Sophie Okonedo Has Long Been One of Our Great Actors. This Is Her Year

It is nearly 11:00 pm in London, Sophie Okonedo has just completed a two-show day — which is to say, nearly five hours on stage — of the Ivan Turgenev adaptation A Month in the Country, and she’s just logged onto Zoom ready to gab. She’s evidently ebullient, energized in the midst of a demanding period of work, while also gearing up for a busy fall of promotion — the rush, you sense, is part of the spark here.

The Tony-winning Okonedo isn’t just earning raves for her latest foray into the theater — over the next few months, she’ll travel the world in support of her highly praised work in two low-budget gems gearing up for scrappy awards campaigns: The Lagos-set Virginia Woolf adaptation Clarissa (making its North American premiere at TIFF this weekend, and out December 11), helmed by Nigerian brothers Arie Esiri and Chuko Esiri, and the heartbreaking family drama Mouse (out November 6), from American indie stalwarts Kelly O’Sullivan and Alex Thompson.

On paper, this combination shouldn’t be read as too out of the ordinary. For decades, Okonedo has worked consistently and to great acclaim. Her Oscar nomination came just over 20 years ago, for her powerhouse supporting turn in Hotel Rwanda, and she’s since gone on to play the scene-stealer in hit shows like The Wheel of Time and Slow Horses while emerging as a powerhouse on stage, taking home awards from Broadway to the West End for her performances in A Raisin in the Sun, Medea and more.

But the truth is: This is a rare moment for the 58-year-old Okonedo that merits serious recognition. She hasn’t had the chance to take on screen roles as rich and complex as Clarissa’s eponymous hostess, nor Mouse’s grieving mother, in years. The two projects, in their wildly different styles and emotional tempos, offer a singular showcase of Okonedo’s range and intelligence as a performer. And while quality of material can never be guaranteed, Okonedo notes it’s no coincidence that they came together at roughly the same time. She’s spent a long time in the business learning to assert, if only for herself, how she wants to work. Now, it’s paying off.

Is there anything you can attribute this moment to, in your career? It’s very exciting, and rare, to have two films this well-received coming out at the same time. 

What happened — if I’m honest, when I think about it — is that I decided I just wouldn’t work as much. I would wait. I’ve done a few bits of television stuff, so I had a bit of money in the bank, and I don’t have high expenses. I don’t do a lot of that stuff; I don’t have assistants. I felt like I could just perhaps wait. When you do low-budget movies, you have to be available. It happened a couple of times in the past where you think: “Oh, will it happen?” And you take a different job and then it’s happening and you can’t do it. I’ve been attached to Clarissa for so long, but I just thought, “I’m going to wait and really only take things if I really want to take them.” I did a lot less work in the last couple of years. I have a really nice home life, so I’m quite happy around my garden. There’s lots to do. But you have to have space if you want to make independent movies.

It sounds like the kind of wisdom that’s gained having done this for a number of years — learning you don’t always have to say yes to everything. 

100 percent. I have a really, really wonderful career and I do lots of things I like doing. You can meet people that are very famous and still always try to get somewhere, but I don’t really feel like I’m trying to. I already have everything I want. I’m working from that place and it’s a very different way of looking at things. It doesn’t mean to say I don’t have ambition to do other things — I do — but I’m already there. I didn’t feel like that when I was younger. It’s much more relaxing because you can be less worried about the outcome. 

You mentioned being attached to Clarissa for a while. How did it come to you? 

The [Esiri] brothers got in touch with me during the lockdown. We had a Zoom and they were just talking about several things they were thinking about doing. This was something that they mentioned — they hadn’t written it, but as an idea I jumped all over it. Then we kept in touch. A couple years after that, I was doing Medea in London and Chuko came to see it. Then he came down to where I live in the countryside, with this script — this is about a year and a half later — and it was in its first iteration, but it didn’t change much. It was amazing. I couldn’t believe it. Then they came back when they raised some money, got Theresa [Park] on board. There were quite a few false starts, in terms of when we thought it was going to happen. It nearly fell through again when I was already out in Nigeria.

How early did you get there?

I went out there a while before filming because I hadn’t been to Nigeria for a very long time. There were some things I didn’t recognize in the film, and I think it’s because I didn’t really realize how much Lagos had changed. Also, when I had been there, I hadn’t been to the very privileged part of Lagos, where half of the film was set in. I wanted to see that, so I stayed with Chuko and Arie’s mother when I was there. I ended up just rolling on and staying with her for the whole of filming. She’s a really, really well-read and bright and brilliant person to riff off of. It was so great, once we started, to be filming all day and then go home and talk about it and obsess about it. It was like I was living the film as well. 

Can you talk about the significance of shooting in Lagos a bit more? It sounds like it was very enriching for you as an actor, and I’m curious about those challenges you ran into just before production.

My father was from Nigeria. I never thought in a million years I’d ever get to make a film there. It’s an incredible place, but it’s hard as well. You can always make another film about the making of this because there was so much adventure, shall we say, every day. So much happened. Just the logistics of trying to get people in one place at the same time — it has very haphazard infrastructure, Lagos, partly because of the way it was built in colonial days. So the logistics were just insane. But we used 90, 95 percent Nigerian crew, and they hadn’t really made an arthouse film before. Everyone got on the bus, really, and that was incredibly moving. 

