“In the Envelope: The Actor’s Podcast” features in-depth conversations with today’s most noteworthy actors and creators. Join host and awards editor Jack Smart for this guide on how to live the creative life from those who are doing it every day.
Ruth Negga’s mission statement has been clear since her early days as an actor: “What I wanted as an artist was to sort of shift things—disrupt, maybe,” she says, illuminating the nuances of both her creative process and how she’s carved her own path.
“Acting isn’t just a job for me; it’s a—I don’t know, it’s a soul vocation,” she continues. “It’s something that I think is helping me understand myself, my place in the world, and others.” Asked if all her acting roles are cathartic, Negga responds, “I can’t see how [they aren’t]…. If you’re quite shy and have social anxiety like me, that’s sort of something that can be denied you, or you can deny yourself that. But when you’re performing on a real stage, it’s liberating, isn’t it?”
Born in Ethiopia, raised in Ireland, and schooled in London, Negga went on to study stagecraft at the Samuel Beckett Centre at Trinity College Dublin. Early influences included “performers like [David] Bowie and Kate Bush and Prince—very physical performers [who] sort of subverted the idea of a fixed identity or sexuality—or anything, really. And I really enjoyed exploring the idea of shape-shifting and not being able to be pinned down.”
Her breakout film roles in “Capital Letters,” “Isolation,” and “Breakfast on Pluto” led to theater and TV work on both sides of the Atlantic, including on “Personal Affairs,” “Shirley,” and AMC’s “Preacher.” She then won accolades aplenty—including an Academy Award nomination—for playing Mildred Loving in “Loving”; she also led an acclaimed production of “Hamlet” in the title role. Now, her Gotham Award–nominated performance as Clare Kendry in writer-director Rebecca Hall’s Netflix adaptation of “Passing” is earning Oscar buzz.
The story of Black women in 1920s New York City who can pass as white, “Passing” is based on the 1929 Nella Larsen novel of the same name. “It’s about giving life and texture and complexity to women of color at a time when we were hardly seen, let alone afforded any sort of narrative complexity,” says Negga. “For Clare, she has decided, like many people, that the way to access power is to exploit what she has. And that’s using her femininity—her wiles, if you will.
“And I don’t have any judgment on that, nor should I,” she adds. Storytellers and audiences alike tend to intellectualize characters rather than experiencing them on a gut level, Negga says. “For me, art in any medium is sort of trying to bypass judgment and encourage compassion and empathy…. It’s great that people are curious and they want to interrogate things. And I absolutely don’t think we should divorce our intellectual from our visceral. I think it’s about integrating them both.”
Tessa Thompson Talks Netflix’s ‘Passing’ + Giving Her Fear OxygenFor Negga, curiosity and quiet introspection are two other key ingredients to acting. Her advice to fellow performers is to find their particular means of inspiration. “If you can go to a quiet place inside yourself and listen to your inner spirit, or whatever you want to call it, I think that’s the best thing you can do. And stay curious—because I think the best ammunition or armor against the uncertainty that can crop up in this job, the unfairness that can crop up in this job, is to stay curious and to stay listening. I don’t know what that means to others individually, but I think that’s up to you to explore and define for yourself.”
Among Negga’s upcoming projects are her Broadway debut opposite Daniel Craig in “Macbeth” and a big-screen turn as performer and activist Josephine Baker. Tune into her deep-dive interview wherever you listen to podcasts.