British Actress Thandiwe Newton is the cover star of British Vogue’s May issue. The actress talked with Diana Evans over Zoom about her identity, the Me Too movement, and her experiences with racism.
Newton’s mother is a Black Zimbabwean and granddaughter of a Shona chief. Her father is a white Englishman that worked as a laboratory technician. Newton moved to Cornwall when she was three. The actress talked about growing up in the United Kingdom.
“I mean holy hell,” she says. “We may as well have been the first Black people anyone had ever seen. We didn’t have conditioner. We didn’t have anything.”
In 2020, Newton discussed her relationship with Australian director John Duigan on the ‘WTF with Marc Maron‘ podcast. She described the relationship as sexually abusive. She said that the director took advantage of her being 16-years-old. In the Vogue interview with Evans, she recalls a time that the director asked her to change the color of her skin for the film ‘Flirting,’ her debut role.
“Got the role. Colourism has just been the funniest. I’ve been too Black, not Black enough. I’m always Black. I’m just like, whadda you people want!”
“[A]nd it was then, it was 16. He derailed me from myself utterly. I was traumatized. It was a kind of PTSD for sure. I was so distraught and appalled that a director had abused a young actress, and that it was happening elsewhere, minors getting abused and how f**ked up it was. I was basically waiting for someone to come along and say, ‘Well, what shall we do about this?’’’
Newton told Evans that her name was misspelled on her first film credit.
“That’s my name. It’s always been my name. I’m taking back what’s mine.”
