Mandela magic

PLAYING South Africa’s most controversial woman, Winnie Mendela, meant that skinny actress Sophie Okonedo was destined for a fat suit and a crash course in the unflinching world of apartheid.

BBC4’s Monday night drama, Mrs Mandela, focuses on the 27 years that Winnie’s husband, Nelson, spent in captivity and she survived repeated police raids on her home, five days of harsh interrogation, 13 months of solitary confinement and banishment from Soweto to remote Brandfort.

Oscar-naminated Okonedo says: “I approached Winnie the way I approach any other role, just trying to get to the heart of it and play the truth as much as possible… and imagine a fictional character to begin with.

“I didn’t get into watching footage. For me that just wasn’t really useful - I’m not an impersonator. I just got really familiar with the facts of that time. I found Anthony Sampson’s biography of Mandela really helpful.”

She loved the fact that she filmed in South Africa, just around the corner from the Mandela’s real house and walking the same streets as Winnie.

“But I was so nervous, one of my first scenes was when I had to go into a big hall and do one of her most famous speeches. I just thought ‘what the hell? I’m about to go in there and be one of South Africa’s most iconic women’. I just felt like a complete fraud. I remember crying in the toilet before it started. I thought ‘I’m not going to be able to – this is just a bridge too far – I’m not going to be able to become this lady now’.

“But once I got out on the stage, the noise from the extras - the cheering and screaming - it was amazing and I thought ‘bring it on’, I really enjoyed it.”

The 41-year-old actress has played two other real life people previously, in the films Hotel Rwanda and Skin, but admitted that setting aside her normally timid personality was a struggle.

“I had been thinking about playing her for a while. I was very nervous because I didn’t want to sell her or myself short.

I thought ‘I’m not going to be able to get away with making as much up as I normally do’,”

Okonedo says.

On playing Winnie from beautiful young bride into old age, the actress says: “I think people will be shocked by Winnie’s story. We did a readthrough in South Africa – that was a baptism of fire. I had to do a two-hour performance in front of the rest of the cast, some of whom would have known or met Winnie. At the end many of the South African actors were really shocked by her story and how much Winnie had endured.

“During apartheid I suppose there was so much censorship that people often didn’t know what was going on.”

The film goes from 1957, when Winnie met Nelson, up to 1990 – so Okonedo’s appearance had to change too.

“I had a fat suit, and a medium suit, which were an instant way into the character. I knew Ruy (Filipe), the costume designer, really well because I’d worked with him on Hotel Rwanda and I said ‘look, we’ve got no time for big make up changes here, Winnie doesn’t age that much, she just gets bigger as she gets older’, so the easiest way to age her was to add some weight to her, literally – physically, but she also becomes a more weighty person as time goes on.”

Her only sadness is that the whole project was filmed in 30 days and would have liked her first visit to South Africa to have lasted the three months it takes to shoot a film.

Mrs Mandela steers carefully away from the controversy which surrounded Winnie after Nelson’s release. The couple divorced in 1996 and she never became South Africa’s first lady.

Currently the 73-year-old is still involved in politics while her former husband, who emerged from prison holding the hand of Winnie in an iconic moment, is now in retirement.

About the experience Okonedo says: “I was on a high the whole shoot. I found it so exciting and so interesting. I was never bored and I loved every single minute of it, including the difficult and dark scenes,.”

■ Mrs Mandela, BBC4, Monday, 9pm