(*Disclosure-I was invited to an all-expense paid trip to Los Angeles courtesy of Disney to attend the #WrinkleInTimeEvent & #ABCTVEvent in exchange for my coverage. No other compensation was provided. All views shared are completely my own.)
You might be asking yourself who is Gugu Mbatha-Raw? If you have seen Disney’s Beauty and The Beast, or Doctor Who then chances are you have seen her. Last month when I flew out to LA for the A Wrinkle In Time press junket we had the pleasure of interviewing Gugu. I have to say I loved her british accent, and how nice and humble she was.
Gugu plays Dr. Kate Murry in the film A Wrinkle In Time one of the questions that was asked was “You approached a role as a mother with such dignity and truth. Can you talk a little bit of about your process of finding that character?” Her answer “I’ve never played a mom before. I don’t have kids. You know when Ava first approached me to play the mom in this I was kind of like, oh are you sure? I don’t know if I can pull this off you know. And then I saw a picture of Storm and I was like, oh my gosh, look at that, look at her. You know I saw myself in her.”
I have to say I was surprised by her response, as mother myself I always have this sense of awareness for my kids I have this everlasting love and compassion for them no matter how old they get. In the film you we get to see how connected her character is to her kids Meg and Charles Wallace, so when she said had never played a mother it made me realize just how talented she was.
One of the reasons Gugu worked on the film was because of director Ava DuVernay, they worked together on a short film series for the African-American Museum of history and culture of the Smithsonian. She thought Ava must have seen something in her, because she said “ I think maybe she was scouting me out that day because like literally a couple of weeks later I got the offer for wrinkle.”
In the film Dr. Murry is an amazing scientist, and I asked Gugu what she had to do to prepare for her role. “I mean it’s sort of you know, it was a lot getting to grips with all of that scientific language. I’m not going to say it was easy. But you know we did have this wonderful consultant on the movie called Stephon Alexander who wrote the book, the jazz of physics. And he was there to sort of talk us through in layperson’s terms you know what we were talking about. We had dinner with him and you know could ask him lots of questions. We also got a trip to JPL in Pasadena to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory; get to meet real astrophysicists and rocket scientists and people planning trips to Mars. And you know so that was really fascinating.”
I have to say I really enjoyed Gugu’s character in the movie and I am sure you will as well make sure you check out A Wrinkle In Time when it hits theaters March 9th 2018.
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T.M. Brown says