ComingSoon Editor-in-Chief Tyler Treese spoke to Aisha star Letitia Wright about the new drama, which is out today in select theaters and on VOD. Starring opposite Josh O’Connor, Wright plays a Nigerian woman who is dealing with Ireland’s immigration system and direct provision. The film is directed and written by Frank Berry.
“Aisha charts the experiences of a young Nigerian woman as she seeks international protection in Ireland. Caught in limbo for years in Ireland’s immigration system, Aisha Osagie develops a friendship with former prisoner Conor Healy, who she meets at one of the accommodation centers. Aisha and Conor’s growing friendship soon looks to be short-lived as Aisha’s future in Ireland comes under threat,” says the synopsis for Aisha.
Tyler Treese: What does it mean for you to be in this movie that is really going to open the eyes of a lot of people about the direct provision system? I had no clue about this. I spent all last night reading about it afterward.
Letita Wright: It means I did my job, firstly. If I can make you turn off the movie and then go research about it, which I’m happy about. It’s a positive thing for me that people could take this movie and learn from it. Have compassion towards people who go through these types of situations and hope that it can bring some real change. Do you know what I mean? Like not only for us as audience members to watch it, but also on different levels too. So it means I chose correctly to be a part of this film and I’m just really grateful that it can have some impact.
What really impressed me about Aisha was there were these really powerful moments of silence. The director really lets the scenes play out. He’s not afraid to sit with the characters. When you’re working with a director, where what’s unspoken is just as important as the dialogue that you have, how does that kind of play into you as an actor?
I love that you picked that up because I’ve been sharing with other people, too. That’s one of my most favorite things about this project. I feel like it’s a mixture of different things. It means that your director’s intelligent enough and like, uh, he trusts you enough to say words, not everything, and trusts me as an artist to have that entire in internal dialogue, uh, be going off and, and, and, and having the camera on me and just trusting it. It expands my skillset as an artist to not always depend on words but to know that once the truth is inside my character, the camera always picks up the truth and always picks up a lie. So that’s what I believe anyway.
Sometimes I’ll redo a take because I know I lied to the camera. I know it, and it, I, I may not have said anything, but I know that inside it wasn’t the truth. So to work with a director such as Frank, who trusts me in that way and also takes that approach, was really refreshing, and it really stretched me as an artist. I had to really bring my A-game internally in order for that to travel through to you when you watched it.
There’s this one scene in particular I wanted to ask about where your character unloads all this kind of pent-up aggression, sadness, and grief. She’s thrashing this room. How is it filming one of those scenes where you’re just doing a huge emotional dump? I imagine it’s just exhausting.
Oh man, it was tough. It was tough. I feel like it was a combination of different things that I was feeling in my own experience in my own life, the grief that I was carrying of losing someone that I really, really cared about. And then also like attaching that to the character. It was exhausting, of course, physically, but it allowed me to release, and everybody around me had to trust that I was gonna do it in a safe manner as well. But it was a lot. I remember that scene. I think I cut my hands and stuff. Like, it was a whole thing. I just really went, I just kind of let it out.
I wanted to ask you about working with Josh O’Connor in Aisha. What kind of stood out about him as a scene partner? Because you both have these great scenes where you’re really connecting and they’re mellow, but there’s an intensity into just how they connect as people.
I like Josh. Like Josh is real, you know? He’s not full of himself. He’s just a beautiful lad, great artist, and I just connect with people like that. It was very easy to work with him. I would love to work with him again. Something different but easy, easy. I have no bad notes, just all good ones. A great scene partner.
You have In the Shadows coming up, I’m so excited for that. It’s this amazing true story from the world of boxing. Obviously, there’s a great story there, but what excites you about that physical challenge and having to get in the ring and learn to box?
I’m so happy you’re asking me this question because we start filming soon and I’ve got all of this… Like, I’m shadowboxing everywhere. Again, I’m always trying to challenge myself. I’m always trying to find meaning in my stories, in my characters, but different worlds. I think what I love about this is, yeah, the physical challenge and testing myself too, but also falling in love with something that Ramla’s fought. So it’s been testing me, it’s been testing my strengths, it’s been testing my mentality. I’ve grown so much as a woman. Been training for a year, and I’m excited for people to see it.
