When she met with McQueen for Small Axe, Wright was prepared to jump through hoops to land the role: “I was like, ‘What’s next? Do you want me to tape? Do you want me to come in for an audition?’ ” The director said he trusted her and cast her then and there. The role appealed to Wright in part because of what it could teach people. “Steve knew that there’s so many young people walking around that don’t know their history,” she says. “They don’t know who was fighting for them.”
Awareness has of course increased after the killing of George Floyd. “We see the pain of our brothers and sisters in America,” says Wright. “What happened with George? It hit us too.” She wants the Black experience in Britain to be highlighted as well. “What we’ve had to endure as Black people in this country.…” She pauses. “You’re an indentured worker. You’re coming from the Caribbean, you’re coming from Africa, you’re trying to make a life here, and you’re helping them to build back up their cities, build back up their roads. And at the same time that you’re helping them, they’re telling you to go back home.”
While making Small Axe, Wright met with the woman she was playing, Jones-LeCointe. “I wanted her approval,” she says. “I just became overwhelmed with honor and gratitude for her because she believed in something. Her and her friends believed in a better future for me. She was like, ‘We gave you a blueprint and you didn’t do anything with it.’ ” That sentiment brought Wright to tears but encouraged her to keep pushing.
“By God’s grace,” she says, “the work that I’ve been doing has been able to be a reflection of what’s really in my spirit, what’s really in my heart. I don’t mind doing a big blockbuster Marvel movie and have it make a billion and then go do theater. Because I know that that story needs me just as much as that Marvel project did, or Black Mirror needs me just as much as that Marvel project did, or Eclipsed needed me just as much as Doctor Who needed me. I just try to be a vessel for each story and tell the truth.”
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