Interview: Wunmi Mosaku on Finding the Grounded Spirituality of Annie in Ryan Coogler’s Emotionally Charged Vampire Epic ‘Sinners’

The wildly tight tonal balance of Ryan Coogler’s surprise 2025 hit Sinners, the 1930s-set Southern period drama turned survive-the-night pulpy vampire genre thriller, is not only a core component of the film’s story’s structural integrity—it’s something imbued within the rich inner lives of the film’s characters. Take Sammie (Miles Caton), the blues-playing younger cousin of Smoke and Stack (Michael B. Jordan), who is torn between his art and his father’s religious haranguing, and who also has deep supernatural power rupturing through his strings. Similarly, take Remmick (Jack O’Connell), whose demon-like vampiric bloodlust and cultural pilfering sit in contrast against his own identity and troubled history as an Irish immigrant. 

But the character with the most pronounced sense of spiritual tragedy and connection to the film’s thriller persona, who acts as a guide for the characters and the audience through the introduction of the film’s supernatural elements, is Annie, played with warmth, sorrow, and strength by Wunmi Mosaku. Mosaku, known for her appearances as Hunter B-15 in within the extended Marvel universe as well as roles in UK drama series such as Moses Jones and Vera, has the palpable challenge of personifying the dynamic mood of Sinners: on a dime she must convey the mournful backstory of her relationship with her husband Smoke, and as the ensemble’s spiritualist she must carry the torch of helping introduce the story’s eventual turn towards horror, relaying the rules of classic vampire lore while remaining grounded within the tangible reality of Sinners’ world. 

Through her performance, Mosaku helps the film to straddle the threshold between the emotional and the horrifying, and between reality and the mystic. It’s a role that speaks to the careful, meticulous construction of the individual pieces that allows Sinners to succeed with its motley of genres, themes, modes, moods, and the fluidity of its general tonal makeup. Even when Sinners eventually moves fully into midnight movie territory, the weight of a character such as Annie never wavers—Mosaku deepens the identifiable humanity of her role even as everything explodes into hellfire. 

I had the opportunity to sit down with Mosaku to talk about Sinners being the movie event of the year, what it’s like collaborating with Ryan Coogler, and anchoring a realistic performance within a film of such varied tonal personas. 

Trace Sauveur: Congratulations on the continued success of Sinners. Obviously, it’s one of the biggest unambiguously successful movies this year. It can be hard to have a film from the front half of the year carry that momentum all the way into the back half for awards season and be as big a box office success as it was. What has the journey been like, specifically since seeing that huge reaction and seeing that energy that it’s carried all the way through now, here in November?

Wunmi Mosaku: It’s overwhelming. It’s wild. This feels like a new thing for me. I’ve been in this industry for 20 years, and this feels new because I’ve never been in anything quite like it, and the love it’s received, the way it’s made people feel, and the way it’s made me feel. It feels new. 

TS: I feel like genre movies have become a bit more reliable as theatrical releases compared to some other genres. But even in that regard, Sinners really blew away expectations. The one movie people in my personal life have asked me about all year is Sinners. What do you think it is that is drawing people in at such a capacity like that, where they’re just so enthusiastic? 

WM: I feel like it’s just a perfect movie. Like Ryan said, he wanted to deliver a 3-course meal, and you feel fed, satiated, and like it is complete. It’s not like it needs a trilogy. It’s full, it’s enough, it’s done. And I think the sense of community, the joy in it, the love stories. The music. There’s a lot that keeps you there, and it keeps you hopeful. And then you have this horror element that just makes you like… It’s not just horror; it makes you think. It makes you think about capitalism. It makes you think about freedom. It makes you think about the cost of freedom. It makes you think about cultural appropriation.
It makes you think about who you’re letting into your life, and there are so many layers to it. And then it’s just like a beautiful love story between two brothers, a love story between two brothers and their women, a love story between two brothers and their cousin, a love story between this cousin and his love of music and his faith and the boxes that he’s trying to fight out of. And it just feels like there’s so much truth and honesty and love and community and questions, and it just feels rich.I think that’s it.
Like, it’s not just boring. Empty. It’s not horror for horror’s sake.
It really pushes you. 

TS: Your introductory scene with Michael as Smoke, it kind of pulls off this magic trick that movies can do sometimes, where the scene has so much tangible history between it, even though we’ve only seen these characters on screen together for five minutes at most, and we’ve just been introduced to Annie.
How much of that relationship between Annie and Smoke was on the page for you and Michael B. Jordan? Did you two or you guys and Ryan have any conversations about the history there to flesh out that relationship?

