‘You can’t paper over the cracks of history. It will haunt you’: Gugu Mbatha-Raw on her race-horror thriller

She paved the way for Bridgerton, lit up Black Mirror’s most joyful episode – and now she stars in a grisly supernatural horror about slavery. The Belle star talks about Possession, partying with Prince and why she loves to shake things up

Gugu Mbatha-Raw seems blissfully immune to the heat. London is pushing 40C on one of those heatwave mornings when everyone is wearing the weather: damp collars, flushed faces, hair slicked to foreheads. Arriving at the cafe of the central London hotel where we meet, however, the star looks as if she’s stepped in from an altogether different climate. Dressed in a pristine white linen two-piece, makeup free, hair scraped back, she carries herself with a composure that makes everyone else’s perspiration seem faintly melodramatic.

She is, in every sense of the word, cool. This impression is only reinforced as we settle in for some small talk and she mentions that she’s been to the hotel once before.
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