London-““Surface”, Apple TV +’s new eight-part seriesThe main character, Sophie, played by Gugu Mubasa Law, asks the therapist the following questions:
“Why did I try to end it when my life was so perfect?”
Sophie, who suffers from amnesia after an attempted suicide, has a handsome, wealthy and devoted husband, a world-class townhouse with panoramic views of San Francisco, a fun best girlfriend, and a killer wardrobe. She is also beautiful — apparently she is played by British actress Mubasa Lo, who became famous for her title role in Amma Asante’s 2014 feature “Bell”.
Mbatha-Raw, 39, has been prolific in movies and television for the past 10 years. He has starred in Gina Prince by the Wood’s “Beyond the Lights,” the Marvel series “Loki,” and more recently the Apple TV + series “The Morning Show.”
However, on Friday’s premiere of Surface, Mbatha-Raw led the major series for the first time and stepped into a new terrain as executive producer of the show created and created by Veronica West (“High Fidelity,” 2020).
Sophie’s question was the driving force behind the show, and West said he was inspired by the 1962 Alain Resnais movie “Last Year at Marienbad.” Why did Sophie try to commit suicide? Did she try to commit suicide?
In a recent interview at a hotel in London, Muba Salo said he was attracted to “the fact that Sophie himself is a mystery” and “I have a memory loss drama, but I saw it with a woman like me. There was no. In the center. “
That role forced her to abandon her usual meticulous preparations to play the character, she said. “She’s blank and looking for clues to her. Her information comes from the people around her,” said Muba Salo. “It was the opposite of creating a backstory. Here I was building a character because Sophie is building herself through the show.”
Oliver Jackson-Cohen, who plays Sophie’s husband James, was strange to work on playing a couple when only one character knew the history of the relationship. “There are so many different versions of Sophie, and so many versions of Sophie and James,” he said in a telephone interview. “But that also applies to our lives.”
Sophie exists in “two realities,” said Ari Graynor, who plays her best friend Caroline. She said, “The external reality she is involved in and her internal reality trying to put everything together. Gugu can feel both of these realities at the same time in layers of sensitivity, delicacy and accuracy. I have the talent. “
Mbatha-Raw signed on to the show before it was sold to Apple, and West described her as “an executive in every way: casting, marketing the show’s vision, helping Sophie form a backstory, and more.” did. “What I’m most impressed with about Gugu’s approach is that she has always made me big and bold, hurting her personality and cluttering her.”
Reese Witherspoon, who collaborated with Mubasa Law at The Morning Show, wrote in an email that she had a glimpse of the “surface” for two days. Mbatha-Raw writes, “Vulnerable, rebellious, ferocious, and determined.”
Mbatha-Raw seems to be fixed all the time. She grew up in the beautiful town of Witney in Oxfordshire, England. She is the only daughter of a British nurse Anna Lo and a South African doctor Patrick Mbata. (Her full name is Guguletu, an abbreviation for Guguletu, which means “our pride” in the Nguni languages of South Africa.) Her parents separated when she was one and she was mainly with her mother. I lived together. Dance and musical theater. At the age of 11, she played Dorothy in the school production of The Wizard of Oz and thought, “This is what I want to do.”
Despite Mbatha-Raw’s complaint, her mother did not send her to a children’s drama school, but in her early teens she attended the National Youth Music Theater and then National Youth Theater — Both selective and reliable breeding grounds for British actors. (Alum at the National Youth Theater includes Daniel Craig, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Rosamund Pike, and Helen Mirren.)
At the age of 17, she was touring at the National Youth Theater in Japan when she heard that she was accepted by London’s prestigious Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (“I’m an act that opens you up to the world and transcends culture.” First experience “). Unlike some of her peers, she wasn’t “snapped” by her agent after a three-year course, she said. She doesn’t know if it was she was confident or ignorant. “
Directly, Mbatha-Raw is clear, friendly, quick to laugh, self-owned, and carefully focused. (She is also as smooth and diplomatic as her experienced interviewee.) “You need to have a little blind faith in yourself as an actor.
After graduating from the academy, she found a fairly stable job, played a minor role in movies and television, and won. Critical attention to play Juliet Opposite Romeo in Andrew Garfield at the Royal Exchange Theater in Manchester. In 2007, she starred in several episodes of “Doctor Who.” She starred in the 2009 TV drama “Fallout” directed by Ian Rickson.
“It was the first time I realized I could be at the forefront of the screen. It was very urban and emotional about the knife crime in London. Rixon created her a playlist of her characters. And she has done it ever since, she added.
“You can live in these different kinds of women and her role is very different,” Rixon said in a telephone interview. And avoided the cast. It’s a burden for young women to be decorative and bohemian. “
In the same year, “Fallout” premiered, with Muba Salo playing Ophelia on the other side of Jude Law’s Hamlet, first at Donmar Warehouse in London and then on Broadway. That led to her role in JJ Adams’ short-lived television series “Undercover,” and an extension of her life and work in Los Angeles. “I felt my heart was open to another scale, broader ambition, the American spirit,” she said.
She heard that she was cast in the role of Bell, inspired by the true story of an African woman’s daughter who was once enslaved and a British aristocrat raised by his family in England during the George Dynasty in 2013. Was in the United States.
In theater, she said, she never felt that interracialness was limiting her opportunities. “But I remember when Downton Abbey came out. I felt it wasn’t the way for me,” said Muba Salo. “I felt that it really made sense to be the protagonist of the historical drama of’Bell’that grew up here. Acting is not just a way to be part of the culture, but a way to promote it. I noticed. “
“Bell” gave Muba Salo a big profile, “but it didn’t seem like my career suddenly went out of control,” she said. She played what she described as her “wife’s role” in many mainstream movies, but in the movie “Beyond the Lights” she also played the leading role (a pop star who circulates between fame and self-destruction). rice field.
Film director Prince by the Wood said in a telephone interview, “I knew I was watching the character within 10 seconds of her reading at the audition,” convincing a disappointing studio executive. He added that he shot an eight-minute short film to do so. Gugu was a character I’ve been working on for three years. “
Mbatha-Raw said he has worked with several black women directors, including Assante, Prince-Bythewood and Ava DuVernay (“AWrinkle in Time”), and has been actively looking for female collaborators on recent projects. I am. “I had a great experience with a male collaborator, but there is a lot to do in balancing work and the distribution of power in our world,” she said carefully.
Similarly, seeing her friend David Eurowo take her three-year-old daughter, Zoe, to the awards ceremony, she began to think carefully about the role she chose. She said, “I want you to grow up watching Zoe represent herself.”
The decision to assume the role of executive producer on the Surface was motivated by both of these ideas. “When I graduated from drama school, I didn’t even know what the producer did,” Muba Salo said. “But how do you put these stories together by spending time in the US and doing projects like” The Morning Show “with Reese Witherspoon’s production company, triggered by #MeToo and Time’s Up? I really thought about giving an opinion about.
“Being behind the scenes has power, in how decisions are made, how to navigate those rooms, and learning those conversations,” she added.
Asked if she was interested in the director, Mbatha-Raw replied cautiously. “Sure, there’s a story I want to explore, a story about Zulu culture,” she hinted at her legacy on the part of her father. “I’m definitely looking for things — take a look.”