People get to see a whole other side of Nigeria that I don’t think I’ve ever seen on screen. So that really interested me as well. I was filming the very last scene of the film way before the end of filming — this party scene. I looked across the lawn of this house we were shooting at, and I saw David [Oyelowo] and Nikki [Amuka-Bird] and all these actors that I’ve known for years. When I was growing up and when I was a young actor, it’d be very unlikely for us to be put in the same film — because there wouldn’t be that many Black people in a film when I was starting. And we were all there in Lagos. I just thought, “It doesn’t get any better. What more can one want?” Since that time, I’ve felt this enormous sense of creative peace; it’s such a weird thing to say. Now I’m feeling like, over the next few years and for how long this goes on, I’m going to make choices purely for the joy of being an artist. That may sound really wanky, but that’s what I’m going to be doing. I’m aware of the film business being in such a difficult time and the world being in such a difficult time. All I can do is act, so I’m going to carry on trying to do it. 

What about Clarissa challenged you? 

She didn’t have much to say. You don’t have any words — I just have to think the thoughts. I had the book as well, and then I had myself at this age, so I had lots to think about. Also being the head of a household and running a household — I grew up not like that, so I didn’t have that experience. But I could experience it through Chuko’s and Arie’s mother, who has people that work for her in the house.

The symmetry of the timelines is gorgeous — something as simple as a cut from India Amarteifio, playing the younger Clarissa, to you. Did you work with India at all in creating the character? 

We were filming all the Lagos bits first, and then they were filming in Abraka afterwards. Because of the nature of the budget, a lot of people were cast quite late. I think India was only on board a few weeks before the film. We didn’t know the financing and there was so much going on. Then I was hearing about all the other cast saying, “Oh yes, I’ve spoken to my younger self and I’ve spoken to that actor and I’ve spoken to this one.” I was thinking, “God, I still haven’t spoken to India. Oh my God, she’s coming here next week!” Then I spoke to her once — really, really briefly — and then that was it. You can’t explain that sort of chemistry on film. We’re just so alike. It was like watching my younger self. We didn’t do any prep. She didn’t watch me. We didn’t do anything. I mean, that’s the power of the casting. I mean, we did have the best casting director in the world [Nina Hold], so that slightly helped. 

In Clarissa, you’re playing a character quietly carrying a great deal of pain. In Mouse, the grief is more immediate and visceral. Was that harder to shake off?

Mouse, I found that very difficult to shake off. I felt bereft when I left. Even though I really enjoyed making it, it was a different thing. Whereas Clarissa, I was so fascinated being in Lagos, I was just on a high the whole time, and that stayed with me. I’d love to be one of those people that just shakes things off, but I don’t. I really do. I haven’t found a way of not doing it like that. It’s true on stage as well. I would love to do more plays. I’m going to try and do one a year now, to step it up a bit — because I’ve been doing one every three years. I find it so exhausting. I don’t know how to do it, technically. It always takes a little while to shake it off. It’s the job.

You’ve got these two films about to hit the fall-festival circuit. Meanwhile, you’re on stage doing Brian Friel’s A Month in the Country. How’s it going so far? 

I’m on stage at a theater that seats 250 people, so not many. We just opened and I’m with a wonderful cast. I’m sharing a dressing room with about seven actresses. I love it. And we’re very cramped. There’s no backstage area. And if I want to prepare, I have to go to a little tiny side corner of the stage to prepare. So it’s like going back in time to when I first started and that’s what I’m doing. It’s not Broadway, put it that way.

I was fortunate to see your Medea back in London — that, I’d think, would take a lot out of any actor. 

I could barely act after it. I took a lot of time off. That was probably the hardest part I’ve ever done, I have to say. Now I’m back on stage again. It’s a bit like this: You think, “I’m never doing that again.” Then you’re like, “Ah, the theater, let’s go back!” 

What do you learn from an experience like that?

When you come out of the theater, when you do a role like that, it just makes you a better actor. You just really, really, really, really, really work your craft. But I don’t think the Greek plays are meant to be sustained for 10 weeks, eight shows a week. I’m just going to put that out there. It’s too much. I won’t do that again for that long. At the moment, I’m just feeling like I’m going to just stick to smaller theaters; I like Broadway and the West End, and maybe I will do it again, but my hunch is I’m probably not going to do that much more of that.

You’re describing an interesting alignment there, though, between the film stuff and the stage stuff — wanting to work on a smaller scale a little bit, maybe? 

I’m sure my agents are going to actually kill me when I say this. Maybe you just get older and you don’t need to do as much of it. I mean, like Mrs. Dalloway, you sort of feel the years encroaching and you think, “How do I want to spend my time?” Not everybody has a choice like me, I’m really lucky. But if I have the choice, then how do I want to spend the time? Maybe doing a 14, 16-week run is not how I want to spend it right now. I mean, you’ll probably see me opening on Broadway next year and go, “I thought you said…” But right now that’s how I feel.