Thuso Mbedu won the best female performance in a new scripted series at the 2022 Film Independent Spirit Awards on Sunday. She plays Cora, an enslaved woman working on a plantation in Georgia who escapes with another slave using the underground railroad.
She described the role in the Golden Globe award winning production as a tool that helped confront her own trauma : “Later on, as I was doing my preparation for the character, I realised that there are so many similarities between who Cora is and who Thuso is. But I remember just crying, weeping, weeping after reading the book. Not only for the story, but for myself.”
The Film Independent Spirit Awards win came as a surprise for the 30-year-old South African actress according to The Hollywood Reporter, who was shocked as she did not think she would receive the award.
“They told me a number of times to prepare something, and I really didn’t,” Mbedu said to the publication.
The first-time nominee and winner thanked filmmaker and director Barry Jenkins for helping her
shape her role to suit her own contributions.
“Barry is a very collaborative director, and it was more about what I found for the character more than anything and him supporting that.”
She added that: “It was evident with like moments on set, where if we made an offer, he would then go and change the script to accommodate that which we had offered, which was amazing”.
The award-winning thespian was grateful for the recognition and thanked everyone who worked on the project: “Thank you to Amazon, to all the executive producers, to my team, Beth, April, Laurie, everyone.”
