Gugu Mbatha-Raw has seen it all. Throughout nearly two decades in the industry, she’s played an astronaut flung into a parallel universe by a backfiring particle accelerator, a senior citizen who uploads her consciousness to a 1980s queer nightclub utopia in the Cloud, and an anthropomorphic feather duster who falls in love with a candlestick in provincial France. (The Cloverfield Paradox, Black Mirror, and Beauty and the Beast.)
Now, Mbatha-Raw's latest project sees her journey to 21st-century London, where she plays a character with very little idea of who she is at all, really. Season two of Apple TV’s Surface continues the story of Sophie Ellis, who lost her memory following a supposed suicide attempt and in the process of piecing her life back together discovered that the vast majority of it had been a lie. In the show’s sophomore outing, Sophie – armed with £8 million from her husband’s dubiously sourced bank account and a passport bearing her real name, Tess Caldwell – boards a flight to London to investigate her strange link to Britain’s richest family, the Huntleys.
Infiltrating the capital’s elite, the woman Formerly Known As Sophie Ellis is now a ‘London socialite with an open tab at Chanel’, able to bid £25,000 at a gala auction just to catch the eye of the mysterious Eliza Huntley (Millie Brady), whose family may or may not be covering up some involvement in the disappearance of Sophie’s mother. Think paranoia and RP accents, stalking on the Central Line, and a plot threat involving horse riding on the grounds of a Hampshire country house.
It’s a glorious return to the Big Smoke for Mbatha-Raw, who moved to the city in 2001 to train at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. On the side, she worked as a tour guide on the London Eye, quite literally witnessing the highs and lows of London life. Now, Gugu has once again donned her (metaphorical) tour guide hat, taking Square Mile through the landmarks of her career, her passion for painting, and the naked cycle ride that nearly interrupted Surface season two.
There’s a line in season one of Surface where your character Tess says ‘it’s hard not knowing your own secrets.’ As an actor, how do you prepare for a role where the character doesn’t know their own backstory?
It's kind of liberating, actually. It is quite different to the typical way you would build a character in terms of research and backstory. I've played characters that exist in a historical period or are real people, where there's lots of research material that you draw upon as a background.
Obviously, with Sophie having lost her memory in the accident, there's none of that. But what I found quite freeing – certainly in season one, where she is rebuilding her sense of self at home in San Francisco, with her husband and her best friend, rebuilding her inner life, really – is that I had to sort of approach her from a child-like perspective, as you would if you were somewhat innocent or naive to the realities of who you are and of life itself. So, I've kind of really enjoyed the journey of that.
There are moments in season two where she seems very self-assured, and yet she’s having to use a poker face, to not reveal the gaps in her. She's trying to get information out of people, so it's sort of a double bluff in a way. It’s pretty ballsy of her, I think, to go into all those social situations armed with so little knowledge, but as an actor, it gives you lots more to play with in the moment.
In the first episode of the new season, Tess wakes up in a beautiful hotel with £8 million. If you woke up in a beautiful London hotel with £8 million, what’s the first thing you’d do?
Oh my God. Order room service, probably. That hotel, the Regency, as it's called, was modelled on the Savoy. If I were in the actual Savoy, I'd probably order breakfast and have it delivered to me in my pyjamas, run a bath and I'd probably then call the spa.
Photographer: David Reiss | Hair: James Catalano | Make-up: Sara Hill | Stylist: Rachel Davis wearing Erdem
You’ve described London as a character in the show. What kind of co-star is the city?
I would say it's quite a seductive and mysterious co-star. It's got layers, different neighbourhoods and something different around every corner, which is what I really like about it. I think what I love about the deliciously privileged and beautiful, but also dangerous world of Surface is that it’s not period: It's present-day London shown in all its glory. Certainly, with Apple and the access that they have to these locations, I think you get to see a very sweeping side of London that I haven't seen outside of a period drama for a while.
