Sophie Okonedo, 54, is one of our most extraordinary actors, now starring as Medea at @sohoplace theatre in London and giving a heart-flaying tour de force of a performance as Euripides’s tragic child-slayer. Her career on stage, screen and television reached new levels of conspicuous achievement in 2014 after winning a Tony for her performance in A Raisin in the Sun and she has been much feted ever since. She has played Cleopatra at the National, Winnie Mandela on television and will star in the third season of Apple TV+’s critically acclaimed Slow Horses later this year.
How much do you see Medea as a mythical figure – or do you feel she possesses a modern psyche?
I try to place myself right in the centre – I don’t know any other way to act. Unless I’m connected to the person I’m playing, I just wouldn’t know how to do it. I don’t think from the outside. I feel that myths are always current.
