THUSO MBEDU

Our breakout star

BY HEATHER DUGMORE

The years of dedication that Thuso Mbedu (BA DA 2014) has invested in her career are paying off. She is the first South African actress to lead an American television series ("The Underground Railroad"). And she is now in production for her first Hollywood feature film, "The Woman King", starring alongside the award-winning US actress Viola Davis.

It all started happening for Thuso after she was nominated for an International Emmy Award in 2017 for her role as Winnie in the 2016 South African teen drama television series "Is’Thunzi".

While in New York for the Emmy ceremony she went for an interview for "The Underground Railroad", a television adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name. The director, Academy Award winner Barry Jenkins, called her back and said “You are Cora”, referring to the lead role. The series is an unfiltered, highly disturbing view of slavery in the US in the 1800s, portraying the journey of a group of slaves, including Cora, to freedom.

Oprah Winfrey showered praise on Thuso, calling her performance the most consistent she had ever seen, psychologically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. “Great things are coming for her and everyone will be saying her name.”

And so it is. The Hollywood machine has kicked in and securing an interview with her now is like tracking an avatar. You speak to her PR person and manager in South Africa who speaks to the PR team in the US...

“For me, getting these roles is a nod that I’m going in the right direction, because for a long time it was about me keeping my head down, keeping my focus, doing what I need to do to pay the bills and to live out a passion that I have worked very hard for,” says Thuso.

“I am thankful to be able to do what I love. It’s not an easy journey but uNkulunkulu blessed me with the kind of spirit that I have, to be able to wake up every day and still fight for what I believe in. I believe I was created for a purpose; to do what I am doing right now.”

She went against her family to pursue acting. “So I have to succeed in this.”

Born and raised in Pelham, Pietermaritzburg, Thuso lost her mother, Sibongile Mchunu, to a brain tumour when she was four and she did not have a relationship with her father, who passed away when she was 21. Thuso and her sister Noma were raised by their gogo (grandmother) Thokozile Zulu, a school principal. Thuso says she was very loving and very strict – and not in favour of the acting career. Gogo passed away in 2015 at the age of 82, shortly before Thuso’s TV debut.

Gogo conferred a sense of the importance of a good education and faith in God. “I took biology, science and maths to matric at Pietermaritzburg Girls’ High School as I thought I wanted to be a dermatologist,” Thuso says. “I also took dramatic arts as one of my more ‘relaxing’ subjects and I fell in love with it and decided I wanted to be an actress.

“I knew Johannesburg would be the stepping stone to the rest of the world, so I applied to Wits and secured a scholarship to study drama, enrolling in 2010.”

She excelled and earned numerous academic honours, including the Golden Key International Honours Society Membership (2012), University Council Merit Scholarship (2012) and New York University Summer Programme Scholarship (2012). She took part in a number of productions at the Wits Theatre not only as a performer but also as stage crew member, stage manager, assistant director and choreographer.

“After varsity it was a case of ‘go and get a real job’ and so I left home with about R500 and a suitcase and I squatted from friend to friend.” She also had a severe period of depression in 2016.

Even after receiving her first Emmy nomination in 2017, she faced a bleak period of joblessness. In an interview for TimesLIVE she said: “The glitz and glamour of the Emmys disappeared and one was left dispensable. People think that getting the next job is really easy, but it is tricky.”

But, as the saying goes, “history is made by those who dare to try”. She dared to try and Jenkins saw in her what he was looking for. Thuso told Winfrey she didn’t completely understand what the director meant when he told her she was Cora, until they started filming. “Rejection, abandonment, a huge sense of loss, running from self, this is what Cora experienced as the only person she would have opened her heart to was her mother.” Her mother, a slave, had abandoned her when she, too, escaped.

To protect herself Cora shut her heart. “That’s how I was for most of my life. It was that thing of people coming into your life and then they just go, and there’s no warning. So, what made sense for me was just to shut people out altogether, just as Cora did. She builds a world in her own head as she is safest there,” Thuso explains. By confronting things through Cora, Thuso confrontImages: Amazon Prime ed them too. “That’s where the healing began.”

What helped her in the role, she says, is that she did voice movement therapy as part of her degree. “It tracks your own vocal journey and how you store away traumas and experiences through your voice. All the pain, hurt, resentment that one inherits over generations, not much has changed. So I prepared Cora’s emotional, mental, physical and vocal journey this way.

“People say slavery happened a long time ago but that is not true. Being a black woman, being a black body, the struggles still happen today.” She became so immersed in Cora that she says: “I had to be extra aware of who I am and where I am at every step because those are very heavy states of being to carry.”

During a break from filming she met Viola Davis and her husband Julius Tennon of JuVee Productions. They told her about the movie they were going to make, "The Woman King". It’s based on events that took place in the Kingdom of Dahomey, one of the most powerful states of Africa in the 18th and 19th centuries, in present-day Benin. It tells the story of Nanisca (played by Davis), general of the all-female military unit known as the Amazons who fought the French and neighbouring tribes who had violated their honour and enslaved their people.

The Hollywood news site "Deadline" reports that after meeting Thuso, Davis and Tennon said: “The depth and complexity of emotional life, her authentic beauty, and regalness are potent. We were mesmerised by Thuso Mbedu.”

She was chosen to play Nawi, Nanisca’s daughter. The film is being shot in South Africa. Thuso says the action-packed role has forced her out of her physical comfort zone as it requires her to commit to a serious workout and weapons training regime.

“I’m excited to be a part of the story because we’re telling stories about Africa with a South African in a major role. It’s not about me, it’s about drawing on African talent as we have so many talented actors and actresses in South Africa.”

Charlize Theron told "Vogue" she was proud. Her advice: “Make sure that you’re prepared when the opportunity arises. You don’t want to only prepare for it when the opportunity is there.”

Thuso Mbedu in the Underground Railroad.