the anger the resentment that one feels that one has actually inherited over generations and so you don't actually have the words to articulate generational trauma generation exactly you know it's like you aren't crazy for feeling that way everything that you see in the story is is what happened then but you're still experiencing now because not much has changed you know we're also carrying that ancestrally you're carrying that from generations exactly one of the things that i felt when i did a beloved years ago and that i also feel every time i read a slave narrative or come across a story as powerful as this one is that amazing grace how absolutely yeah yeah amazing i i i i i feel like look at what i've come from yes exactly look at how i am able to stand look at how they were able to endure the most impossible circumstances and now look at me now i mean i think that you you there there is a for me there is a rejoicing and a kind of privileged understanding of where i've come from did you get a sense of that yes a hundred percent and also in the way that you know barry treated the project in terms of shooting it it's for me it's unlike what we're used to seeing when it comes to telling these types of stories you know i can confidently say that never at any point did i feel like within you know the brutal scenes or the all the traumatic scenes that barry was showing it to sensationalize or romanticize it or he's putting it out there on display to get a reaction it's just so happened that this is what the body endured in that space and time but there's a lot more to it you know we have moments where we can celebrate the black body for enduring for fighting and pushing hard under their circumstances you know and that's something that i really appreciated you know it's so interesting because everybody is aware of the whippings and you know even if you're not really an informed person you know about the women's meetings but one of the reasons i felt episode 2 was so striking is because the moment she walks into that doctor's office because of what has been done over the years you know no good can come from that moment so i wonder was was that what were you thinking about when you were lying there in the stirrups when we first saw and he pulled out and we see the stirrups yeah yeah everybody in my house went whoa oh what were you thinking so in that exact moment it really was uh it's just for me a great discomfort to have someone that close yes you know one as when you're shooting you're 100 protected you're not being you know exposed in any way but the reality is this is a man it's a white man who comes who has some sort of power over me you know and it's just greatly uncomfortable and it it takes a trust of vulnerability to be able to sit in that position on your back open yeah in minutes every woman who's done it in her doctor's office feels something you know that's why i'm asking exactly exactly but then that internal conversation for cora of the first time that anything came at her in that direction was forced it was an act of violation but then it's cora again who doesn't show how she feels it doesn't speak about how she feels you know it's you we're lucky that her face allows us to see her feelings but it's a whole lot happening at all times and i just say about the face first of all you are already a phenomenal actress and this is the first time i've seen you in anything i know you were doing um some great work in south africa but you are one of those great actresses like viola davis who who expresses through your eyes and one of the great things about barry jenkins is is that so much is told in silence so much is told in between the sentences as you know and you allow the world of pain just to come through your eyes and what it takes to do that girl i don't know i don't i i don't know i really because for me it's just mentally going be 100 in the moment allow every single thought that the character is having to be had don't dictate what she's supposed to be showing just allow the thought to happen because that changes you as a person as you go from one thought to one thought because then you know your thoughts take detours and they remind you of something they bring up memories so instead of saying i need to be thinking about this allow that journey to happen and i and i guess then that comes in your eyes you have the gift may i say so was there any particular scene or several scenes that were harder to do than others after a while did you find your rhythm so i remember there was one scene where everything is happening cora has lost a number of people on her journey and i don't know if i'm i'm not allowed to give spoilers right so i'm trying still give spoilers yeah so this is episode nine this is episode nine it's a scene between cora and ridgeway and in it rodri was holding her in a particular way and physically i couldn't breathe and emotionally my and spiritually i was still in the chaos of what was happening in in that sequence and so coming back to my body after that moment was really really hard to the point where i actually went and i sought the the the guidance counselor out and i said i need you to help me find me i don't know where i am right now because i just i surrendered to the moment and it was actually a very very traumatic moment yeah yeah yeah okay yeah wow okay yeah i don't want to give away the ending we will not give away the ending but what do you think cora is thinking in the final moments of the show i think you know she in that moment she is holding on to hope with everything that she has with everything that she has because of everything that she's been through in that journey it's like she has had to fight to get to where she is and she sees the light she sees you know the possibility of actually getting to where she is however her experience has taught her nothing is guaranteed and so it's like she's tired she's exhausted and it's like i see it but if i have to fight again to get there i will do exactly that i cannot surrender to this moment because again now she has someone over the younger generation who you know so it's like harking towards the future that she has to protect and ensure that they have that hope well listen we didn't know your name before this but everybody's gonna be going too so too so so the next thing we'll see you in after this incredible incredible performance uh in underground railroad i mean it's like watching a movie every time and you know it's like 10 movies yeah now we're going to see you in woman kings with viola davis viola it is my great honor pleasure privilege to be able to talk to you thank you for joining us here really thank you thank god thank you thank you thank you appreciate it all the best to you all the best all the best great things are coming so well go well

Channel: SouthAfro NewsChannel

Views: 109,789

Rating: 4.9727626 out of 5

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Id: 30sKmufQ3uY

Length: 25min 5sec (1505 seconds)

Published: Wed May 19 2021