Hailee Steinfeld "forever grateful" to Sinners role for pushing her to research her multiracial heritage
Steinfeld has a key role in Ryan Coogler's acclaimed new vampire flick.
Hailee Steinfeld has opened up about how her role in Ryan Coogler's new film Sinners pushed her to research her multiracial heritage – revealing that she will be "forever grateful" to the project.
In the film, which is set in 1930s Mississippi, Steinfeld plays a white-passing character called Mary who is revealed to have black ancestry, which mirrors Steinfeld's own family history (her maternal grandfather was half-Black and half-Filipino).
And speaking exclusively to RadioTimes.com, she explained that the research process had made her feel "closer to myself and closer to my family".
She said: "This movie in general, and this role specifically pushed me to, I guess, include as part of my research digging into my family history... something I've done here and there throughout the years, but never like I did when I took on this role.
"And I'm forever grateful for Ryan, for Mary, for this movie, for pushing me, encouraging me to do that. I love the research period for what we do, and the fact that this was something I got to walk away with, feeling closer to myself and closer to my family was the most incredible thing."
She added that it is "always wonderful" when research for a role entails picking up a new skill or learning about something that piques your interest.
"But when it has to do with yourself, and even more than that, your family and your history and your ancestry, it's a really, really beautiful thing that had a lot to do with shaping Mary and understanding more of her role in this world," she said.
Steinfeld continued that she had "many, many conversations" with Coogler about the backstory of her character and what she'd done in the seven years prior to the film (since she'd last seen Michael B Jordan's twin characters Stack and Smoke).
"And that was just again so fun," she said. "You spend hours and hours and weeks and months even talking about that backstory... and somehow in the writing, Ryan managed to make it so that we feel so connected to each of these characters, not just where they are in that moment, but where they've come from."
Meanwhile, Wunmi Mosaku – who plays a Hoodoo conjurer and spiritual healer named Annie in the film – explained how the research period was equally rewarding for her.
"I did a lot of research into Hoodoo and that practice and that spirituality, which led me to Ifá and the Yoruba traditional religions," she said.
"I'm a Yoruba woman so, you know, researching Annie, I felt closer to myself, to my history, my ancestry, the people I'm from. And I found a little part of myself that I didn't know was missing by doing that research.
She added: "[It's a] beautiful and quite profound experience, especially when you love a character and you learn something about yourself through them. It's quite magical, actually."
Sinners is in UK cinemas from Friday 18th April 2025.
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Authors
Patrick Cremona is the Senior Film Writer at Radio Times, and looks after all the latest film releases both in cinemas and on streaming. He has been with the website since October 2019, and in that time has interviewed a host of big name stars and reviewed a diverse range of movies.
