Speaker 1: You're listening to Later with mo Kelly on demand from
Speaker 1: KFI AM six forty KFI.
Speaker 2: It's Later with mo Kelly. We're live everywhere on the iHeartRadio,
Speaker 2: app Arriving in theaters nationwide this Friday comes to new
Speaker 2: supernatural thriller Sinners, trying to leave their troubled lives behind.
Speaker 2: Twin brothers and World War One veterans, both played by
Speaker 2: Michael B. Jordan, nonetheless returned to their hometown to start again,
Speaker 2: only to discover that an even greater evil is waiting
Speaker 2: to welcome them back. But joining me right now on
Speaker 2: the show is one of the co stars of Sinners,
Speaker 2: actress one Mi Masaku, who you know from siries such
Speaker 2: as Lovecraft, Country Loki and of course her TVA ties
Speaker 2: from Loki carried over to the movie Deadpool and Wolverine.
Speaker 2: One Mi Masaku, A pleasure to meet you. How are
Speaker 2: you this evening?
Speaker 3: I'm good, Thank you? How are you?
Speaker 2: I'm actually tickled because right now I've known you from
Speaker 2: your best works such as Lovecraft, Country Loki and of
Speaker 2: course the movie Deadpool and Wolverine, But I don't think
Speaker 2: i've heard your natural voice until now. You grew up
Speaker 2: in Manchester, England, and I'm always so curious about how
Speaker 2: English actors may hear the so called American accent. What
Speaker 2: do we sound like to you? And how do you
Speaker 2: go about mastering it?
Speaker 3: Oh? Well, I love hearing American accents. I love hearing
Speaker 3: how different they are from from east to west, north
Speaker 3: to south. It's it's a challenge, but we hear so much.
Speaker 3: We get so many of your TV programs when we're
Speaker 3: growing up, so we hear it a lot. And then
Speaker 3: you know, then getting to the specificity of different accents,
Speaker 3: like my character and Sinners, I play someone from Louisiana,
Speaker 3: and you know, I had a dialect coach in Beth
Speaker 3: Maguire who is amazing, and it's it's it's yeah. I
Speaker 3: love doing accent work. And it's interesting because it doesn't
Speaker 3: actually come naturally to me. But with a good teacher,
Speaker 3: I can get it. I can't just listen and repeat,
Speaker 3: but I can someone can break it down the hows
Speaker 3: and the whys and what people are doing with their
Speaker 3: tongue and their mouth and the back of the and
Speaker 3: their soft palette. I find it like an really fun challenge.
Speaker 2: Sinners is, of course a supernatural horror film. Is directed
Speaker 2: by Ryan Coogler. And as I said, my introduction starring
Speaker 2: Michael B. Jordan, tell me more about this story in
Speaker 2: how you as Annie come in?
Speaker 3: So I play Annie? Who is who? Do priestess, a
Speaker 3: conjure woman, a healer? She is powerful and full of
Speaker 3: love and understanding and and and and and she has
Speaker 3: such a groundedness and connectedness with and her ancestry and
Speaker 3: the spirit world. She is smokes other other half. So
Speaker 3: Smoke is played by Michael B. Jordan. He plays Smoke
Speaker 3: and Stack, identical twins. And she is smokes Person soul Tide,
Speaker 3: his safe place and sanctuary. And yeah, she's someone who
Speaker 3: has the intuition and the foresight and knows what's going
Speaker 3: on before most people know what's going on.
Speaker 2: What y'all doing?
Speaker 4: Just step aside and let me hang in now?
Speaker 3: Why you need him to do that? You begining strong
Speaker 3: enough to push basses? What?
Speaker 2: I wouldn't be too polite, now, would it, Miss Hanny.
Speaker 2: I don't know why I'm talking to you anyway, So.
Speaker 1: Don't talk to him.
Speaker 3: You're talking to me right now. Why you can't just
Speaker 3: walk your big ass up in here without an environ?
Speaker 4: Admit to it admit to what that you Dad, you're
Speaker 4: listening to this now? Now we out here playing games,
Speaker 4: telling ghost stories in place of doing what we ought
Speaker 4: to do, and what is it we're supposed to be
Speaker 4: doing being kind to one another, being polite. Now we
Speaker 4: is one people and we shouldn't go in barging into
Speaker 4: other folks places uninvited.
Speaker 2: So we've been in and out of Hill all day.
Speaker 3: They never need an invite. Dean. Yeah, So I ain't
Speaker 3: had no.
Speaker 2: In working with someone like Michael B. Jordan and how
Speaker 2: you are intimately tied. There's a level of intimacy with
Speaker 2: your characters. Tell me about that production process. How much
Speaker 2: rehearsal time might you have with him prior to doing scenes?