I remember one day because – it’s just one of the nuts things about filming in London – there was some sort of nude bike ride going on down the strand. And when we start that shot, I'm in the back of a taxi and the taxi driver drives Sophie round the corner to the Adelphi Building [on Embankment], where she steps out and thinks she's going into this party and then gets ambushed off to another car. But between takes, there was some crazy nude cycle ride going on down the strand, which was very distracting.
There are so many iconic locations on the show that have been amazing to film at. We were filming in the British Museum for episode one, which is very near to where I went to drama school. Our base camp, where the trailers were, was on Mallet St, which is right around the back of RADA, where I spent three years at drama school. So that was very surreal: to be stepping in and out of a trailer right next door to where you did your training.
It's like a full circle moment, right?
Definitely, definitely. Along the River Thames, where I worked as a tour guide on the London Eye, on their river cruise, so many iconic places. But there are loads of places that I haven't even discovered in London, you know, like Lincoln's Inn and round the back of Fleet Street. So many nooks and crannies in the City of London that you don't often find yourself in unless you're there with a film crew.
From naked cycle rides in central London to filming in a stunning Hampshire country house – did that come with its own unique challenges or privileges?
I was really lucky, I lived in a cottage on the estate while we were filming, which was really special. ‘The Salmon Hut’, it was called. I'd come back from work and there would be deer outside my cabin. It was magical to be immersed in a place like that, acres and acres of land. I think it fitted with the story as well: Sophie is infiltrating this family. Those big country houses are notoriously chilly, a little draughty, not every room in the house is heated. But it was a stunning, stunning location.
Your career really started in the theatre – you’ve played Ophelia opposite Jude Law’s Hamlet and starred as Nell Gwynn. What makes acting on the stage so different to maybe acting on TV?
I love working in theatre, and I think the main difference is the audience. There is an immediacy to theatre, you feel the energy change in the room; you either get a laugh, or a gasp or a round of applause, or you don't. It feels like a communal experience. Making film and television is communal in a different way. It's a delayed, protracted process. You film out of order, and it can take a long time before anybody gets to see it. But it still feels communal in that you have the crew, and you feel a bit more like a travelling circus. The aliveness of theatre... you get little moments of that on set, but they're really broken up with the process of filming, all of the paraphernalia and the technical side of filming, which is much more out of an actor’s hands, really.
You have such an eclectic collection of roles, what is that one thing that attracts you to a part? Or is the eclecticism the point?
I like a challenge, and I think that changes depending on what you've done previously. I like to stretch myself. I don’t like to feel as if I’m getting too settled. I consider myself an artist, you know? And I think, as an artist, you have to keep trying new things, using different muscles. It's such a privilege to do what we do: to pretend, to have the opportunity to play a feather duster or a policewoman, or a period aristocrat. I think for me it’s exploring different sides of myself. I love history. I love anthropology – people, psychology, I find that really interesting. So, there's no real one thing I look for: I just look for something that's a bit of a challenge, maybe a bit scary, or saying something culturally that I think is an interesting conversation to have.
With Surface, it was a great opportunity to be involved as an executive producer alongside Hello Sunshine. Coming on board with them and their ethos for female-driven storytelling and empowering women not just in front of the camera, but behind the camera. That was a big draw for me, because I hadn’t been in that role before.
Did you learn anything about yourself doing that?
It feels like being head girl in my school days. I like being a team leader, that's just always been in my nature. I don't shirk away from that. I think different roles will require different amounts of you. Different characters obviously do, but I think when you are the lead actor, you are also the leading person on the set, and that goes twofold, especially if you have executive access and influence. So, for me, it brought back that leadership energy, which is fun.
What kind of cultural conversations do you hope come out of Surface?
It's really inspiring to see a female driven thriller. Still in this day and age, there aren’t that many of them on TV. To have something that adds optically to the canon of stories that have somebody who has lost their memory at the helm – I've not seen one that stars a woman; I've seen several with a man in the lead. In the thriller and noir genres, I think that’s an interesting contribution. Surface is this glossy privileged luxury world for the most part, but it also deals with themes of power and justice and secrets. And those are such big, sweeping themes. But it’s also about speaking truth to power.
