As Sinners sets a course to bring genre into awards season, actress Wunmi Mosaku and Oscar-winning costume designer Ruth E. Carter, a frequent Ryan Coogler collaborator, discussed amplifying the filmmaker’s vision through aesthetic and decorative choices.
Mosaku’s character, Annie, plays a pivotal role in the fight to vanquish the vampire invasion of her town; she’s determined to protect those she loves, especially her estranged partner Smoke (Michael B. Jordan). Using her Hoodoo practice and deep ancestral magic, Annie is the film’s MVP, supporting the brawn and violence of twin brothers Smoke and Stack’s defense against undead supernatural supremacy in the South.
Carter shared with Deadline how Annie’s strength, as described in Coogler’s screenplay, was a key inspiration in crafting looks for the character. “The whole vision in mind is starting with the script … Someone like Annie, who is a root worker—she is a person who is a community hub. People during that time needed someone like her in the community because she was the healer, and they didn’t go to the doctor.”
Carter’s work deeply influenced Mosaku’s take on the character; seeing the designer at work was like “watching an alchemist,” Mosaku said. “Every time I stepped into [Carter’s] studio, Annie became more and more real to me, and she became more and more tangible.”
Annie’s role in her community was always at the forefront, Carter emphasized. “You have to know what lives on the clothes; there’s all this representation in the clothing, and for someone like Annie, we connect to what she needs to survive and how it lives in the clothing.”
She added, “We looked at these root workers in cinema… and how it’s represented. We’ve seen that; we’ve done that.”
Making Annie her own version of what could have been a familiar character type was important. “We were talking about a headtie at one point, almost like presenting this Hoodoo queen,” Mosaku added. “But then when we took the head wrap off, it was like, ‘Oh, this is who she is.'”
“It was very important to not make her this saint but to make her a spiritual force, a feminine woman, a mothering soul, but also independent,” Carter said. “Let’s make her a real woman and make it about empowering the women in our lives, the strong women who nurture the community, and not such a mystical character that is so far away from us being able to relate to her.”
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