Wunmi Mosaku Was a Math Genius, Now She’s an Oscar Nominee

March 3, 2026·39 min·3 clips

Wunmi Mosaku explains how Sinners set a new standard for creative safe spaces and connected her to her ancestors.

Wunmi Mosaku is an actress and Oscar nominee speaking with Vogue's Run-Through podcast about her role as Annie in Ryan Coogler's Sinners, a film that received sixteen Academy Award nominations. Her nomination for Best Supporting Actress comes during her second pregnancy, and she describes the physical and logistical challenges of doing press and attending ceremonies while pregnant — including the practical difficulty of finding appropriate clothing, which partly motivated her to launch Iyade. Iyade is a maternity and nursing clothing line whose name comes from a Yoruba phrase meaning the mother has arrived. The line is designed with the needs of Black women and women of color specifically in mind, drawing on Wunmi's experience that mainstream maternity fashion rarely served her. She grew up in the UK as the daughter of a Nigerian father who was emphatic that acting was not a viable or respectable career. His opposition was persistent and specific, rooted in economic anxiety and the belief that the industry held no place for women who looked like her. She went to RADA anyway, and her father's position eventually softened as her career progressed. The conversation covers her early career in British television, her transition to international productions, and what it meant to work with Ryan Coogler on a film explicitly centered on Black American history and experience. She describes the Sinners set as one where she felt fully seen as a performer. She also discusses her ongoing Yoruba language lessons, which she undertook in part for her children — wanting them to have access to a language and culture their grandparents speak. The episode touches on the structural barriers Black British actresses face in an industry that often directs them toward specific types of roles, and how Wunmi has navigated those expectations throughout her career.

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