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Current Projects Site InformationMisbehaviour was released yesterday on most VOD services online. I’ve updated the gallery with high quality screencaptures of Gugu looking like the true queen she is.
Gugu was featured on Gucci’s podcast in an episode that was released last week, the synopsis is as follow:
In celebration of International Women’s Day and Women’s History Month, actress Gugu Mbatha-Raw MBE joins in conversation with activist and writer Scarlett Curtis.
Together these remarkable women dive into their thoughts on feminism, ongoing cultural and global issues, and touch on why Gugu is drawn to roles that start conversations more than others. Listen to this remarkable female duo question the process of categorising oneself, expectations for actors to be activists and the importance of starting new dialogue.
I’ve updated the gallery with photos of Gugu attending the world premiere of “Misbehaviour” in London last night.
Opening the 1970 Miss World contest, the presenter Bob Hope was in a particularly ebullient mood. “I’m very, very happy to be here at this cattle market…” he leered to the tittering audience. “Moooooo!”
His enjoyment was short-lived; moments later, the clatter of a football rattle resounded around the Royal Albert Hall, and the stage was invaded by outraged women protestors, hurling flour and stink bombs. They forced the obnoxious Hope to flee from the set and disrupted the BBC’s broadcast in what has come to be seen as a watershed moment for feminism.
“I watched the whole ceremony and it’s shocking, particularly the bit where the women all have to turn round to show their bottoms…” says Gugu Mbatha-Raw, over lunch at a smart Marylebone restaurant. “It definitely makes you realise quite how far we’ve come.”
This particular Miss World contest is the subject of Gugu’s thought-provoking new drama, Misbehaviour. She takes the role of Jennifer Hosten, who, as Miss Grenada, became the first black woman to win the Miss World crown. “I came to [the part] with an air of judgement, of, oh, you know, beauty queens,” she admits, “but I’ve become more open-minded as to what that represents. I think it’s very easy now to look back and say, ‘Why would you do that? It’s so superficial.’ What’s interesting is that rebellion can often be a luxury.” For her research into the film, Gugu visited Grenada to talk to Hosten. “She’s in her seventies now, and she’s got such a regal presence, such posture, these bright, bright eyes – she’s very demure, quite proper but very centred.
“It was amazing to meet her and find out about a moment in her life all that time ago that really informed all her opportunities and choices. She felt like she was an ambassador for her country, and she was breaking boundaries in her own way.” Hosten went on to be appointed Grenada’s High Commissioner to Canada. Meanwhile, just a few days before we meet, the Miss World title is awarded to Toni-Ann Singh of Jamaica, meaning that in 2019, for the first time ever, all major beauty titles have been won by black women. “Optics are so powerful: who gets to be celebrated?” says Gugu.Distractingly beautiful herself, and appearing far younger than her 36 years, Gugu has an unselfconscious freshness that could not be further from a beauty queen’s manicured perfection. She has come to our lunch straight from a yoga class and arrives dressed down in a monochrome ensemble of jeans, a scarf and an embellished rollneck from Sézane. “This is as jazzy as I normally get,” she confesses. “My wardrobe is mostly black because I dress up for a living, and it makes me feel calm and neutral.
The waiter, who can clearly recognise star quality when he sees it, rushes up with a menu, and she studies it with frank delight, eventually settling on potato ravioli and sea-bass with champagne sauce, and diving for the bread basket. “Ooh! It’s warm!” she exclaims, then complains vociferously about the inadequate dinner served at a celebrity event we both attended recently.
In short, Gugu is one of those rare people to whom it is easy to warm immediately. Perhaps this attribute is why she doesn’t always shy away from less sympathetic roles; on the contrary, she appears to revel in them. “You can’t always be the goodie everyone’s rooting for,” she says, laughing. [More on Source]
EXCLUSIVE: Coming off Apple’s The Morning Show, Gugu Mbatha-Raw is heading to another streaming drama. The British actress has been cast in Loki, the Disney+ series starring Tom Hiddleston as the trickster demi-god and brother to Thor, I have learned.
As is the case with every Marvel project, details about Mbatha-Raw’s role are under wraps, but I hear it is a prominent character, described as the female lead. In addition to Hiddleston, the only actor who has been confirmed by Marvel/Disney, Mbatha-Raw joins fellow cast members Owen Wilson and Sophia Di Martino in the series. Marvel had no comment.
In the new Marvel Studios series, Hiddleston returns as the mercurial Loki, the Asgardian god of mischief and everyone’s favorite Marvel villain, in stories that take place after the events of Avengers: Endgame. with There likely will be a tie-in to the May 2021 supernatural sequel Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness.
Mbatha-Raw was a series regular on the first season of Apple TV+ drama series The Morning Show, starring opposite Jennifer Aniston, Reese Witherspoon and Steve Carell. On the big screen, she most recently starred in Motherless Brooklyn, alongside Edward Norton and Willem Dafoe. She will next be seen in the British comedy-drama Misbehaviour, starring alongside Keira Knightley and Jessie Buckley, and in Come Away, starring opposite Angelina Jolie and David Oyelowo. Additionally, she has completed production on World War II drama Summerland. [Source]
Happy new year everyone!
