Meet ‘Nanny’ Star Anna Diop
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
“Nanny” is a star-making film.
The psychological horror premiered at the Sundance Film Festival early this year, where it won the grand jury prize, making it the first horror film to win and director Nikyatu Jusu the second Black female director to win the festival’s top award. The indie film was picked up for distribution by Amazon and Blumhouse, and will be released theatrically before streaming a few weeks later.
More from WWD
The intimate film is led by Senegalese American Anna Diop. The actress first became aware of Jusu several years ago, when she was starring in the TV series “Titans.” One of the show’s writers, Bryan Edward Hill, flagged that Jusu was interested in working with her. “He said, ‘There’s this filmmaker.…I think she’s really dope, she could be the next Barry Jenkins,'” recalls Diop. She watched one of Jusu’s short films, and became “enthralled” with her, but the pair didn’t meet until a year and a half later.
“I went on and did the show and did my life, and she wrote ‘Nanny.’ And then I got the audition for it, and then we finally met over Zoom, and thankfully it worked,” Diop says.
Diop slots “Nanny” in a similar vein as “Get Out;” both films use horror to speak about social issues at the domestic level. Diop stars as Aisha, a young mother who has immigrated to New York from Senegal and finds work as a nanny for a wealthy white couple. Her goal is to save enough money to bring her young son over to America. Along the way, folklore staple Anansi the spider begins to show up in Aisha’s dreams and as she’s working, with dizzying impact.
“I was stunned at how many parallels there were to my mother’s own story,” says Diop of the film’s resonance. “We immigrated from Senegal when I was five years old, and my mother did that so she could give me a shot at a life, because there’s not much [employment] opportunity in Senegal,” she continues. “And Aisha does the exact same thing for her son. I’ve always wanted to be able to portray my mother in some way and to honor her in what she’s done. And so it was very emotional and very arresting for me to be able to do that in [‘Nanny’].”
They filmed mid-pandemic around New York City, an experience that Diop describes as its own suspenseful narrative. “The looming threat of COVID-19 on a small budget project is really scary because one positive case in the Red Zone, as in the cast and crew and major players like the [director of photography], will wipe you out,” she says.
A surge in COVID-19 cases at the start of 2022 meant that the Sundance Film Festival pivoted online shortly before its scheduled in-person start. “You do these projects and you do them because you love them and you believe in them, but then to get into a festival like Sundance is so exciting. So we got in, and then a week before we were meant to fly there they switched it to virtual,” she says. The team has since gotten to celebrate the film in person; it recently screened at BFI in London to a sold-out, 2,000-seat audience.
“Seeing it in a theater — which is the way to see ‘Nanny’ because of the visual complexities and the soundscape — was really moving. I felt really proud that Nikyatu created something that was on one hand such a grounded story about motherhood and the immigrant experience and survival and resilience, and on the other hand, is visually stunning to see and take in.”
Jusu is directing a forthcoming “Night of the Living Dead” sequel, but Diop’s next project — which is unannounced — has her veering from the horror genre. She’ll begin filming at the end of this year in Europe, followed by North Africa.
“I was really picky after ‘Nanny’ because it spoiled me to be able to do a project with that level of artistry and that elevated of a story,” Diop says. “I started getting really picky about what I wanted to do next, and thankfully this [next] project came along that is phenomenal in all the ways.”
Best of WWD
