Sophie Okonedo Q&A

26 March 2009

There is a touching vulnerability to the portrayal of May Boatwright, by the accomplished Sophie Okonedo. She brings depth and humanity to her role of a woman who has been hurt badly in the past by the death of her twin.

Dreamy, emotional and child-like, May is delightful, but has no control over her emotions. Sophie Okonedo infuses the character with innocence.

Were you familiar with the book when you were offered the role of May?

I read the book three years ago and really liked it. I remember just thinking that it oozes humanity. I remember ordering everything with honey afterwards. I went and bought honey cream for the bath and honey moisturizing lotion. I was just steeped and smelling of honey. The book was a really tasty read.

And then Gina sent me a copy of the first draft of the script. I was taken with it right away and taken with Gina herself as a person, so I was on board right from the beginning. I liked the character of May and knew that she was the Boatwright I wanted to play.

May is a twin isn’t she? Did you do specific research?

May’s twin sister died when she was young. So I did some studying and went onto a twin bereavement website that twins go onto and post letters about what it is like losing a twin. May lost her sister April, when she was 14 or 15, she committed suicide and I think May got very stuck at that point in time, something happened and she changed. I imagined her as a split character with half of her missing.

How do you portray someone like that who has deep psychological and emotional swings and can’t quite function in the world like everyone else?

I didn’t play her any different than any other character except that if anyone said anything sad to me in a scene, I would amplify it. If there was laughter I would be hysterical. I imagined that she felt more deeply than everyone else about every single thing that happened.

So it wasn’t like I had to make a huge jump, I portrayed her as being quite childlike. You know how children can go from happy to sad? They turn their emotions around all the time. May is like that.

So when she feels something, she really feels it very intensely, everything is extreme with her. I just think the duality of her, the enormous kind of grief that she holds, and how she deals with it is interesting.

She contained a lot of pain, she is like an open wound. She was kind of the symbolic embodiment of the civil rights movement. I thought the role was great, with all these aspects of being a woman, the whole gamut.

On screen it looks very natural. How do you tap into that sadness?

I never do a scene thinking I am going to cry in it. I just try to work out what the objective of the scene is and see what happens, I really hate it when I see ‘and then she cries’ in a script, because I want to discover what takes place myself, there might be a more interesting alternative.

How much did you discover about the American south in the 60s?

I knew quite a lot about the civil rights movement so I had a general knowledge, but Gina gave us a book about the period and I read that and it helped me to understand what it was like to grow up at that time. I also watched a documentary that Spike Lee made called Four Little Girls, which had a really big effect on me.

There was one woman who lost her sister and she talked about the experience and that helped me play May. It helped me get into that frightening time of change and understand how scary it must have been to live at that time, but also exciting, being on the precipice of change. I did that sort of research and listened to a lot of 60s music.

How hard do you think it would have been as a black girl living through those times?

It must have been so difficult; it is quite easy to forget how much things have changed since then. It is interesting because recently I had to do a lot of research on apartheid for a film I have just made called SKIN, in which I play the black daughter of two white parents. It’s a true story, she was a genetic throwback, and I have met the real woman. It was interesting because I had to go from an Afrikaner accent to an American southern accent.

But making The Secret Life of Bees gave me a much better understanding of black Americans, reading more about the civil rights movement. It made me realize how amazing the NAACP was (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People: one of the oldest and most influential civil rights organizations in America). I didn’t know so much about how it started and what it meant, and what the relevance was of the battle they fought, so I learned a lot.

Have you experienced racism yourself?

I have experienced racism when I was younger but not now. I lived in North London on a council estate (Government housing). I didn’t live in the Deep South in the 60s. I don’t really notice any racism now I have to say, not overtly anyway.

I haven’t personally had people coming up to me saying ‘leave the country’. Maybe it’s because I have become a well-known face. I get noticed and stopped in London because people know me from television and films.

But you know I am always interested in doing films like this that break down barriers in terms of casting and color. For example I loved playing Nancy in Oliver Twist recently for the BBC.

It was great that they cast me; it wasn’t as though it was set it in modern times, it was done in the period, they had no qualms about doing it with me and I was dying to do a costume drama, so it was perfect. I love doing things like that which break the norm a bit.

