Gugu Mbatha-Raw has a distinct way of finding her way into a character. It starts with a perfume. She hand-selects a fragrance for each of her characters and wears only that scent while filming. It’s a clever trick. With a quick spray of the scent, she’s immediately transported into that person. For Surface‘s Sophie Ellis, it’s Chloé’s Nomade Eau de Parfum. Described as a woody fragrance, its fresh, earthy notes are counterbalanced by sweet, fruity notes, providing interesting twists and turns. It’s a fitting choice for a woman who has lost all of her memories and must piece together the questionable events of her past clue by clue.
“I haven’t smelt it for months, and I sprayed it on the other day when I was doing press, and I was like, ‘Oh yeah.’ All these memories came back,” Mbatha-Raw tells Who What Wear via a Zoom call in February. “Especially when you’re dealing with somebody whose memory is a thing, scent and smell is so evocative. It goes straight into your brain in terms of those areas.”
The Chloé fragrance is an ingenious part of the English actor’s process of plugging back into her Surface character Sophie following a nearly two-and-a-half-year break between filming seasons one and two and a forced hiatus from the simultaneous writers’ and actors’ strikes in 2023.
It’s not that she needed a ton of help in that department; Sophie is a character near and dear to Mbatha-Raw’s heart. The actress first received the pilot script for the show in 2020 while filming the Marvel series Loki, and it immediately caught her attention. The story was light-years away from the sort of kick-ass, villainous character she was currently playing—just what she was looking for. “It was really nice to be reading a leading role in a psychological thriller that was told from a woman’s perspective,” she tells us. Not to mention, Hello Sunshine, Reese Witherspoon’s production banner, was on board to produce. “I had an amazing experience with them on The Morning Show, so for me, knowing that they have such a female-driven ethos and having worked with Reese on that project and previously on A Wrinkle in Time, I knew the caliber of material was going to be interesting,” Mbatha-Raw says.
With no major studio attached at the time, an exciting opportunity presented itself to the actress to come on as an executive producer, a first for her. “That was my first-ever pitch in 2020—with Reese and Lauren Neustadter at Hello Sunshine and Veronica West, our showrunner—to be on a Zoom with the bosses at Apple pitching Surface. That was a big deal!” she says. Being a part of the genesis of a project and building the show, especially in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, was an empowering journey for Mbatha-Raw, one she would get to continue with the show’s second season.
Season two, which premiered on Apple TV+ on February 21, follows Sophie (who now goes by Tess) to England, where she attempts to further unravel the secrets of her past. Finding herself entangled in elite British society, Sophie works to piece together the events of her childhood and her mother’s mysterious death.
For the English actress, shooting in her hometown enriched her involvement in the show even further. “Bringing season two to London, I was able to contribute a lot more just culturally and in terms of the world that we’re entering of a privileged dynasty-life family and what that would have meant for Sophie growing up and her mom,” Mbatha-Raw shares. “That, to me, was a really lovely conversation to be able to build in the layers with Veronica. … I was definitely able to steer a little bit more and bring an authenticity to it.”
With this season also came a chance to expand the Surface world and cast even further. Mbatha-Raw’s eyes light up as she starts listing new cast members. Nina Sosanya, Joely Richardson, and Tara Fitzgerald are all actors she grew up watching on TV. Rounding out the impressive ensemble are Freida Pinto, Phil Dunster, and Millie Brady, who plays Sophie’s elusive childhood friend Eliza.
“What I loved about season one is [Sophie’s] interior life and the internal journey that she is on psychologically in terms of the flashbacks and in terms of her therapist trying to figure out who she is, but it’s very much in that murky San Francisco ‘don’t know who to trust in my own house’ situation,” Mbatha-Raw says. “Now, it’s like the walls have been knocked down, and it’s not within that house in San Francisco. You’ve got a whole cityscape, so that, to me, was really nice—just to be able to open things up and [work] with a British crew and be here in the UK. There’s so much talent in the UK to celebrate.”
Mbatha-Raw is still geeking out over the fact that they got to film on location at various iconic London landmarks. There were night shoots at Tower Bridge and Waterloo Bridge and scenes where she’s walking down Bond Street and the South Bank of the River Thames. “As a drama school student, I used to be a tour guide on the river cruise that went up and down the Thames, so to be able to be filming on a Saturday morning where we closed off one of the bridges (I’m doing a scene, and then I see my boat go underneath me), it was magical. It’s really meaningful to be on a journey like that because it’s not just the journey of your career, but it’s also your relationship to a city and different perspectives on that as well,” she says. There was also the show’s Huntley estate in Hampshire, where the actress stayed in a cottage on the grounds. She adds, “It was very special to access that place and felt very immersive in terms of the journey Sophie was on at that point.”
Sophie’s journey has always been one of twists and turns, surprising the viewer—and Mbatha-Raw—at every turn as we get closer to who she was, who she is, and who she wants to be. “I think there is a grit and determination to Sophie this season, which maybe I always knew was there, but I think it comes out in the scenarios that she’s in. She’s gone too far to stop now. Her quest for justice and exposing this family [has] gone to a point of no return,” the actress says.
We ask Mbatha-Raw the impossible question: Do you think Sophie is good or bad? “You just reminded me of a quote from Hamlet, which is, ‘There is nothing [either] good or bad, but thinking makes it so,'” she responds. The actress argues that what is bad really depends on how you look at it, and she loves that the show constantly walks that tightrope. It’s that gray area along with the nuances and complexities of what it is to be human that Surface explores so well. “You think you’ve got somebody in a box, and I think we’re all so keen to just label people and decide [and] make a choice about them, and what I love about the show is that people surprise you, and people aren’t just good or bad, like in life,” she adds.
People like Sophie, who are complex and messy and flawed, are the most interesting characters to play and arguably where Mbatha-Raw is at her best.
Catch new episodes of Surface season two every Friday on Apple TV+.
Talent: Gugu Mbatha-Raw
Photographer: David Reiss
Stylist: Rachel Davis
Hairstylist: James Catalano
Makeup Artist: Sara Hill
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