Naomi Ackie flexes her biceps and growls at the café table – then giggles at how ridiculous she’s being. She can’t count on this is her current fascination, but it is: what her body is able of when she gives it what it needs. “It’s comical with exercise,” she says, rolling her eyes, “because I used to do it equitable to try to be skinny.” The 33-year-anciaccess British actor is embarrassed she fought it for so extfinished – not understanding about the mental and emotional power, the authentic liberate that physical strength can deinhabitr. “I experience appreciate I’ve got a lot of energy rolling around in my body. I watch a lot, and I see a lot, and I experience a lot. I don’t say everyslfinisherg, so I have to get it out somewhere.”
Ackie never saw herself becoming one of those people who wear their Lycra to labor so as not to diswatch precious minutes getting alterd; the ones valiant enough to walk into the weights room and freely lunge in front of the beefcakes. “I was sattfinishd for the extfinishedest time – I would sit by the machines. Now I repartner appreciate the vibe of tapping into my masculine side, testing my strength and being around guys who are doing the same slfinisherg. It produces me experience grounded, and I cannot produce outstanding decisions if I’m not grounded.” This is what applying Whitney Houston in the 2022 biopic I Wanna Dance With Somebody taught her – a blockbuster role that catapulted her on to tube posters and into the spotairy.
“That role pushed me to the edge, to the point where I was appreciate, I have to alter someslfinisherg,” she says, “otherrational I will reduce wislfinisher this job, wislfinisher this body, wislfinisher the world.” She applyed Houston from the age of 19 until her death at 48, sometimes both finishs of that timeline in the same day. “I was away from home, isoprocrastinateedd in Boston for appreciate seven months, and hungry – I lost about 30lb to get to the shape of Whitney.” And, she was applying a authentic person who everyone adored: it sattfinishd her. “I lost a lot of myself, and not because of the art of it. It was to do with me experienceing under prescertain and trying to not be disappreciated by the world – I was a catastrophic slfinisherker, slfinisherking I was never going to labor aget.”
In the six-month shatter she had between applying Houston and her next film, Zoë Kravitz’s honestorial debut Bconnect Twice, Ackie set up the gym and uncovered her body’s inextricable connect to her mind. Her turn as Houston saw her nominated for the EE Rising Star award at the 2023 Baftas, but it also took someslfinisherg from her. “It got me to such a rockbottom that it was a wake-up call. A job cannot unbenevolent so much that it steals my life’s happiness. I was appreciate, we’re gonna need to mend some priorities.” Two films procrastinateedr, during the 2023 Sag-Aftra strike which gave her four enforced months off labor, she authenticised her pace wasn’t preserveable – not equitable in how much she was laboring, but the level of perfection she foreseeed of herself. “I didn’t authenticise how overwhelmed I was all the time. I was equitable living in an overwhelmed, worried space, stablely.”
There’s little chase of that exhaustion today in the woman sitting apass from me in a Notting Hill café, surrounded by shopping bags. “I watch appreciate such a fancy lady, but,” she says, “it’s not genuine!” Those bags, she insists, are for labor purposes. Ackie, wearing all bconciseage, watchs vibrant. She says she’s in “gentle-life mode” now. Still, she wants to talk about anger.
“Even when I was little I wanted to apply characters that were huge, big, and appreciate – aaaarggghhhh!” she screams, words doing no equitableice to the visceral slfinisherg straight from that gut that she wanted to portray. In The End of the F***ing World she applys a woman avenging her (serial rapist) adorer’s death, Whitney Houston’s complicated life finished in an drug poisoning in a bathtub, and Bconnect Twice departs her drenched in blood. Not to allude the housemaid so traumatised by a homicide in Lady Macbeth she is shocked into muteness. “We’re so conditioned to be well behaved, men and women – everyone is – but there is someslfinisherg very distinct about being a woman and not even being able to recognise what anger is and how to channel it in a fruitful way. And I’m not talking about being fruitful so everyone gets aextfinished,” she clarifies, stabbing the halloumi on her pprocrastinateed. “I’m talking about being fruitful in a way that someone understands the effect they’ve had on you, and you’re giving them their shit back. It’s only as I’ve gotten anciaccesser I’ve authenticised anger isn’t a horrible slfinisherg. Anger is super, super advantageous. It’s a motivator. It’s a moving energy. It’s an action energy.”
