Wunmi Mosaku enters the room beaming. The heavily pregnant star is enjoying a brief moment of respite, sans red carpet gowns, opting instead for a Savage x Fenty hoodie, sporting her mini Afro and a bare face for the first time in weeks. However, she’s not complaining about her new fast-paced existence. “This is such a rare moment, and it’s such a big moment for the film: 16 nominations!” she says, reflecting on the Oscars race over high tea at London’s The Chancery Rosewood. The Nigerian-born, Manchester-raised actor is in a close race for the Best Supporting Actress category at the 98th Academy Awards on Marchn15, as a crucial part of the ensemble for Ryan Coogler’s Sinners, the most-nominated film at the award ceremony since it began.
In the lead-up to the ceremony, our paths have crossed several times: at film screening Q&As, in the lobby of the BAFTAs (where she took home Best Supporting Actress), on our photoshoot set. Wunmi appears to be doing everything, everywhere, all at once, on barely any sleep and in multiple time zones. She’s being honored for her portrayal of Annie, the hoodoo priestess who is such a grounding force for the 2025 film. Its heady mix of horror, surrealism, and social commentary easily could’ve jumped the shark if not for the relatable stories of love and loss at its center, and Wunmi has been described as the film’s “beating heart”.
At 39 years old, she has a vast resume. She’s one of the few actors to straddle multiple superhero franchises, with Marvel’s Loki and DC’s Batman v Superman. Her stint in gritty BBC drama Damilola, Our Loved Boy retold one of Britain’s most tragic cases involving the senseless killing of a young boy, and earned her her first BAFTA. Netflix’s refugee thriller His House and Jordan Peele’s Lovecraft Country showed early signs of her penchant for horror as a metaphor for racial oppression. She also appeared in long-running, beloved British TV hits like Luther and Black Mirror.
But Sinners, which grossed $368 million worldwide, is undoubtedly her watershed. “This is the moment that I have worked 20 years towards,” she says. No matter what happens at the Oscars, Wunmi Mosaku is quickly becoming the people’s champion.
In an industry with few working-class stars, Wunmi’s journey is unique. Moving to England from Nigeria at the age of one, she was raised on a council estate in Chorlton-cum-Hardy, South Manchester, in a “house full of girls.” The youngest of three daughters, hers was a household of ambition led by two academics. Despite possessing PhDs—her mother in chemistry and her father in architecture—the pair initially struggled to get work after immigrating. School was also a little rocky at times. As a teenager, she was diagnosed with dyslexia. When she struggled with her grades, teachers suggested her parents stop speaking to her in their mother tongue of Yoruba. Though the Nigerian language has made its way into the UK charts in recent years via Afrobeats, when Wunmi was young, it was something to be concealed. “When we grew up in school, it was not cool to be Nigerian—or African,” she says. “I found out [a classmate] was African, like, 15 years after school.”