‘Sinners’ Scene Stealer Uncovers The Emotional Core Of Ryan Coogler’s Wild New Vampire Movie

The first time many U.S. audience members may have seen Wunmi Mosaku would’ve been in Loki, in which she plays the badass TVA Agent Hunter B-15, or in HBO’s Lovecraft Country, where she faces off against supernatural eldritch creatures. But the first time I remember seeing Mosaku was in the chilly British horror film His House, in which she plays one-half of a refugee couple from South Sudan dealing with the ghosts from their past haunting their shabby tenement house on the outskirts of London. As a child of refugees myself, I was struck by her haunted, soulful performance, and told her so when we sat down to chat ahead of the New York premiere of Sinners, the revelatory new vampire flick from Ryan Coogler. A thoughtful expression flashes over her face, as she reflects back on making the 2020 Netflix indie horror flick.

“Being an asylum seeker is a terrifying thing to have to be, it’s terrifying to cross borders, to be considered illegal, to leave everything you’ve ever known and loved, to go to another place where it’s meant to be safe, but the safe country may not want you,” Mosaku tells me. “Could you make that journey? Could you make that journey with completely clean hands? And could you survive in a place where it’s not an easy, breezy, comfortable, warm, welcoming hug? Actually, it’s a terrifying place to be?”

“I really am in awe of people who can tell stories like that, that move you and make you think.”

It’s a powerful and provocative question, and talking about it moves both me and Mosaku to tears. But that kind of thought-provoking, emotionally shattering storytelling is precisely what draws Mosaku to her roles. “I really applaud and I really am in awe of people who can tell stories like that, that move you and make you think,” she says.

Her latest role in Sinners, Annie, a Hoodoo healer and “conjure woman” who shares a difficult past with Michael B. Jordan’s Smoke, falls right in line with that kind of emotionally resonant storytelling. She remembers the moment when she knew that she had to star in Sinners: she had received seven pages of Coogler’s script to read for her audition, and she fell in love with the story immediately.

“It blew me away from the quality of the writing, the story that was being told, and how it was being told,” Mosaku says. “The characters, I loved them. I was invested in them in just seven pages of script.”

Those seven pages describe a quiet but essential scene: Smoke (Jordan) returns to his hometown alongside his twin brother Stack (also played by Jordan) to open up a juke joint with funds that they’ve “acquired” from their dubious dealings in Chicago. While the more gregarious Stack goes off to rustle up more resources for their grand opening, Smoke makes a detour to the outskirts of town where Annie (Mosaku) resides. Just outside of her cabin is a tiny grave, which he lays a handful of fresh flowers upon. Smoke asks her to cook for their juke joint’s opening night, but they both know that’s just a cover-up excuse. The real reason he’s visited her remains unspoken between the two of them: the deep, undying passion of their past romance, and the unbearable pain of the beloved baby lying in that grave outside. It’s in this scene, steeped in the pain and love of the past, that Mosaku makes her first appearance as Annie — and she has to make a strong impression while establishing a longtime dynamic with Jordan’s Smoke. But it wasn’t something she was too concerned about pulling off.

“Reading through those scenes, Ryan has written such depth, and captured their love and understanding, their grief, their connectedness, the things that pull them apart and the things that pull them together,” Mosaku says. “He’s written it so succinctly and delicately. So just rehearsing those scenes and going through the dialogue, you can’t help but [let] it chip away and root itself deeper in you.”

Mosaku and Jordan spent several weeks rehearsing the scene to establish a sense of trust. But she remembers the moment they really cracked the scene — when they had begun filming and Coogler stepped in to offer a piece of direction to Mosaku. “In that moment during filming, Ryan stops and he says, ‘Call him by his name.’ So she says, ‘Elijah, why are you here?’” Mosaku recalls. “And that was a magical moment on the set where the whole scene broke open because now Smoke was exposed.”

A Magical New Role

Ironically, despite starring in the buzziest vampire movie in years, Mosaku doesn’t watch horror movies. She doesn’t really watch vampire movies, either, she bashfully admits to me as we sit down to chat in a Manhattan studio. I’m the last stop in her whirlwind day of press promotion, and she’s given up any pretense of being an expert in the genre. She’s a bit of a scaredy cat when it comes to horror movies, she confesses, but she was far from scared when she walked in to audition for Annie. After reading opposite Jordan for a chemistry test, to her surprise, Coogler offered her the part on the spot. “[That] had never happened to me before,” Mosaku says, describing the moment as “quite magical.”

Once she got the part of Annie, Mosaku immediately dove into the world of Hoodoo and Black American spirituality. “It’s a way of life. It’s a belief system. It is rooted in traditional herbs, and wisdom of the motherland of Africa,” Mosaku says.

“I knew by playing Annie, I was going to learn so much about myself too.”

Hoodoo is not to be confused with Voodoo, though they share similar roots in African spiritual traditions. While Voodoo is an organized religion, Hoodoo is more centered around rootwork (the use of herbs in healing) and protection — something that plays out in Sinners when Annie hands Smoke a mojo bag, which ends up becoming a surprising protective amulet against vampires. But Annie’s skills as a Hoodoo practitioner also turn her into the most essential character when the movie takes a turn for the bloody: she’s the only one who recognizes the vampires as vampires. It’s both a smart way to merge Black American folklore with the vampire genre, and a thrilling subversion of how Voodoo and Hoodoo have been traditionally depicted in Western pop culture.