Speaker 3: We had two weeks rehearsal. Everyone got spent this time
Speaker 3: kind of getting to know their characters, getting figuring out
Speaker 3: their costume and spending time with Ryan and Michael and
Speaker 3: understanding their history. We had. We had their history kind
Speaker 3: of written out like beat by beat when they met,
Speaker 3: you know, when she moved from Louisiana, when they when
Speaker 3: he went to war, and we spent this time just
Speaker 3: like trying to flesh out their past so that when
Speaker 3: they're reunited after seven years of being apart all that
Speaker 3: history into the room with them, and whether or not
Speaker 3: you see it as an audience, you feel it and yeah,
Speaker 3: so the rehearsal period is really about getting to know
Speaker 3: each other, building that history between us and and building
Speaker 3: trust so that we could we can move freely with
Speaker 3: each other and safely and know like where our where
Speaker 3: our strengths and weaknesses are, and where we need the
Speaker 3: support and the space.
Speaker 2: You know, Sinners is a powerful, powerful horror movie. And
Speaker 2: the horror genre I would say has evolved over the
Speaker 2: years where it was less psychological, less thriller, and more
Speaker 2: bumps and jumps and screens, and this seems a return
Speaker 2: to that. When you were reading the script, I'm quite
Speaker 2: sure it impressed you one way, but after seeing the
Speaker 2: final movie had probably impacted another way. Talk to me
Speaker 2: about the powerful nature of the movie.
Speaker 3: I feel like horror has such a I want to
Speaker 3: say modern horror, but I don't. I don't watch a
Speaker 3: lot of horror, but since like for me get Out,
Speaker 3: horror has been such a powerful tool for for empathy,
Speaker 3: for building empathy with audiences, whether it's you know, someone
Speaker 3: who looks so different from you, what experiences the world
Speaker 3: in a different way from you. The horror, I don't know,
Speaker 3: it triggers all those like instinctive like adrenaline and and
Speaker 3: and anxiety and your sweat glands, and now you feel
Speaker 3: an iota of what it might feel like to be
Speaker 3: that person in that situation. And whether it's an asylum
Speaker 3: seeker in his house or or Daniel callua in in
Speaker 3: Get Out. I feel like horror has a powerful way
Speaker 3: of connecting people who otherwise may not understand the horrors
Speaker 3: of humanity, that that part of humanity. So yeah, I
Speaker 3: think it's a really powerful tool.
Speaker 2: You said something right there. I want to go back
Speaker 2: and get you said you didn't necessarily watch a lot
Speaker 2: of horror. But if I look at your career, you've
Speaker 2: been able to do extensive work in either fantasy, this
Speaker 2: being horror or science fiction. Is that by chance or
Speaker 2: choice that you've been in a world of make believe?
Speaker 2: Let me put it that way.
Speaker 3: I mean, for me, the story, the story the messages
Speaker 3: that are told in these in these projects, whether it's Sinners,
Speaker 3: Lovecraft Country, even in Loki, the story of like a
Speaker 3: Crisis of Faith, the story of of of of of vampires,
Speaker 3: of a vampire, spiritual or actual or uh or or energetically,
Speaker 3: that taking trying to take what you have, your gift,
Speaker 3: your you know, it's the story that matters. It's the
Speaker 3: character journey for me that matters. I feel very lucky
Speaker 3: that I've been in part of projects that really the
Speaker 3: story has moved me. The stories have changed me the
Speaker 3: way I look at the world, the way I interact
Speaker 3: with the world. So yeah, horror is to me. It's
Speaker 3: for me. It always boils down to the story and
Speaker 3: the lessons that I learn and with the way I'm
Speaker 3: challenged in my way of thinking. And it just happens
Speaker 3: to be that some of the most creative ways of
Speaker 3: storytelling have been through horror in the last few years.
Speaker 2: For me, are you someone who is there the first
Speaker 2: night to watch audience reaction to a movie like Sinners,
Speaker 2: to see you on the big screen? Are you someone
Speaker 2: who doesn't ever want to see yourself on the screen
Speaker 2: and doesn't want to critique your own work.
Speaker 3: That's really interesting. I've never done that. I've never gone
Speaker 3: to the cinema on opening night to see the the
Speaker 3: audience response. But my husband was thinking saying the other day,
Speaker 3: maybe we should do that on Friday, and maybe I will.
Speaker 3: I think maybe I will, but it's not. I don't.
Speaker 3: Usually I've never done that before, but with this one,
Speaker 3: it feels like it might be cool to do that.
Speaker 2: I have a feeling you might be right. Centers in
Speaker 2: theaters nationwide. C one be Masaku as Annie. Thank you
Speaker 2: so much for coming on this evening and much success
Speaker 2: for you and the movie.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much.
Speaker 2: It's Later with Moe Kelly CAFI AM six forty. We're
Speaker 2: live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app.
Speaker 1: You're listening to Later with Moe Kelly on demand from
Speaker 1: KFI AM six forty