Somebody like Sophie, who is trying to get to the truth of the matter, almost in a journalistic sense or an investigative sense – those kind of stories are always inspiring, whatever times you're in. I think Surface has an escapist element to it – as well as the meat of the story, as well as her trying to find truth and justice for her mother – I think that there’s the world of London high society, the opulence of that world. So, I think as well as discussing those themes, I think it's also just a really delicious, twisty-turney, hopefully enjoyable watch!
Early on in your career, you made a decision between being an actor and being a painter. Do you notice any similarities between the two art forms?
I love portrait painting. I got back into portrait painting in, in the pandemic. And I think as an actor you’re still painting a portrait of somebody, it's just it's not with a paintbrush, it's with your whole physicality. There are definitely similarities in terms of putting your energy into a story or into a visual story.
When I was doing my art A-level, when I was making these kind of choices, I felt like acting brought me out of myself more, and was more collaborative, whereas art I could do by myself – I thought it would bring me into myself and that might make for a less collaborative, social life. I thought it would be more of a stretch for me to do acting, because... it just gives you the heebie jeebies a bit more! I felt like at the time it needed a little bit more nerve. It's been hard for me to keep up both at the same intensity because I think any artist is all or nothing.
What was interesting in the pandemic, when I wasn't able to act, was that I sort of sprung a leak creatively. My creative energies needed to escape somewhere, and it escaped back into painting. When you're doing a film or TV show, schedule-wise, it's very difficult to find the bandwidth. But I feel really grateful that it will always be there for me if acting is not, and hopefully vice versa.
I do think they're very connected, and it's been lovely with Surface as the through line in season one with the art world, and the [John Everett Millais] Ophelia painting that sort of inspired that whole trip... I hadn’t even told Veronica, our show runner, but that’s been my favourite painting since I was about 12. I used to go and look at that painting in the Tate. So it's kind of surreal that she wrote that into the show without me even mentioning it.
Another full circle moment.
Another full circle moment. Spooky. In season two of Surface, when Sophie breaks into William’s house and looks up at one of the paintings on the wall, it’s a black servant giving status up to their white counterpart in the historical painting. We flipped that narrative with Belle, the painting of Dido Elizabeth Bell, where those two characters seemingly had more equal status in the painting. I love when art can be brought in and the two worlds intersect, I mean, it's all just an expression, it's just a different art form.
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Does one role stick out as particularly challenging to you?
I was just reviewing some images of a project that I did last year that was really challenging. It's not out yet, so I probably shouldn't talk about it! I think everything is challenging in different ways. You can be challenged by the material, by the subject matter, or you can be challenged by the process. Sometimes the hours of the day or the process are lengthy. When I did Lift [Netflix’s 2024 heist film with Kevin Hart], we had really long fight scenes on a moving aeroplane, a real physical challenge.
With Surface, it was very challenging because we had a five-month writers’ strike in the middle of production. That was challenging in terms of ‘are we going to be able to pick up momentum? Is the show going to be able to be finished?’ I think there are challenges in terms of the role itself, but sometimes, the world is challenging! Sometimes just being able to finish your art is a privilege.
Is there one piece of advice that another actor has given you that's particularly stuck with you throughout your career?
I always feel like people don't often give advice, but I always absorb when people lead by example. It's rare that anyone has pulled me aside and be like: ‘hey, let me tell you a little something...’ I think it's more that you see how people operate in certain scenarios, and what's successful, and how people carry themselves. I've been constantly inspired by the producers at Hello Sunshine, for example. Like Lauren Neustadter, who runs Hello Sunshine alongside Reese Witherspoon, her energy and clarity and passion for the material, her leadership is really inspiring. It’s not advice, I think people just lead by example.
As I'm sure you're doing for other actors, I'm sure they really appreciate working with you as well.
Oh, well, who knows? I hope so. That would be lovely.
Surface is out now on Apple TV
