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?"
