# ‘You can’t paper over the cracks of history. It will haunt you’: Gugu Mbatha-Raw on her race-horror thriller

- URL: https://talkfuse.com/story/you-cant-paper-over-the-cracks-of-history-it-will-haunt-you-gugu-mbatha-raw-on-her-race-horror-thriller/
- Published: 2026-07-24T12:00:12+00:00
- Updated: 2026-07-24T12:33:36+00:00
- Original publisher: The Guardian (publisher lean: Left)
- Original article: https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2026/jul/24/gugu-mbatha-raw-interview-possession-race-horror-thriller-sky-atlantic
- Topics: Art, Celebrity, Culture, Entertainment

## Key points

- Possession links an inheritance dispute to Britain’s colonial legacy.
- Mbatha-Raw’s character reconnects with her Jamaican heritage.
- The series alternates between modern Jamaica and plantation slavery.

## Summary

Gugu Mbatha-Raw discusses her role in Possession, a Sky supernatural thriller that connects a contemporary inheritance dispute in Jamaica with the legacy of British plantation slavery. She says the drama explores how unresolved history can continue to affect the present, while her character, a Bristol lawyer of mixed Jamaican heritage, becomes increasingly connected to a background she had kept at a distance.

Mbatha-Raw plays Claudia, who is sent to Jamaica after a wealthy descendant of a white plantation owner leaves his estate to an untraceable Jamaican man rather than his own family. Initially selected partly for the “optics” of being a Black, half-Jamaican lawyer, Claudia faces a case in which legal questions give way to supernatural and historical forces; the series moves between modern Jamaica and the era of plantation slavery. The 43-year-old actor says she chooses varied, politically ambitious roles, following work in Belle, Black Mirror, The Morning Show and Surface.

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Summarised by TalkFuse (https://talkfuse.com/). Quote the original publisher for the reporting and link this page for the summary and discussion.