Thirteen years after starring in Belle, Gugu Mbatha-Raw is again 'fighting for justice' in a new Sky supernatural thriller, Possession. The 43-year-old actress says the film shares 'common themes' with her breakout role as Dido Elizabeth Belle, Britain's first black aristocrat.
In Possession, Mbatha-Raw plays Claudia, a lawyer sent to Jamaica after the descendant of a wealthy plantation owner bequeaths his fortune to a local man no one can trace. She is accompanied by the late aristocrat's son, played by Johnny Lee Miller, who expected the inheritance. As Claudia arrives at the possibly haunted former plantation, her loyalties begin to shift.
Echoes of Belle
Mbatha-Raw notes that Possession takes the story a step further than Belle by bringing it into the present. 'It's not only looking at a romantic piece of history, but it's saying, this is how the history has informed our present day and who is accountable for righting the wrongs of the past?' she says.
She adds: 'They're definitely part of the same lineage in a way, but I think that where Belle was a lady and in a love story, I see Claudia as a warrior in the fight for justice. So very different women, with related themes.'
The supernatural twist
The supernatural element arrives with Bel Powley, who appears as the lady of Hope Hill plantation in the 18th century. The drama weaves between present and colonial past, where the modern-day inheritor is an enslaved man.
Director Storm Saulter stresses the parallel timelines are not flashbacks. 'One of our mantras throughout this process was past is present,' he says. The scenes at Hope Hill, past and present, were shot at a real former plantation house in Jamaica.
'People lived and died in that space for hundreds of years, so I had that consciousness in my mind, and also the story itself,' Saulter explains. 'Visually, I tried to find ways to transition between past and present like you're slipping in, not like ta da da! We're going to the past! No, the past and the present are woven together.'
Visual and audio echoes
Saulter uses visual mirroring, such as matching a character drinking rum in the past with another drinking holy water in the present. 'You could layer the shots on top of each other, and you'd see the exact frames and the exact movement.'
Sound effects like tree frogs and drumming, present in the 1700s, are also used in contemporary scenes. 'It's these subconscious things that tell you this world has been walked in,' he says. 'So everywhere we could find ways to tie the two, we did.'
Possession airs on Sky Atlantic on August 6 at 9pm.
