Alison Stewart: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. The Ryan Coogler film Sinners remains on course to be one of the most successful horror movies in Hollywood history. It's more than just box office mojo. It's a deeply researched script that attracted my next guest to the role of Annie, a healer whose love goes beyond the limits of the human form. Annie's spiritual wisdom allows her to see the vampires for what they are. She's also the only one who knows how to protect those around her from the threat they pose.

Here's a clip from the film. It's 1930s Mississippi, a character named Cornbread, who was watching the door at the nightclub where the action takes place. Now he is asking to be let inside, but the fact is, the vampire's got him. Cornbread speaks first.

Cornbread: What y'all doing? Just step aside and let me on in now.

Annie: Why you need him to do that? You big and strong enough to push past us?

Cornbread: Well, that wouldn't be too polite now, would it, Ms. Annie? I don't know why I'm talking to you anyway.

Annie: So don't talk to him. You talking to me right now. Why you can't just walk your big ass up in here without an invite, huh? Go ahead, admit to it.

Cornbread: Admit to what?

Annie: That you dead.

Alison Stewart: Wunmi Mosaku joins us now. Wunmi, nice to meet you.

Wunmi Mosaku: Nice to meet you too.

Alison Stewart: You were offered this role immediately after auditioning. You told IndieWire that had never happened to you before. What do you remember feeling in that moment?

Wunmi Mosaku: Oh, my goodness. It was so overwhelming. I had just had my chemistry read with Michael, and I walked out the door. Then I was saying goodbye to everyone, like, "Nice to meet you," and Ryan just came out. He said, "I don't know what I'm doing. The role's yours. I don't know why I would make you wait. The role's yours."

Then Michael jumped out of the room behind him, like, "Yaaaay." [laughs] It was so overwhelming and so fun and so lovely and like-- yes. I keep saying that this whole experience has been magical from beginning to end, and that was definitely one of those magical moments.

Alison Stewart: You're given the first seven-- The first script, it was the seven minutes of this love scene that you have with Michael B. Jordan's character. What felt special to you about that particular scene?

Wunmi Mosaku: Seven pages is-- it's quite a lot in a script, but it felt so deep. It felt like I understood who they were. I felt like I understood their history, their love, the depth of their love, the breadth of their humanity, and their fear. Their beliefs, their differences, their grief, and their hopes in seven pages is really quite a feat to achieve. I got these seven pages not knowing what the film was about, so I thought this was a love film, like a love story, and I was so excited about the possibilities. Then Ryan spoke me through the rest of the film, and I was like, "Wow." [chuckles] Talk about genre-bending. I was like, "Oh, I was sure this was going to be a love story." It is.

Alison Stewart: It is a love story, though.

Wunmi Mosaku: I think it's one of the greatest love stories, but it's also a horror, it's a musical. It's everything.

Alison Stewart: How is love central to the story of Sinners?

Wunmi Mosaku: I think love is central because the characters, they're so real, they're so whole. You understand, with all of them, who they love, how they love, why they love, and what they love, and the community. The love within the community. The love of the blues. The love of a space that is theirs, and they're free in. The love of parents and children, and that loyalty. The love of your ancestry. The love of needing-- not just wanting, but needing to live your life and its purpose, and with ferocity and truth, whether that's with your partner, if that's your desire, or whether it's your gift. Whether it's your gift for the character of Sammie music.

Love is absolutely the heartbeat, the bloodline, the rhythm, and the flesh of this whole movie.

Alison Stewart: When we meet Annie, where is she in her life? What's important to her?

Wunmi Mosaku: You meet Annie when Smoke, her other half, has returned after seven years away. They have lost a child, and they are reconnected seven years after that loss. There's something about their meeting, where I feel like she knew-- She's always known he was coming back. She always knew that these seven years were part of his grieving process and what he needed to do in order to keep living after such great loss. I feel like there's just this unsaid, unspoken kind of knowingness that they just need to be honest with each other, and then we can move through this world together again. That's all she requires of him is honesty, and then they're locked back in. They are soul-tied.

She has given him this mojo bag years ago, and I imagine it's something that she gave to him when she first fell in love with him. I feel like she poured all of her power into this mojo bag, and that's why it works. [laughs]

Alison Stewart: They do have an argument, though, in the beginning about accepting plantation currency in her store, and she refuses it. The blood money, she calls it. What does this tell us about their interaction?

Wunmi Mosaku: That they serve two very different gods. [chuckles] He is all about power and money and the earthly signs of success, capitalism, and survival. Regardless of the world that they live in, she's rooted in that space because of her child. She's rooted in that space because of her beliefs and her people. If this is the currency that her people and her community are using, then that's all that matters, because she's not going anywhere else. This is where she belongs until she doesn't belong there anymore.

Alison Stewart: She calls Smoke by his name, Elijah. How are Smoke and Elijah different to Annie? Or maybe they're not.

Wunmi Mosaku: I like to describe Smoke as his smoke and mirrors. It's his representative. How he wants the world, needs the world to see him and interact with him. Elijah is his core. It's his true vulnerable self. It's everything that he's too scared to show the world. The only people who know Elijah are Stack – his brother Elias – and Annie. They're the only two people he can truly be Elijah with. They're different to her, but she understands the need for Smoke. Smoke is Elijah's shield and protection.

Alison Stewart: My guest is Wunmi Mosaku. We are talking about Sinners. She plays the role of Annie. Let's get down to business. Annie is a healer. It's important to what she does. It's important to who she is. Did you know much about healing when you went into this role?

Wunmi Mosaku: No.

Alison Stewart: No.

