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Melissa Harris-Perry: It's The Takeaway. I'm Melissa Harris-Perry.
Sophie: Everyone keeps telling me who they think I am, but if my life was so perfect, why did I try to end it?
Melissa Harris-Perry: That's the question motivating Sophie, the central character in Surface, a series on Apple TV+. Sophie is a woman without a past, at least as far as she remembers. After she loses her memories in a traumatic incident, she sets out to put the pieces together.
Gugu Mbatha-Raw: I am Gugu Mbatha-Raw.
Melissa Harris-Perry: Gugu Mbatha-Raw stars as Sophie. She's also the executive producer on this series, which was just renewed for a second season. I sat down with Gugu soon after the news broke.
Gugu Mbatha-Raw: I've known for a little while. It's always that sense of having this exciting news that you can't talk about. I'm really thrilled. I love the show. I love playing this character and I'm really excited that we get to keep doing it and that it's filming in London, which a little bit biased, but I'm excited about that too.
Melissa Harris-Perry: I don't want to spoil too much for folks who haven't had a chance to watch it yet, but tell me a little bit about Sophie and about this I would call it almost subversive character.
Gugu Mbatha-Raw: I mean, we are really in this world of a psychological thriller, and when we meet Sophie, she's a woman who has been told that she had survived a suicide attempt, and she has lost her memory. She is looking to her husband and the people in her life to rebuild her life. She seemingly has everything, the perfect wardrobe, the perfect husband but when she leaves her home for the first time, she meets a man who knows her, and she doesn't know him, and he alludes to the fact that what she's been told that happened on the boat that day, there's more to it.
Melissa Harris-Perry: As an actor, how do you get into a character who doesn't even quite know herself?
Gugu Mbatha-Raw: Sophie doesn't have any of the usual backstories that you would have as an actor. For me, in a way that was disconcerting, but in a way it's quite liberating because you have to strip back and become almost a detective of her own life. I've been so used to seeing and growing up with films like The Bourne Identity where the male protagonist has amnesia and is trying to figure things out. But I'd never really seen it from a woman's perspective before. Certainly, Sophie starting off seemingly as this fragile damsel in distress, but then we get to really subvert that trope.
Melissa Harris-Perry: I also really love it, even in how you described it, meeting a man who knows her, but she doesn't know him. She doesn't quite know herself. I think, actually, that probably describes most of my relationships before I was 35. I met some guy before I even really knew who I was myself.
[laughter]
Gugu Mbatha-Raw: I love that. I love that. Well, as this show develops, she's looking to the men in her life initially to define her, be it her husband James, played by Oliver Jackson, Cohen, or Baden played by Stefan James. Essentially she's looking to the men in her life to define her. It's not really until we go deeper into the show that she realizes that she is the key to who she is, and she doesn't actually need either of them to find her authenticity.
Melissa Harris-Perry: Now, you expressed some enthusiasm about London as the setting of the next season, but oh my goodness, San Francisco is so central. It's almost its own character. Help me to understand how the setting is so central.
Gugu Mbatha-Raw: It's such a dreamy city, but it has that sort of noir energy, from classic films like Vertigo. Just the iconic Golden Gate Bridge, the mist that it is murky that there is a complexity there and there's a history there from the ambiance of the show. Also, just to the physical expression of it, for my character who is an avid runner and having to run up some of those hills of San Francisco, which really became a motif in the show. I loved filming there, and it's just really great to have such an iconic place, especially for a mystery like this.
Melissa Harris-Perry: Talk to me about making this show on location during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Gugu Mbatha-Raw: It was a challenge. I'm not going to lie. We filmed in the summer of 2021, the height of the Delta season of COVID. We actually filmed in Vancouver. It was a challenge to arrive from London and having to quarantine for two weeks, but I have to say, it was also really invigorating to be so focused on something. For me, I think what helped with that time in COVID and during the pre-production was that I'm also an executive producer on the show. Even though we were experiencing lockdowns, even though we were all on Zoom, there were plenty of meetings that I could take in a producer level and really focus on the show. It really was a beacon of creativity in quite a challenging time for us, in the rest of the world.
Melissa Harris-Perry: Now, I don't want to go into too much detail or to give too much away, but suicide, self-harm, is a consistent theme throughout this first season. Talk to me a bit about the considerations you brought both as an actor and as a producer to thinking about this part of Sophie's story.
Gugu Mbatha-Raw: Of course. We were very sensitive to the theme of suicide in the show. I think for her, the investigation of the show is about her identity and her sense of self. We have a wonderful performance and a character, played by Maryanne John Baptiste, who plays Sophie's therapist. Some of my favorite scenes in the show where Sophie gets to really be vulnerable and honest with challenging her motivations and trying to figure out why she allegedly did this. I think that what I find so interesting about the show as well is that it's this luxurious world and the essential question of the show being if her life was so perfect, why did she try to end it? We were really trying to explore what you need to be authentic, and how important an authentic life is.
Melissa Harris-Perry: In what ways is race a part of that answer to that question of why one might not be happy despite all the trappings of the elite?
Gugu Mbatha-Raw: Sophie's the biracial woman like myself. I think, we definitely delve more into the concept of identity and having a multifaceted personality. Certainly for me to see a woman of color in a psychological thriller where she's not the victim, ultimately, she's playing, a very empowered role in her life. I feel like that is somewhat groundbreaking in its own way. For me, it's part of the world, but it's not the front and center conversation of the piece. I think, depending on your perspective and your experience, you'll draw from it what you need in terms of, I guess, how the show brings out, new levels for women and empowerment for women of color, like Sophie's journey.
Melissa Harris-Perry: Speaking of empowerment for women of color, you are an executive producer on the series. Talk to me about how important it is to have women of color in the roles of decision-making in film and TV projects.
Gugu Mbatha-Raw: Well, it's been huge for me. This is definitely my first time as an executive producer and I feel really fortunate to have great mentors in Reese Witherspoon and Lauren Nuta who run Hello Sunshine. You do really have to be the change, and this has been a wonderful opportunity for me to be a producer and to actually be a part of shaping the power dynamics behind the scenes.
Melissa Harris-Perry: Gugu Mbatha-Raw is star and executive producer of the Apple TV+ series Surface. Thanks so much for joining us today.
Gugu Mbatha-Raw: Thank you. Thank you so much for having me.
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