The amazingly talented Letitia Wright is back on our screens with a new film Surrounded, featuring the late great Michael K. Williams. This is the final film he starred in before his unfortunate passing.
Surrounded is set five years after the civil war in America as a newly freedwoman and former Buffalo soldier travels west in search of a gold mine. It's not the safest environment for a lone Black woman to travel in, but Letitia's character, Moses Washington, makes it a journey that you'll never forget.
We had the great opportunity to sit down with Letitia Wright to discuss her upcoming role:
So last time we chatted, I was grilling you on your Nigerian accent, your Pidgin accent! And in this film, you have a Southern American accent. When going from project to project, do you ever get nervous about having to completely change the way that you speak again?
Yes, you do. Any artist who takes up the beautiful career of acting, portraying other people; you do get nervous but you try to equip yourself with a good team and try to just work as hard as possible to pull it off. But yeah, you do get nervous.
Was there anything that you watched, maybe some old-timey Western films that you were like, "OK, this is what I'm going to use" to try to formulate your accent?
That's a really good question, and I'll be super honest with you, I mainly just worked with my accent coach; she predominantly works with us on Black Panther as well. She's really equipped in her knowledge of accents, especially for the United States. So I predominantly just stayed in the pocket of anything she was sending me. She would send me rips of old-school interviews or recordings of that time, which is really hard to find as well. It was just based on her knowledge of what she knew, so I would really focus on what she was teaching me.
I didn't want to impersonate another actor's portrayal of the accent, I only went to real people and real sources. It would be like anything that you can grab from that time of real people connecting on screen that she would grab and make a list of voice memos and recordings for me. I would just regurgitate that and keep practising it as much as possible.
OK, so that goes into the process of preparing for this role, but I also saw that you were listed as a producer and while this isn't your first producing credit because you've had your short film and Silent Twins, this is a completely different terrain. So how do you prepare differently as a producer in this role in comparison to your acting?
Funnily enough, this is the last film that's coming out of the series of films that I've done in the last three years, but this was actually the first film I did. I did this film in September of 2020, and then everything came after that. So this was my first time stepping onto a project as a producer and it was a really new experience for me. The way I handled it was to basically just give my knowledge and my opinions on who the HODs (Head of Departments) would be. A lot of script work just trying to work with the team and make it as real as possible. So that was really how I handled myself as a producer on this project, which was my first experience and then after that it was Silent Twins. I understood a little bit more about the process then, but I was even more involved in Silent Twins than in the other experiences that I've had prior.
So do you think you'll dabble more into producing in the future then?
Oh, 100% yes.
I actually recently saw you at City Splash and you were looking so carefree! I feel like you're in a phase of your life where you seem happier, more relaxed, like you're walking in a new stride. So I wanted to ask how you're feeling. You've been through a lot – there's been a lot of ups and downs, and you've been attached to projects where tragedies have happened, but I wanted to ask, how is Tish? How is Tish doing?
So what is it that you're most excited to do this year? We know you've got acting projects, but what have you got planned that you can't wait to do?
Honestly, travelling. I know it sounds like not that great or fun of an answer, but travelling and reading the books that I've been delaying for like 23 years. I've gone through so many books in the first quarter of the year, I'm really impressed with myself! And just self-care, being better with my friends and the people that I love the most, I'm excited about those things.
And finally, I have to ask. This role is intense and to be honest, the way that you were fighting is kind of how I wished you beat up Namor in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, but it seems like you saved that fighting spirit for this role. How was it getting into that dark headspace?
Well Namor was actually after Surrounded so I put all my fury on our beautiful counterpart and co-leader Jamie Bell, he got a lot of things from me. It was like in every role that I play, I try to tap into what that character's feeling. Simply put: this character has a dream and a desire for herself and there's someone that's blocking that, there's someone that's interfering with her dreams, and what do you do when your life is in danger? You're in the middle of nowhere and all you have to do is defend yourself and think 10 steps ahead of everybody else.
I always just go straight to the script, straight to what I feel the character's feeling and try to allow that to flow through me. Obviously, if you're being provoked by your co-lead and he's doing it really well, naturally those things will come up. I just always try to find the truth in every scene and everything that I do.