But that’s not all. Wunmi also starred opposite Idris Elba in Luther and portrayed B-15 in the Loki TV series and Deadpool & Wolverine. Her first role was in 2009 BBC2 drama Moses Jones, and eight years later her performance as Gloria in Damilola, Our Loved Boy, the mother of a ten-year-old boy named Damilola who was stabbed to death on a London estate in 2000, won her a BAFTA in 2017, making her the second Black woman to win a BAFA in the history of the awards. Wunmi also appeared in Netflix’s Black Mirror episode Playtest, The End of the F***ing World and ITV series Vera.
She has spoken out recently about the integral importance of inclusive representation on screen, in particular ensuring that more than one type of woman is cast and viewed as a love interest.
“It’s important that everyone feels represented, and it can’t be that only a certain type of woman is seen as a love interest in films,” she said. “We all need representation no matter what our gender, sexual orientation, or physical-mental ability is. I just feel like everybody deserves to see themselves loved, challenged, and accepted as a hero and as a villain. I want to see all of us represented.”
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Where is Wunmi Mosaku from?
The actor was born in Nigeria and emigrated to Manchester when she was a one year old. She graduated from drama school RADA in 2007.
She has talked about struggling at school, and her parents being told to not speak Yaruba at home. “It was because of… I’m gonna say racism,” she said in an interview. “All my Nigerian friends had the same thing, but none of my French or Lithuanian friends were told to stop speaking their mother tongue at home. It happened when I was five: I was diagnosed as dyslexic at 18.”