Jodie Turner-Smith is a woman who knows how to get on with it. It should be unsurprising, considering the career the actress has managed to carve out for herself in just a few short years—you don’t go from a Melina Matsoukas feature (Queen & Slim [2019]) to playing Anne Boleyn (Anne Boleyn [2021]), star in a Kogonada two-hander (After Yang [2021]) and then play God herself in Sex Education if you’re a slouch—and yet on the bleary Thursday morning of our call, Jodie Turner-Smith does just that. She surprises me.

There is usually a rhythm to these sorts of conversations. They begin rigid and polite, one measuring the other’s sincerity through a blurred screen. Personal anecdotes come later, after they’ve marked you as safe and trustworthy. This is not the case with Turner-Smith. The first words out of the actor’s mouth aren’t guarded—there’s no, “It’s lovely to meet you,” or, “Thank you for taking the time.” She begins instead with a sweetly rasped confession:

“Today was my daughter’s first day of kindergarten. It was so emotional. It sounds cliché but I can’t believe it. She’s growing up so fast.”

I apologize for the call taking up time she could be using to process this milestone; she waves it away.

“That’s life. We don’t always get the moment to process what’s happening.”

From a less gracious mouth, Turner-Smith’s attitude might come off as brutishly English in its pragmatism—but from Turner-Smith, it’s a clear acceptance of the reality she’s been working towards for years. It becomes apparent rather quickly that Turner-Smith has weighed the cost of the career she’s chosen against its merits, and found herself in excess.

Her award-winning, stellar feature debut as a lead alongside Daniel Kaluuya in Queen & Slim was proof that she was quite simply built for this. “[Queen & Slim] was my ‘Hello, I’ve arrived’ moment,” Turner-Smith shares. “It was all such a whirlwind. I was pregnant, which was its own mental vortex. I remember being ecstatic. There was so much happening at one time. It felt like all my dreams were coming true all at once, and it was so beautiful. I had two babies that year.”

Turner-Smith talks about film with an earnestness that betrays a nerdy side. Once the conversation takes a (rather quick) turn towards the cinematic, she doesn’t stop listing films: “I always say that I took myself to film school by working my way through the Criterion Collection. I would literally sit in my apartment and just watch film after film after film studying. I haven’t done [a Criterion Closet video] yet, but I’m fucking ready,” she laughs.

She’s an Agnès Varda girl—Cléo from 5 to 7 and Vagabond are deemed “utterly perfect pictures.” As are movies like Black Orpheus, The Passion of Joan of Arc, and The Handmaiden, and she would die to meet Park Chan-wook who helmed Decision to Leave. “Babe, Decision to Leave? I’ve seen it four times. I’m obsessed. I’m always wearing my Decision to Leave hoodie. He’s everything,” she gushes, adding that she wants to be in a Wong Kar-Wai film so badly she insists I include a plea: “Wong Kar-Wai, call me. Please. Call. Me.”

It’s unthinkable to imagine a world in which Jodie Turner-Smith is not in this industry, playing all sorts of steely, stoic women with quietly tragic lives (all the films she chooses, whether via franchise or independent, seem to revolve around women with wounds, and the people who try to tend to those wounds alongside them; women who are equal parts blade and silk).

“I had another life,” she tells me. “In that life, I was in the finance world. That was who I thought I would always be.”

It’s true—Turner-Smith attended the University of Pittsburgh and worked in a large bank after graduation, before running into Pharrell at a N.E.R.D concert. Pharrell, a mutual friend, advised her to move to LA to pursue modeling. So, she did, and spent the better part of the 2010s appearing in TV series and music videos (see her, pre-Queen & Slim, in ZAYN’s “Pillowtalk,” as a siren in True Blood, as a sergeant in The Last Ship, among others).

