LADY GUGU
I was a little bit star-struck by Alec Baldwin,” Gugu Mbatha-Raw admits with a smile as she curls up in a huge chair in the library of Soho Hotel and contemplates her stellar co-stars on Edward Norton’s Motherless Brooklyn. “He’s just a cultural icon, really, and now he’s so famous with the Trump stuff as well. And he’s got such a presence on screen and in person. He’s slightly intimidating initially…” She trails off as she politely flags down a passing waiter to ask for tap water. Turning back, she asks, “Where were we?”
We were in the middle of discussing the amount of legends, dames and icons the unflappable 36-year-old Brit has worked with since graduating from RADA in 2004. After numerous high-profile stage roles and TV jobs, she made her big-screen break playing the title character in in 2013 (for which, Matthew McConaughey in slavery drama , appeared in the ‘San Junipero’ episode of and co-starred with Jessica Chastain in gun-lobbying thriller . She’s played a feather duster in , worked for Ava DuVernay on the well-intentioned and inhabited an unconventional superhero in last year’s . She nabbed an MBE for services to drama in 2017, and earlier this year, impressed in Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje’s hard-hitting . Oh, and did we mention that she has Oprah on speed-dial?