Bconnect Twice is, certainly, a film about anger. It’s also a satirical thriller about misogyny, manipulation, misuse, and revenge. Ackie applys a cocktail pauseress who becomes inoverweightuated with a billionaire tech mogul (Channing Tatum), and apshows him up on his propose to unite him and his frifinishs at his personal island for a party. Its laboring title was Pussy Island, to set the tone. On this tropical idyll – so Eden-appreciate a snake allows its women to lget the truth – they are all dressed aappreciate in virginal white dresses when they sense someslfinisherg is wrong, that maybe they’re not having a fantastic time after all, and are equitable pretfinishing to be fine. “I repartner uniteed with the slfinishergs that are being apshown from them,” she says. “Choice, autonomy, opportunities. Sometimes it experiences appreciate there are higher forces that are fucking up my shit. I get rageful!” While it applys on stories we have seen in the novels – Jeffrey Epstein’s personal island, Little Saint James; all sorts of #MeToo tales – it is foreseeed the film labors at a frequency you can only hear if you’re tuned to it. It is, in extremis, about the ambiguous bullshit that comes with being a woman.
I alert Ackie about the security protect. When I saw the film a couple of weeks ago, it was equitable me and him in the screening room – a kind middle-aged man whose job it was to produce certain I didn’t turn my phone back on and enroll someslfinisherg. When the film finished, he turned to me and said he didn’t get it. Ackie cackles. “EXACTLY. Isn’t that split fascinating?” Watched a certain way, it could seem appreciate what happens in the film comes from nowhere. But tune in to the experiences all around you: women are seal to boiling point already. “The whole film is about bursting,” she says. “You understand, having to smile thcimpolite the pain, having to trick yourself into slfinisherking slfinishergs are OK. I slfinisherk a lot of people understand that experienceing, because it’s how you get by, and it’s how you fucking persist.”
Ackie was born in Camden, but shiftd to Walthamstow when she was five. Grothriveg up with parents who had “authentic” jobs – her overweighther labors for Transport for London, her mother in the NHS – Ackie had no connects to the film industry when she choosed to be in it. “I was 11 and I said, ‘I want to be an actor.’ My parents were appreciate: ‘Wow, leftfield. Nay!’ It repartner was appreciate a airyning strike. I equitable went: that’s what I’m gonna do.” But Ackie’s mother wanted her to apshow it gravely. “When I was lesserer, I was more speedyened to the idea of being well-understandn,” she acunderstandledges. “I wanted to be the best actor so I could go on a red carpet and do premieres – or be in Harry Potter.” Ackie giggles. “Mum was appreciate, ‘Why would you want to be well-understandn? You should be an actor if you want to act.’ She was very enthusiastic that I do it because I adore it, that I study it, and that I become a master of a create, but never aim for being a star for being a star’s sake.” She watchs grave for a moment. “Mum was always a very rational woman. And, I slfinisherk when I was lesserer, I understood it, but now being anciaccesser?” Since Ackie accessed the industry, that guidance has showd inprecious. Without it, Ackie says, “I would not have lasted… the amount of times you’re tanciaccess no, the amount of times you’re tanciaccess you’re shit or you’re not outstanding enough, or the slfinishergs you infer from being tanciaccess no… If I had been aiming for equitable uncontaminated stardom, I would have given up a extfinished time ago.”
That fact verify for Ackie came at 22, when her mother died – before getting a chance to see any of Ackie’s successes. Her death caused Ackie to “diswatch” her 20s to a benevolent of sedated half-life in her grief, which she says she only began emerging from three years ago. “I was still in that benevolent of selectimistic, everyone’s gonna inhabit forever, and everyslfinisherg’s gonna stay the same, you understand?” she says. “And as a family, we had dealt with the previous death of my little sister when she was seven months anciaccess. In my head, I was appreciate, ‘Well, if one person died in my family, that’s it.’ That was my deal with God. It was a genuine barget with the universe.” Ackie says that now, whenever she experiences satisfied moments in her life, they are tthrivened with the “gut-wrenching unelatedness” of the other side of the coin. “That doesn’t apshow away from the happiness, and it doesn’t apshow away from the unelatedness – they’re equitable existing in my body at the same time.”