“What’s a shame, which I realized in playing Annie, is that we’ve been given this false idea of what Voodoo is through [pop culture], whether it’s James Bond or The Crucible. And it’s really not that. It’s a beautiful religion. And I love how much respect and honor Ryan has given Hoodoo in this film,” Mosaku says.

She continues, “Learning more about Hoodoo, and the religion, and the connection to the Yoruba religion of Ifa, it really was enticing because I knew by playing Annie, I was going to learn so much about myself too.”

On A Bigger Stage

Born in Zaria, Nigeria, Mosaku emigrated to England as a child, where she developed an interest in acting. After graduating from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in 2007, she found steady work on the stage before landing the lead role in the 2010 British TV film I Am Slave, which earned her accolades and praise. She’s been a dependable presence on British TV for years with appearances in shows like Black Mirror and Luther. But U.S. audiences likely recognize her for her roles in HBO’s Lovecraft Country and Marvel’s Loki and Deadpool & Wolverine, in all of which she played supporting roles — but still managed to make an impression. The latter two also makes her a fellow member of the MCU alongside her Sinners co-star Michael B. Jordan. But don’t ask her if she’ll make a return to the MCU (“I don’t know nothin’!” she laughs). However, Mosaku did find a surprising throughline between her two MCU projects: both her lead actors were essential in making the sets feel welcoming.

“[Loki star] Tom Hiddleston is someone who keeps the energy up. He would always check in and make sure that everyone was feeling safe and heard, and same with Michael,” Mosaku says.

But was it a dramatic change for Mosaku to go from British TV productions and scrappy indies to Marvel time-travel capers and full-blown action blockbusters, in just five years? “I mean, it’s all kind of the same,” Mosaku says with a shrug. “So really the biggest shock will be, it depends on who you’re working with. It’s whether or not you get a sense of family, and security, and safety, a place where you can creatively thrive and explore or not. I can have that experience on a big budget like Sinners or on a tiny budget like on Passengers.”

On the set of Sinners, Mosaku found herself instantly welcomed by Jordan, even though he’s “a huge star and everything that he does has a knock-on effect to the feel of the film.” Sinners is the fourth collaboration between Jordan and Coogler, but Mosaku never felt like she or the rest of the cast were left out of their close relationship. “Their dynamic is so special and there are no doubts, just trust and creative freedom, and then the rest of us follow suit,” she says.

“It feels scary when you’re walking onto those sets,” Mosaku admits. “But then when you have someone like Michael, someone like Ryan, leading, you are able to relax.”

Coogler especially had to take the lead for the film’s biggest sequence: a series of long takes in the juke joint when Smoke and Stack’s younger cousin, Sammie (Miles Caton), sings — his unique gift of music blurring the boundaries between past, present, and future. It was the kind of sequence that Mosaku had never participated in before, especially because it was shot entirely on IMAX cameras.

“That was very choreographed. And that took a long time because it was basically three shots,” Mosaku recalls. “It was one camera move that we rehearsed for maybe six hours, and then we did another camera move.”

Coogler and cinematographer Autumn Durald Arkapaw shot Sinners on both Ultra Panavision 70mm and IMAX 15-perf 70 mm cameras — the latter of which there are only eight in the world. As such, the cast and crew had to be careful when shooting on IMAX, and Mosaku admits that it was “challenging because one of the cameras was extremely loud.”

“[Coogler] definitely warned us about the technicality of filming on IMAX and filming on film. There is a discipline [to it],” Mosaku says. “But in a way, it helped us stay focused and stay on track because you can’t waste the film.”

But the result is bewitching: a jaw-dropping sequence in which the juke joint patrons sway alongside breakdancers from the future, and traditional African dancers from the past. Sammie’s bluesy song blends with a DJ playing hip-hop music, while Coogler’s camera swivels around our main players lost in the music. It’s a sequence that feels strange to describe out of context — Sammie’s power is part of the ancient Hoodoo gift, of having a voice so pure it can break through the barrier of time — but it’s part of Sinners’ unique and potent power.

“I definitely feel very proud and privileged to be a part of something that artistically I feel is trying to preserve Black culture, and shine a light on it,” Mosaku says.

“Does This Project Change You?”

Sinners is technically the second genre project that Mosaku has starred in over the past five years that centers on the Black experience in Jim Crow-era America. But whether she’s playing a Hoodoo conjurer in Sinners or a beleaguered boarding house owner in Lovecraft Country who dreams of more, she says it’s the roles that attract her to these kinds of productions.

“I really feel like those are the things that really attract me,” Mosaku says. “Because in so many scenarios and so many films, we’ve been left out. Our experiences have been left out. Even if it is sci-fi, or naturalistic, or supernatural, why not tell those stories through our experience?”

“In so many scenarios and so many films, we’ve been left out. Our experiences have been left out.”

That’s when the conversation drifts towards His House — a film that shifted her perception on how Black people can move through the horror or sci-fi worlds.

“That’s the throughline for me is, does this project make you think? Does it change you?” Mosaku says. “And that’s how I feel, definitely about His House, definitely about Lovecraft Country, definitely about Sinners.”

Sinners is playing in theaters now.