Underground Railroad’s Thuso Mbedu On Silently Capturing Cora’s Emotions: Slaves ‘Weren’t Allowed to Feel’

IN the very first installment of The Underground Railroad, an enslaved Black man is brutally and horrifically punished for attempting to run away.

The inhumane incident serves as a catalyst that forces the story’s heroine Cora (South African newcomer Thuso Mbedu) to take a similar risk and flee in both the Amazon Prime limited series and Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel on which it’s based.

Because of this, viewers will see the camera cut back and forth between the torture and Cora’s reaction to it when Barry Jenkins’ TV adaptation premieres this Friday and explores a mystical world where actual trains under the ground help enslaved people emancipate themselves.

This range of emoting is a challenge that a very expressive Mbedu conquered and surpassed — even if she doesn’t think so.

“The people that I’ve worked with have given props to the expressiveness of my face, and I don’t