“I realized that I didn’t enjoy [the corporate realm], that I didn’t want to remain there. I wanted to figure out how to do work that I loved…I started wondering if there was a way to make play my job. The performance element of modeling was what appealed to me, even in those early days. I was always having more success doing TV ads than anything else. I feel like that was a sign,” she admits.

Her openness starts to make more sense the longer we talk—of course Turner-Smith is giddy and generous; her wildest dreams, and biggest risks ever taken, have come true and delivered her fortune. Even the oft-dreaded press tour (of which she’s been on many, particularly for larger-budget fantasy films like the forthcoming Tron, in which she plays antagonist Athena) is an opportunity for her to celebrate the work; the leap; the risk.

“[The press tours are] something to look forward to. The parade of dresses—I don’t mind it at all. I tend to make it more enjoyable for actors who don’t usually enjoy that kind of stuff because I usually have fun. I get it, it can be tedious and nerve-wracking, but I choose to enjoy it. And it’s an opportunity to serve looks, honey. Don’t threaten me with a good time.”

It would be dishonest, however, to discuss Jodie Turner-Smith’s career without also pointing out the vitriolic coverage some of her work has received; her classy handling of the crass racism she has had to contend with does not mean that that bigotry should be ignored.

A loud minority emboldened by production companies who refuse to protect their Black and brown talent against fandom racism have, on more than one occasion, set their sights on a project the actress has been a part of. The Acolyte—a Star Wars series in which Turner-Smith starred alongside Amandla Stenberg—was the second most streamed show on Disney+ last year, boasting viewership numbers in the tens of millions. However, the show was unceremoniously cancelled after its first season—not-so-strangely, the cancellation followed months of bigoted review bombing by anonymous online posters, all demonstrating an antiquated inability to wrap their heads around Black people becoming part of the realms of make-believe.

“At this point, [racism] is just standard,” Turner-Smith admits. “The fact that I have these opportunities at this moment is because the actors of color who came before me did what they had to do, all in circumstances that I feel like were even more hostile than the ones I’ve had to contend with. I’ve spoken up about certain things and it’s because it’s my duty to do it. I’m not complaining. I’m just telling people what I see.”

Turner-Smith has spoken publicly about her disappointment with Disney following the studio’s lack of any public support for Amandla Stenberg, who was ridiculed online after bringing forth concerns about the racism present in the Star Wars fanbase.

“In terms of protecting performers, I don’t think I need to wax poetic about the ways in which capitalism rarely ever benefits people who look like me,” Turner-Smith says.

Following the cancellation of The Acolyte, the actor asserts of Disney—or any platform that picks and chooses the convenient times to support or withdraw support from minorities—“If they were to [actually] support us, they [would] find that we will support these projects ourselves. Our communities will support these projects with our own money,” she says. “We have a lot of buying power…People are still quite afraid of criticism and a lot of these fanbases are very opinionated. There are a lot of keyboard warriors out there who are loud, but things can’t keep going the way they are. It’s simply not sustainable, which means that change will happen. We just have to keep speaking up and showing them that the money follows us.”

Jodie Turner-Smith’s range is truly glorious to behold, but there is always a trace of something fierce in her portrayals. Whether she is playing a race-bent Anne Boleyn (and being hailed as the best part of the production) or the leader of a magic coven, Turner-Smith is a force to be reckoned with. She sympathizes, in more ways than one, with her characters’ lust for a different reality.

“I think I understand their desire to create a certain outcome. I love that you can’t pinpoint one specific type of character that I’ve played. They all have spines, which I think is delicious. Whether they’re loud and wrong or they’re standing up for themselves in quieter ways, it’s so important to see someone in this skin live audaciously.”

Photographed by Miles Aldridge at 2bmanagement

Styled by Oliver Volquardsen

Written by Ayan Artan 

Hair: Marcia Lee

Makeup: Joey Choy at The Wall Group

Nails: Sabrina Gayle at Arch the Agency

Set Design: Trish Stephenson

Photo Assistants: Kate Rosewell and Luce Scaglione Martini