Actor Gugu Mbatha-Raw by Danika Magdelena in 'Star Power' for Porter Edit

British actor Gugu Mbatha-Raw is super pleased about landing the female role in the new Disney+ series ‘Loki’, playing opposite Tom Hiddleston.

Maya Zepinic styles the actor in ‘Star Power’, choosing crisp, modern looks from Agolde, Kassel Editions, Lanvin, Lisa Marie Fernandez, Loewe, Loulou Studio, Saint Laurent, The Row, Wardrobe NYC and more. Photographer Danika Magdelena [IG] is behind the lens for Porter Edit’s June 14, 2021 issue.

Ajesh Patalay conducts the interview.

“For a start, it was exciting that Kate Herron was directing all six episodes,” Mbatha-Raw tells Patalay of the writer-director who gained recognition for Netflix’s Sex Education. Mbatha-Raw considers Loki to be more complex than the usual superhero roles that had come her way in the past.

Porter Edit specializes in featuring activist women and Mbatha-Raw is no exception. The BAFTA-nominated actor turned to painting in the summer of 2020, donating portraits of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor for charity.

This action to support Black Lives Matter and its corollary organizations syncs with the actor’s acting roles. Whether playing the first Black woman to win Miss World [Misbehaviour], the victim of TV newsroom sexual abuse [The Morning Show], or a singer fighting against misogyny in the music industry [Beyond the Lights], personal activism in canter stage.

As the daughter of an English mother and South African father, Mbatha-Raw explains that her father openly risked imprisonment by campaigning against apartheid in South Africa. Only recently did she learn that her parents were able to settle in England thanks to the UNHCR [the UN Refugee Agency], an organization the actor a couple years ago.

This fact is poignant as the interview with Ajesh Patalay closes. In a coincidental action — or so we are assured — the doorbell rings and Mbatha-Raw receives a massive bouquet of flowers. “Honestly, I didn’t stage this,” she jokes.

The blooms are celebrate her being named a Goodwill Ambassador for the UNHCR (the UN Refugee Agency), with which she has been working with since 2018, including visiting camps in Rwanda and Uganda.

Now the circle of life — or “ubuntu” as her father would call it in South Africa — is complete. Mbatha-Raw introduces a new term to activist fashion dialogue — that she received “an ancestral call” in the words of her cousin.

“It’s kind of special that I can be part of a legacy [my father] was directly involved in.” Having resisted joining social media for so long, she now uses Instagram partly to raise awareness of the UNHCR’s work. “It does feel,” she reasons, “like it gives those [social media] platforms more of a sense of purpose.”

Living with purpose is central to Gugu Mbatha-Raw’s essential being.