Gugu stepped out yesterday in a gorgeous Gucci dress styled by Leith Clark to attend the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards where The Morning Show was nominated then attended the Annual Instyle & WB After Party. I’ve updated the gallery with photos of both events.
2020 > 05 January – 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards
2020 > 05 January – InStyle and Warner Bros Golden Globes After Party
If it seems like you’re seeing Gugu Mbatha-Raw everywhere lately, it isn’t your imagination. This past fall, the actress was on the promotional trail for not just one but two acting projects, which, in the perfect confluence of events, were both released on the same day, November 1.
In Motherless Brooklyn, directed by Edward Norton, she plays Laura, an activist lawyer in 1950s New York City, in an adaptation of Jonathan Lethem’s detective novel. The film, which stars Norton, Alec Baldwin, and Willem Dafoe, was shot in Harlem and has a jazzy, noir sensibility that Mbatha-Raw was eager to sink her teeth into. “It’s a genre that is so cool and isn’t often done,” she says.
The actress related to the contemporary themes of the film and the strong role, which Norton added for her. “Laura is an activist in her community; she’s not your typical 1950s housewife or heroine,” she says. “She’s so layered and a real underdog.” You may remember the 36-year-old Royal Academy of Dramatic Art–trained English actress from the short-lived J.J. Abrams television series Undercovers and the British sci-fi series Black Mirror, but she broke into film five years ago in the period independent movie Belle and played a pop star in Beyond the Lights. And now she’s made the jump into the big leagues with these starring roles.
Her other project, Apple TV+’s first series, The Morning Show, has no shortage of huge stars, either, including Jennifer Aniston, Reese Witherspoon, and Steve Carell. It was Mbatha-Raw’s second time working with Witherspoon in a female-led project. (They briefly worked together in 2018’s A Wrinkle in Time, directed by Ava DuVernay.)
“It’s so special to work with Reese on this show,” Mbatha-Raw says. “I’m so impressed by what she’s built with her production company and what an amazing group of actors she’s assembled. She’s such a generous artist and is leading the way in terms of female storytelling.”
The actress was in the midst of shooting Misbehaviour (a film that follows the 1970 Miss World pageant in London, which saw the crowning of the first black winner) and jumped right into filming Apple’s television show-within-a-show in New York City. She did, however, have time to jet to Aniston’s cast party, held at her Los Angeles home before they began filming, and bonded with English costar Bel Powley on set. The show, in which she plays Hannah, a booker for a popular morning TV show, focuses on the drama between the anchors and crew behind the scenes, with a #MeToo plotline. “It’s so relatable for our time,” she says. “It really gets under the skin of that conversation.” Her Hannah is ruthless, ambitious, and disciplined. “I really enjoyed exploring the cost of ambition and the wear and tear of the New York media world. Hannah has such an interesting dramatic arc.” [More at Source]
After introductions, we chat briefly about her latest projects and she starts laughing at my cellphone. But in a nice way. “Do you need me to call Apple for you?” she teases.
See, my phone doesn’t look like a grown-up’s cellphone. It looks like someone took a rock hammer to its upper-right-hand corner, shattering the glass and exposing a mysterious chunk of metal that I pretend is a battery but seems potentially dangerous. Cracks, like crooked sunbeams, cascade down my screen from there, and little dead spots, like burn marks, have recently appeared all over it. My phone doesn’t just look injured; it looks sickly.
“Do I need to sort this out?” she asks.
She probably could, too. After all, she’s basically an employee of Apple these days. Her latest project—or one of her latest projects, actually—is The Morning Show, an original 10-episode series for the tech giant’s new streaming service, Apple TV+. Starring Reese Witherspoon, Jennifer Aniston and Steve Carell, it takes people inside and behind the scenes of a Good Morning America-type talk show. In it, Mbatha-Raw’s character works as the show’s celebrity wrangler. But with Apple being Apple, she says she can’t explain much more than that.
But the character really is more than she seems. “She has a lot of secrets,” says Mbatha-Raw. “What I like about it is that it has a strong point of view and [tackles] the post-#MeToo era in the media landscape. Plus, it’s America’s sweethearts together in one show. I knew it was going to be amazing and have something to say.”
She can talk a little bit more about Motherless Brooklyn, the Edward Norton passion project about a private detective with Tourette’s syndrome (which can make sneaking around a little tough). It’s a kind of spiritual adaptation of a Jonathan Lethem novel, which is handy for Mbatha-Raw since her character isn’t in the book. “My character comes up as this Woman in Blue that Norton’s detective character is following. She was born in Harlem and grew up in the jazz club owned by her dad. And she works for the community against racial discrimination in housing. She has a law degree. Suddenly she has these layers to her—she’s not just a femme fatale. She has a purpose. She is much more than meets the eye.” [More at Source]
Gugu, Edward and Alex stopped by Build Studios in New York to talk about the upcoming release of ‘Motherless Brooklyn’. Check out the video below and make sure to head to the gallery for the photo coverage.