Gina says she loves working with British actors (you and Paul Bettany in this film), adding that you ask a lot of questions, is that true? What kind of questions do you ask?

It is absolutely true, that is all I ever do, I ask myself and the director questions all the time. I read the script thoroughly first of all, the script is my bible and I think that comes from my theatre training where ‘the play is the thing’. I read the script again and again and again and all the time I am asking questions.

I look at the facts about the character first of all: she is called May and lived at this particular time and then I want to find out more about her.

I am only interesting in unlocking the text and digging underneath the text to find the truth of the character. I have to build a strong foundation from the words, the script, or the play if it is theater. So in this case I thought: ‘Okay I don’t know anything about twins, I will go and find out’.

I do a lot of research at home before I get to the set. Research is a pleasure for me, I love it, and otherwise the job would be incredibly boring. I very rarely think about the outcome, how films are going to turn out. The process is the joy for me.

Having said that, the outcome for example the Oscar nomination for Hotel Rwanda - must sometimes be fantastic?

Yes that was fantastic, such a shock. I was not anticipating or hoping something like that would happen. I really enjoyed the process of making the film and I’m glad everyone else liked the film. And of course I enjoyed the nomination.

What is your acting technique for a role like this, did you go around in between takes humming like May?

No I don’t do that at all, I am not a method actor, I just feel too embarrassed to stay in character all day. It would be too exhausting, I need to relax and chat with everybody. I want to find out what everyone is doing, I am very friendly, hanging out, talking to the crew, chatting to the people from crafts services.

What was it like on the set?

It was real fun but it was freezing cold and it was meant to look like it was really hot. We were always wearing little tiny dresses and that was tough because it was winter in North Carolina where we were filming and it was particularly cold and icy in the morning. But it had a funny effect.

Because it was so cold, we were always huddling together and we got slightly hysterical, you know if you are really cold how you can get hysterical with laughter? That really bonded us because we were all in the same boat. And then there are scenes in the water which were very hard.

There is one scene where I was immersed in water for a long time with the rest of the cast. It was so, so cold. We were in the middle of the forest running around with hot water bottles to try to keep warm.

Dakota and I just stayed in the water instead of getting out to warm up because we thought it was just warmer to stay there. We had to eat ice in every scene to make our breath the same temperature as the air.

Unlike the other actresses, you didn’t have to go to bee school, you went to cooking school. May does the cooking for the family. What did you learn?

I wasn’t learning to cook, because I can cook, I actually love cooking, I don’t often go to restaurants but at ‘cooking school’ I was learning specific southern recipes.

What like?

I learned from two women who have a restaurant called The Two Fat Ladies who have nothing to do with the English (famous) chefs who also go by that name. They are two gorgeous, robust women who have a restaurant in Wilmington.

We went round to Gina’s house, because she had a big kitchen and they taught me to make some Southern dishes. All the recipes amount to this: add a pound of butter, a pound of sugar, a pound of flour and a lot of salt to everything and you’ve got southern cooking.

It is very tasty but I couldn’t eat like that all the time. I learned how to make slathered pork chops, southern mashed potatoes, sweet potato biscuits, buttermilk pancakes, fried chicken, collard greens, a sugary dish with sweet potatoes, and we did lots of baking. I had to make all the dishes I cook in the film.

I enjoyed it. At home in London I still make the onion gravy, but I don’t do many of the dishes because my 11 year-old daughter is quite fussy, she likes simple food like pasta.

What do you cook at home?

I am a soup expert, I make vegetable soup, lentil soup, I also make great roast dinners, pastas, just normal things, lots of fish.

Do you think the film is inspiring?

I hope so, it is nice to see a group of black women in a film like this who aren’t all living in the gutter. They are strong and quite self sufficient with their own house and land and I think that is inspirational.

What was special about playing May?

I haven’t done anything really in America. It was the first time I had played an American so it was a challenge. I had to get the accent right, I hope I did, but that was difficult for all of us because none of us were from the south. I was really, really keen on Gina. I think she’s tremendous. She is incredibly kind and insightful, she is the opposite of sycophantic.

She’ll say ‘that was good’ but she is not free or lavish with compliments, so you really appreciate every little compliment she gives you.

I hear you were actually nervous at the start of the film, yet you are so experienced?