WM: To me, it was all there on the page. Like, you know how deeply they love each other. You know how deeply they’re grieving. You know he believes fully in power and money and capitalism, and she’s like, “all I care about is my spiritual journey and integrity and the community that I serve.” You understand that she and Stack aren’t really in sync, you learn where she’s from in Louisiana, and her grandmother, who taught her everything. You know how the community turns to her; you know she’s not just a shop owner. It’s all actually there. But yes, we did write a backstory of just a timeline. When they met, when they had their daughter, when they lost their daughter, when he went to war, when he came back from war, when they went to Chicago. I knew those things. We have our first, middle, and last names. We have our daughter’s first, middle, and last name. Like, we have that, but we didn’t dwell on it. We just had it. So we knew where and how they met. 

TS: The movie is operating in this dichotomy of being this epic period character drama pressed up against the pulpier vampire elements. And I think Annie specifically represents two sides of that coin in some capacity because you’re playing the spiritualist of what ends up being this whole congregation of people fighting for their lives at the Juke Joint. And so you get the honor of acting with respect to all the classic vampire lore that you’re kind of teaching to all the other characters and the audience. Can you talk about how you stay grounded as an actor when the tone is shifting so dramatically throughout the movie? 


WM: The school of acting I’ve been taught is to just believe. To be as truthful as possible. And that’s all I could do, and that was the choice I made. You know, everyone else is panicking, and Annie is like, “we just don’t let them in. You know, we just hold up till sunrise. You have to let go. You gotta take Stack out. You’ve got to leave Bo out there. We’ll deal with it, and we’ll see what we have to deal with in the morning.” She was just the rational one. She had to be the steady rock. 


TS: You mentioned this aspect of just believing in the world, and I feel like that’s really easy when you’re working with someone like Ryan Coogler. It seems like every single interview I’ve ever seen of anyone that’s worked with Ryan is just all about how great and open a collaborator he is. Can you speak more about the creative process of working with Ryan? 

WM: You know, Miles [Caton] said it yesterday. Ryan has all this pressure on his shoulders. He’s got this big budget, this massive cast, huge crew, Louisiana weather, but he still finds the time to get to you personally and give you your note. Gently. He might whisper it into your ear. It feels very real and personal. He wants to hear every thought and idea you have. It’s such a different way of working. A lot of directors, you know, you can feel the pressure and the stress and the time crunch, but he’s just… He’s methodical, and he won’t be rushed. He will find time to give you the note and get the shot right. He cares about getting what’s best in the moment. He gives you just so much respect, he wants to hit all your ideas, and he makes you feel like you’re the head of your own department. He makes you feel like you’re guiding it, even though he is absolutely our leader. But he makes you feel empowered—bolder and braver. He makes you feel like you know what you’re doing. 

TS: I feel like that really comes through on screen, and I feel like that extra agency helps with the kind of crazy tonal tightrope that this movie is walking across that is informed by Ryan as the director, but also you guys as performers who have to navigate it. 
To that degree, it’s a role that really lets you move between just so many dynamic moments as an actor. What did playing Annie reveal to you about yourself as a performer? 

WM: I learned that I need to trust myself more, be bolder, and stop asking for permission and just do. I felt my fears, and I was allowed to move through them.
I was encouraged to move through them. And I’m not sure if I fully moved through them with Annie, but I feel like I am moving through them more and more every day, as an artist, as a mom, as a person. That’s what I learned from playing Annie. I was a little scared and a little less bold, and I learned that I needed to move through that. 

TS: With this kind of super successful moment for you, what are you hoping that this opens up for you in terms of future roles or collaborations that you’re looking to pursue after this? 

WM: I just wanna work in a safe, loving, fruitful, nourishing, fertile environment. I want to be around people like my castmates on Sinners, and I think it’s possible. I mean, I’ve already experienced it. I’m shooting with Idris Elba and Charlie Cox, and we’re very intentional about the on-set environment and the culture on the set, and for me, that’s all I want. I want to go to a place where I’m happy to be instead of being at home, and so that being at work feels like joy. That’s my only goal and hope for my career is that I can continue working on these beautiful, healthy, happy, inspiring, nourishing sets where I can keep growing and take risks and become a better artist with a bigger voice and trust my voice more. That’s what I want for my career. 

Sinners is currently streaming on HBO Max.