There’s no doubt that Mbatha-Raw loves what she refers to as the dress-up element of getting into character, but when it comes to her hair and makeup, she prefers to keep things simple. “I feel most beautiful when I’m not being perceived as beautiful,” she says over coffee in Brooklyn a few days after our shoot. “If I’m not thinking about what I look like, then I’m just happy and free to be myself.” Growing up in rural Oxfordshire, “a million miles away from Hollywood or any big city,” she was raised by her English mom, a nurse, and her South African dad, a doctor, to “nurture the soul, spirit, and intelligence rather than the exterior.” That notion has stuck with Mbatha-Raw, so it’s been a process for her to accept the value placed on appearance in the entertainment industry. “I’ve had to come to terms with the concept of beauty without judging it as a vacuous thing,” she says. “My image is part of my job, but I’m getting more comfortable with knowing that it doesn’t define who I am or mean that I’m a superficial person. It’s about expressing yourself.”
Both on and off camera, Mbatha-Raw favors wearing her voluminous, curly hair as is. If a project specifically calls for another hairstyle, “it really has to support the story,” she says, explaining that her role in 2014’s Beyond the Lights was one such case. “My character ultimately took out her purple weave and wore her hair natural, which was essential in the evolution of her authenticity.” For The Cloverfield Paradox, which hit Netflix in February, she was determined to have her character depicted just as authentically. “I was quite adamant about showing my natural hair onscreen, because I had never really seen anyone with hair like mine in a sci-fi movie,” she says. “Images are so important, and I thought it was an opportunity for little girls growing up mixed to feel included and see that they can be an astronaut too.” Though her hair appeared totally natural in the film, she did get a bit of added length from extensions. “I could never shed the character because I was literally carrying her on my scalp,” she says. “That was hard, because at the end of the day, you really want to strip it all back and just be you.”
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