By Gill Pringle
Your character is one of the bodyguards, is that the fighting class?
My character is the leader of the Dora Milaje, a general, who is the head of the armed forces. They are betrothed to the throne, so they don’t marry; it is a very deep vocation, far beyond just bodyguards. Being the head of the Dora Milaje equates to being the head of the armed forces of the nation, and also the intelligence. She is also considered the next greatest fighter in the nation after T’Challa [Black Panther]. When he goes and handles things, she is with him.
How was the bonding on the set?
Lupita [Nyong’o, who plays Nakia, another member of the Dora Milaje] and I have already bonded because she was in one of my plays, Eclipsed, and we went through an astounding journey with that; I’ve known her since 2007. She understudied that play when she was at school in 2009, so we go way back. We are sisters. Working on this together has really deepened that bond. We’ve collaborated a lot; we’ve come together a lot to express ideas or contextualisation with the knowledge we have about the continent, that we have contributed to the story. We really work as a team; I think Ryan once referred to me as his partner in crime.
Letitia [Wright, who play’s T’Challa’s sister Shuri], who I absolutely adored, played the same role in Eclipsed in London, so I spent some time with her back in 2015 when I went to see that production. I always thought she was extremely special as I watched how she connected to this character I had written, by throwing on some really heavy Kendrick Lamar music and getting into the zone. She didn’t care if people were watching her.
Did you have a sense of responsibility with the themes that you’re putting out there in regard to women?
Oh yeah, hugely, which I’m sure anyone would let you know who talks to you about our participation. Lupita and myself were both deeply involved and were very specific in our contextualisation. We contributed. And they let us contribute, which I’m thankful for. I’m a woman, and I’m African, and I tell African woman stories. I can’t not be myself. The beauty is that they allowed us to be collaborative.
Were you a fan of Black Panther before being cast, and how do you feel about him?
I didn’t know a lot about Black Panther but I knew someone Chad [Boseman, who plays Black Panther] is close buddies with, who ended up acting with me, so we knew we were in similar circles as each other, and I was very happy for him when he got this role. But I didn’t know the story, I don’t heavily follow that world. It was very cool to learn about it, it’s an amazing story to adapt.
The interesting thing for me is that I’m an African; I was raised on the continent by African parents. The thing we constantly think about is how far we could have come if we weren’t colonised, because it puts restrictions on people being able to naturally evolve into their own specific modernity; when they are overcome by someone else’s idea of modernity and of advancement and of civilisation. The concept of Wakanda was very thrilling, because you get to tell this story of this African country that doesn’t exist but is the one that we would love to exist. It will be very important for Africans.
What did you do to prepare yourself for this role?
Physically we were being trained from the very beginning. We only started shooting in January, whereas we started training in early November. The physical lexicon was something we were being trained in very specifically. Then of course I did my own training to strengthen my physique. I play a television character who uses a sword, so for me everything has to revolve around ‘what is this character’s connection to the weapon and how do they find their flow in it. My character in The Walking Dead is very economical with it, whereas this character I had to find through my imagination and she is more to the book, because she is a traditionalist.
Coogler [Director Ryan Coogler] was talking about it in April last year, and it was really beautiful the way he described who she was. A lot of it was heavy reading because there are so many variations of this story, so coming to terms with this and what fed me and what didn’t was something I pulled from learning about female soldiers. It was a very interesting exploration. There was something sexist about the way the Dora were initially portrayed, and how they were kind of characterless, so obviously [Black Panther comic writer Ta-Nehisi] Coates did a great job at changing that. A lot of the character came from looking at context, and learning about the history of Wakanda.
Do you think the story will be looked at the same way in Africa as it is elsewhere?
I grew up on the continent, and we are paying attention to the lack of representation of ourselves. The reason I think it is especially important to the people of Africa is because we grew up looking at African Americans, we grew up looking at Denzel Washington and Michael Jackson, we grew up seeing this as the most popular African representation. Our representation, our voice, our accents, our languages are not so popular. So, this is extremely important to the African, because this is something that has never been done before. I’m already being hounded by the press trying to talk about this sort of thing, because it’s huge for the Africans to see. I grew up writing plays from the African perspective, because the representation was so tremendously poor. So absolutely, I think it’s going to be deeply important for these people. We are drawing from truly beautiful aesthetics from the country, that have often been considered primitive, but we are celebrating these as something so important.
Do you think it will be political?
I can’t go too far in depth with that. But there is a lot of relevance to the world that we are in right now. It’s stunning because he wrote it before some things were happening. That’s what great art tends to do, it tends to be a great forecaster, great artists can tell what the weather is going to be, and that’s exactly what Ryan is. It’s great how it hits on so many issues, it hits on global issues, it hits on very domestic issues to the United States, it hits on black issues from the African perspective, and I think it will be deeply resonant.
Black Panther is in cinemas from February 15, 2018.