Wunmi Mosaku: No, I didn't know anything about hoodoo and the practice of it. I didn't know anything about the priestesses and their work in the community, the keystone of that knowledge being a part of our survival as the diaspora. I learned that it was a derivative of Ifa, which is a Yoruba traditional indigenous religion. I'm a Yoruba woman. I was born there but raised in the UK, so for me it was like this opening up of my ancestry, my survival, why I'm here. A big part of the film is your ancestry and your place in-- We talk about future ancestors as well. You will be a future ancestor.

Learning about Ifa grounded me in a way, because I found a part of myself that I didn't know existed within my research of Annie. That has given me more roots for that role of the future ancestor that I will one day take.

Alison Stewart: This sounds like a role that blew your mind a little bit.

Wunmi Mosaku: It did. It really did. It changed me on a very spiritual and cellular level. It inspired me as an artist, what Ryan has created. That quality of writing and that research and that love of our cultures, our ancestry, our practices, our beliefs, and our conflicts. Someone being able to write all of that in one two-hour film, it blows my mind. Learning Annie and trying to fill up the space that Annie takes, I felt powerful. It was feeding me, reminding me of my own power, to tap into it as a mother as well. It was my first job back after having my daughter.

I just felt really inspired, hopeful, and grateful. I always say it felt magical. It feels like that's not quite the right word because it feels like a really easy word to say, but it really, truly felt magical and transformational.

Alison Stewart: You got to get dressed by Ruth E. Carter.

Wunmi Mosaku: Oh.

Alison Stewart: The woman.

Wunmi Mosaku: Yes. The legend.

Alison Stewart: Seriously, what was something about the outfit you wore, part of the costume that you wore, that you've thought about a lot?

Wunmi Mosaku: The haint blue, I didn't realize that that-- For those who don't know, haint is another word for a spirit. The haint blue is a color that people paint their homes with, or the windows, or the door frames, because they think that the blue will make the spirit think it's the sky. They'll run away because they don't want to go back to wherever they came from. Haint blue as a color of protection, I loved that, and I love how she used the colors between Smoke and Annie.

Smoke is someone who doesn't believe in hoodoo, and he doesn't believe in all that, even though he wears the mojo bag and he wears blue. [laughs]

Alison Stewart: He knows. He knows somewhere deep down inside of himself.

Wunmi Mosaku: He believes in Annie. He believes in her. I love that. I love the beads, this kind of prayer beads, and how she doesn't wear it just out. It tucks into her costume, and it'd be like a silent prayer for her. I love that about her costume. Yes, Ruth E. Carter, she is extraordinary. The detail, the texture that she brings. Every day you would come in something new. She was like, "All right. This belt is more like her tool belt." People say, "Why didn't she have a mojo bag?" I said, she did. She did have a mojo bag. It was just in my costume silently, just there.

Alison Stewart: That's important for you as an actor, though, to have that.

Wunmi Mosaku: So important, yes. Because there you go. His mojo bag works, things like that. Seeing her rely on it. She carries a little vial of holy water and a little knife and a talisman. These little things that don't really get-- they don't get used in the script, but it's all there. That's because Ms. Ruth kind of sees things in 360. 4D, I want to say. Not just 360, 4D. [laughs]

Alison Stewart: There's moments in the film when various people are drawn to the vampires. Either they want to be with someone they loved who has been turned, or there's something about the vampires that sort of tempts them. It doesn't seem like Annie is tempted. Why not?

Wunmi Mosaku: Because her goal and her whole purpose is to be spiritually connected. The vampires, they get to live this other life, but it's devoid of the ancestors. It's devoid of connectives and spirituality, and so consider living this life of-- There is a kind of freedom in their life, although they have to hide from the sun. There is a kind of freedom where two people who weren't allowed to be together in the Jim Crow South can now be together. In the darkness, she not tempted by that because all she knows is, "I want to be with my people, my ancestors." She wants to be an ancestor. That's her. That's part of her purpose.

Alison Stewart: What is something that you have not been asked about Annie? You've done a ton of press. It's always been interesting, but something that you've wanted to say about her.

Wunmi Mosaku: I read that scene, and I desperately wanted to work with Ryan on whatever he was working on. I said it to him on the first day of the read-through. I was like, "I feel like Annie is going to change my life." I think she's going to change my life. Not on a acting career, but on a spiritual path. I really feel like she has. I've been doing Yoruba lessons for five years, and I'm finally, six months later, able to do my whole class in Yoruba. The language has never stuck with me before. There's just something with-- So many things clicked for me beyond-- I can't even explain all of it.

It just opened up a part of me, and now I speak-- I want to say I speak Yoruba. I feel scared to say it because I have to speak it very slowly, and people have to speak very slowly, but in time, I just know that this language is going to stick. I just know it. That's a big change for me because you move to another country-- and this is a topic that's in the film too. You move to another country for whatever reason, whether you're seeking asylum or-- My parents were students in the UK. You sacrifice so much of your culture and you lose so much. There's so much I don't know about being a Yoruba woman.

There are so many conversations I've never really had, even with my grandmother, because I've always needed an interpreter. I miss nuances about her personality, and sometimes people can't be bothered to translate for you. I just feel like Annie is the beginning of that reclaiming and home-going and reconnectedness. The spiritual awakening just felt like that was always going to be her purpose in my life.

Alison Stewart: This is just in. The film Sinners is being re-released in IMAX starting May 15th for one more week. My guest has been Wunmi Mosaku. It is so nice to meet you.

Wunmi Mosaku: So lovely meeting you. Thank you so much.