Actors often seek connection with their roles to help them embody their characters. For Anna Diop, the many links she shared with her character in Nikyatu Jusu’s directorial debut, “Nanny” — from her Senegalese culture to the reflection of her own mother’s immigrant story — drew her to accept the role.
In “Nanny,” an undocumented Senegalese woman named Aisha works for an affluent Manhattan family (Michelle Monaghan and Morgan Spector) while hoping to bring her own son she left behind to the United States. She is tormented by visions of African spirits Anansi the spider and Mami Wata, whose chaotic energy push Aisha to become bolder. “Nanny” won the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival in January, and Diop just earned a Gotham Award nomination for best breakthrough performer.
Aisha navigates complex emotions and situations in “Nanny.” What part of her character did you relate to the most?
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The trepidation Aisha carries through the beginning of this film, I really relate to because as an immigrant, I relate to tiptoeing around environments. I’m just getting to a place where I’m growing up from that and becoming a lot more unapologetic and taking up space myself. … It’s also something as an immigrant I saw my mother navigate. Especially when you first get here and especially if you’re undocumented, you’re so careful and your parents, if they’re first-generation, are raising you to be careful and cautious. That’s just an experience I relate to as an immigrant as a Black woman. I am just myself evolving into the place that we see Aisha evolving into.
What conversations did you and the director have in exploring Aisha’s story?
So we talked about Aisha’s emotional arc. … For Aisha, it’s certainly her coming into her own power and articulating and standing in her own dignity. The conversations I had with Nikyatu were why or how is this happening to her now, what is it that’s bringing her into this new place of having more confidence and having less fear and speaking up for herself… this is happening because of these spiritual entities that are now imbuing her, Mami Wata and Anansi, these figures of resistance and rebellion, these chaos agents. This is how or why I [as Aisha] should begin to behave in this way that’s much bolder and less apologetic, despite her very fragile position.
How do you feel about all the awards recognition you and film are getting?
I am so proud of our film and I’m so honored by it. When you care so much about a subject matter — this story is my mother’s story in so many ways, and it’s a story that I’ve always cared so much about. It’s a character I’ve always cared so much about. An African immigrant woman and a mother, this is something that means everything to me. To find other people responding so positively to it and connecting so much with it, and celebrating it, is very moving.
“Nanny” is a film covering a story and character we do not see enough of onscreen — and need to see more of.
It’s never quite our stories or people that look like us or exploring the nuances of who and what we are. It’s rare.
What do you hope people take away from “Nanny”?
I hope that those of us who aren’t used to seeing ourselves centered find some sort of recognition in Aisha — either that she reminds them, or her story reminds them, of what their own mothers have experienced or what they themselves have experienced. We just simply need more of that. We’ve been, I think, longing for it for so long and deprived of it for so long. It is refreshing when you get to see yourself reflected on screen … and for those who don’t necessarily relate, I hope it blows up a deeper empathy in them for these individuals and these people navigating vulnerable, precarious, dangerous, sometimes vulnerable situations.