I was nervous, I am always nervous on my first day of work. You never know what may happen. I have to sing and singing was nerve wracking, considering I was working with all these fantastic singers. Gina would not give me a singing coach, I was pleading with her ‘please can I have a singing coach’ and she said no.

When I had to do it for the first time, I couldn’t sleep the night before, knowing I had to sing in front of three of the most famous singers in America. I said to them ‘I would rather you saw me running around naked than do this singing scene’. They all fell about laughing. But they were very supportive.

Because it was my absolute worst nightmare though, when I did it. I found the experience was very freeing because it didn’t really matter what I sounded like singing, as long I was May.

You look so young playing May and of course she is quite child like, how do you look so youthful? Any secrets?

I am 40 but I suppose I do look quite young. I think since I was 17 I have always looked like I was in my late 20s. I stopped still at that point. (laughs). But I am sure everything will start to fall down at some point and I will look really old.

I just think it is a state of mind, if you think young it comes out. I do have good genes though, it is one of those arbitrary lucky things, my mum looks really good, she is a Pilates teacher and she is as fit as a fiddle.

Can you say anything about your style?

I am not a shopaholic. I do not buy clothes often. I like to look nice but I wear jeans and a t-shirt every single day. That is all I ever like to wear. I get into a panic when I have something special to do and I think: ‘oh my God, what am I going to wear.

Do you like any shopping?

I love buying books from Amazon, that is my biggest extravagance.

How enjoyable is the success you are experiencing now?

I do everything normal, my life hasn’t changed much, my fame is quite small and I am not a huge star. I am not extravagant at all. I’m a total homebody. I always find it easy not work, so I don’t work for long periods. I am lucky because I don’t have a lot of stuff to maintain like loads of houses or cars.

I live an ordinary life. Everyone knows me where I live in North London; I have lived there for years and years. So when the Oscar nomination happened, the local shops put notices in their windows, the local bicycle shop put up a poster with a big picture of me saying: ‘Good Luck Sophie’. I said ‘take it down, it’s so embarrassing’.

It must have been fun?

It was really nice but it settles down quite quickly and you carry on, people are not as fascinated as you think.

Do you watch your own films?

I don’t because I find it so hard, I have got to let go of that and find a way of dealing with it. I had a whole period where I didn’t watch anything, but I’ve watched this one because I wanted to see what my ladies were like and I wanted to see what Gina had done with the film.

I actually find it quite difficult because the way I work means that I don’t really worry about the camera and what it’s doing, I don’t worry about lights, any of that stuff, I just play the character. So when I watch myself it suddenly separates me from what I was doing and I am not sure how helpful that is.

How has your life and career changed since the Oscar nomination?

More people know about me, I took quite a bit of time off afterwards to stay at home and I couldn’t decide what I wanted to do, I got confused. So I thought I’ll wait. I don’t feel on a treadmill with work at all since the nomination though, I don’t feel I have to go from job to job.

How do you relax?

I don’t actually work that much so I have a lot of time to relax, though I know it always seems to look like I’m working. I stay at home at lot. My daughter goes to school and I always have things to do. I read a lot and I potter, I spend an enormous amount of time daydreaming, I must waste years of my life doing that.

Sometimes I am chewing over ideas, but I don’t know what I am dreaming about. I love to cycle, I cycle everywhere as a mode of transport, and I didn’t have a car until not long ago.

So cycling was just way to travel around. I do have a passion for hill walking; scrambling I go to North Wales quite a lot, I love Snowdonia, I like being outdoors and I love camping. I like walking in London and I really love reading. There is nothing better for me than a rainy day when I am curled up in bed with a book that is very gratifying.

Is it emotionally draining doing so many serious roles?

It does take its toll but what really exhausts me is doing bad scripts, doing good stuff is exciting. Yeah it’s emotional and all that but for God’s sake there are many worse jobs in the world, you could work on a building site all day, that would be very tiring. I am in a very luxurious, privileged position and I am very grateful for that and aware how lucky I am every day. I don’t get too nutty about the industry and just make sure I do things to calm me down like long hikes.

After so many serious, intensely emotional scenes are you ready for a light comedy?

Yes, I am putting it out there in the universe so that somebody will give me a comedy, because I have watched two of my films this week and I thought ‘lighten up baby, 2009 is your light year’ So that is my focus this year.