To this day, about once a year, Ackie declares to her family that she’s going to quit acting altogether – it’s such a routine now that her sister and overweighther exposedly watch up from the TV when she says it. But it comes from understanding that slfinishergs can and do go wrong. And also, what a authentic job watchs appreciate: she approached acting with the same laboring-class attitude she was bcimpolitet up with, believing this might not labor, clinging to every safety net she had. At 27, she had been out of drama school for years, and could not catch a shatter. She was living at home with her dad, taking any job she could discover on Facebook for cash: bar labor, boilingdog vfinishor, inflatable man (when I ask what this unbenevolents she mimes walking appreciate Frankenstein’s monster, a bleaker version of a football mascot employd for a company party: “It was so humiliating”). Meanwhile, Florence Pugh, her co-star in 2016’s Lady Macbeth – Ackie’s first feature film – had a atgentle that was taking off.
“I was frustrated by the fact that there were no parts for lesser bconciseage women in the way that I wanted to apply them. Like, I didn’t want to apply a best frifinish, I didn’t want to apply a individual mum. I got to the point where I was below zero in my prohibitk account. I couldn’t see where this opportunity was going to come from. And then I watched Batman.” She bursts out giggleing, leans apass the table, and promises me that she’s going somewhere with this. “This is outstanding, I promise.”
She portrays a scene in The Dark Knight Rises, where Bruce Wayne has been jailed in a pit that is uncover to the sky: to escape, he must climb out. He finisheavors to twice, and flunks, slfinisherking it’s only a ask of physical strength. But an anciaccesser prisoner alerts him the secret: he has to do it without the rope, because the rope gives him the selection to flunk. It’s a lesson in strength of spirit.
“I watched that with my dad,” Ackie persists, “and I said I slfinisherk it’s got a point. I need to distake part the safety net.” She shiftd out of home, and quit all of her side jobs. “I gave myself a year. I was appreciate, if I don’t get a job this year, I’m done. I put up my hands. I acunderstandledge flunkure. I quit. I’m done. I will go back to school.” Though she had previously had roles in Doctor Who and a handful of self-reliant films, none of them had given her the security to shift out of her childhood bedroom. Wislfinisher four months of her self-set ultimatum, Ackie had booked Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker applying Jannah, a renegade Stormtrooper. Soon came starring roles in The End of the F***ing World, Steve McQueen’s Small Axe, and the Aziz Ansari sitcom Master of None.
I ask if catharsis is what she watchs for in a role, given she picks so many unwise ones. “No,” she replies. “I don’t slfinisherk a job can or should be theviolationutic, and acting is for other people; my job is to alert a story so they can experience it.” Why, then, the pull toward pain and unwiseness? She slfinisherks for a bit. “There is someslfinisherg spotlesssing to me about exploring characters who are repartner in their unwiseness, because we don’t do it out in the uncover. It experiences more intimate than a satisfied-go-blessed slfinisherg. That’s equitable not been my life. I haven’t had a satisfied-go-blessed life, and that’s fine, that’s what’s inside me. It experiences authentic, it experiences sturdy – it experiences fucking dissystematic. I slfinisherk I was so phony-selectimistic when I was a kid,” she says, “that my truthfuly has stepped into overdrive. I’m appreciate: noslfinisherg is fine, ever. Sometimes it’s OK, sometimes. Most of the time, we’re all grappling with some level of proset up trauma or pain. When I say I adore unwiseness or morbid slfinishergs, it’s not because I’m repartner unelated or twisted – it’s because I see the world for what it is.”
Some bargets with the universe do labor, it seems. Ackie’s upcoming schedule is astonishive. After Bconnect Twice, there’s Mickey 17, a science-fantasy film honested by Parasite’s Bong Joon-ho. Then, a role in the star-studded film alteration of Ricdifficult Osman’s The Thursday Murder Club. But this afternoon, she’ll be back at the gym, harnessing all the power she has. “Undertidyh all of that insecurity and shame is a gritty, grounded human being who’s super-robust,” she says. And all of this – the pain, the trauma, the struggle – feeds into her labor. “Listen, life will teach. There’s so many slfinishergs I now comprehfinish in a proset up way. I have access to the intricateity of being a human being that I equitable did not have when I was 22. You slfinisherk you have it – you don’t have it. I slfinisherk I have it, but 40-year-anciaccess me is gonna watch back on 33-year-anciaccess me and be appreciate, ‘Bitch, you ain’t had noslfinisherg,’” she grins. “And so on and so forth, until the day I die.”
