When Nikki Amuka-Bird started work on Old, the latest film from Hollywood supernatural-loving director M Night Shyamalan, she knew it was going to be special. It was the summer of 2020, and production on films and television had tentatively started up again. She flew to the Dominican Republic with an international cast, during hurricane season, to shoot the story of a group of people on holiday on a secluded island, who suddenly start to age at a rapid rate. I was not able to see it before we met, but it turns out that Amuka-Bird hadn’t watched it yet, either. The director of The Sixth Sense and Signs — Night, as she calls him, fondly — works on his films right up until the last minute and the mystery is all part of the fun. What she can tell me, though, is that it turned out to be far more than a run-of-the-mill acting job.
"It was the most incredible experience," Amuka-Bird says, "on many levels." She is on a break from filming the Netflix adaptation of Jane Austen’s Persuasion and at home, briefly, in London.
"Just an incredible coincidence," she smiles. "I obviously thought, it’s a sign from Mum. But also the themes of grief and losing loved ones, it just felt like something I could channel all of that experience I’d had over the past few years into."
At 45, the Nigerian-born Amuka-Bird is now a familiar face on the British stage and screen. At school, she thought she might want to be a dancer, but she had a problem with a back injury.
"I knew that with dance you had to be committed in a certain way, and injury is a part of it, and I hit a crossroads."
She took the acting path instead, and at a different school an inspirational teacher cast her as a worm in a production of James and the Giant Peach. Even as an annelid, she knew this was what she wanted to do forever.
For the past few years, she has carved out a line in quietly authoritarian characters, the kind of women who work hard and take no nonsense from anyone. You might have seen her in Survivors, the BBC’s 2009 drama about a flu pandemic running rampant across the planet; she played an ambitious young politician who ended up in charge of the country.
"Oh my God, yes! I hadn’t thought about Survivors in so long. And here we are, many years later, looking at a pandemic, and the fear that comes up with that, and how we look to our leaders for answers, and how a lot of the times they don’t necessarily have those answers."
Or perhaps you caught her in Luther, as DCI Erin Gray, Idris Elba’s colleague-turned-nemesis.
"The character didn’t start that way," she reminds me. "She was just a keen rookie. Idris is one of my — one of many people’s — heroes, and I was quite worried at the time, especially as a Black woman, going up against him."
She wondered how people would react to the relationship once it aired.
"But people responded well. As much as we love Luther, he’s also a wildcard. And so they saw her standing up against him as an interesting show of strength from a woman."
She says that on set Elba was an inspiration, and gave her confidence.
"He’s somebody you feel like you’re getting in the ring with, someone you need to keep up with. He moves at such a pace. It was exciting."
But it was NW, the BBC’s 2017 adaptation of the Zadie Smith novel, that changed the game for her. She starred as Natalie Blake, a high-flyer who lives a kind of double life, and won a Bafta nomination for the best actress award.
"To put it simply, it’s a leading role for women like myself, specifically — a dark-skinned woman with many layers," she says. "Zadie wrote something really profound in that. It was about the experience of being a woman of colour, but it expanded in a way that was unpredictable, that looked at her sexuality. That’s a rare opportunity for actresses like myself. It was a really tasty meal, and a challenge."
The experience of playing Natalie reminded her of her mother’s journey, "in terms of the cost, mentally, it takes to fight for what you deserve in this world". She adds: "Women of my mum’s generation, and then mine, were always taught that you have to work twice as hard for half as much."
Amuka-Bird has been busier than ever over the past 18 months. One of the many projects she currently has on the go is Avenue 5, Armando Ianucci’s space comedy, in which she plays the head of mission control for a space tourism company. She previously worked with Ianucci on his film adaptation of David Copperfield, playing Mrs Steerforth. The film was cast colour-blind. Amuka-Bird first encountered this approach when she started out at the RSC, in the early 2000s.
"That was a real moment where the idea of colour-blind casting was really being celebrated," she says. "But I think what I found, as a young actor, was that I was leaving a bit of my culture behind."
Now, she sees it slightly differently.
"I see it as being more like colour-enhancing than being colour-blind. I don’t want to think of the idea that my colour is something that is not needed in this situation. My experience as a human being is also defined by my experience as a Black woman in the West. I’ve learned how to use every part of myself, even in situations where there might not have been a woman who looked like me at that time in history."
Amuka-Bird is about to head back to Bath, to resume filming Persuasion, directed by Carrie Cracknell and starring Dakota Johnson.
"It is just so much fun. I hadn’t factored that in, but going to Bath, going to Salisbury, being pulled by horses, wearing the dresses, the little girl in me is having a full ‘Cinderella, you can go to the ball’ moment." She laughs, heartily. "There are times when you realise, you are just allowed to enjoy yourself. You’ve done all of the work, and now you can just really play." — Guardian News and Media
