{"id":34271,"date":"2023-06-25T09:00:54","date_gmt":"2023-06-25T07:00:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.radiotimes.com\/?p=1849161"},"modified":"2023-06-26T03:48:04","modified_gmt":"2023-06-26T01:48:04","slug":"letitia-wright-on-new-western-surrounded-and-working-with-the-late-michael-k-williams","status":"publish","type":"rss_feed","link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/rss_feed\/letitia-wright-on-new-western-surrounded-and-working-with-the-late-michael-k-williams\/","title":{"rendered":"Letitia Wright on new Western Surrounded and working with the late Michael K Williams"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Black Panther star plays emancipated slave and former Buffalo Soldier Mo Washington in the new Western \u2013\u00a0which she also produced. <\/p>

By Adam Davidson\n \t\t<\/p>

Published: Sunday, 25 June 2023 at 12:00 am<\/p>

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Letitia Wright might have achieved global recognition and critical acclaim for her portrayal of Shuri in the MCU<\/a> \u2013 but the award-winning Guyanese-British actor is not afraid to mix it up and work on smaller independent movies.<\/p>\n

In the past couple of years, she\u2019s starred in films like The Silent Twins and Aisha, allowing her to tell important stories that haven\u2019t been told before \u2013 and this is clearly something that she\u2019s eminently passionate about.<\/p>\n

\u201cI love projects that feel different to what I\u2019ve done in the past, and what I haven\u2019t seen,\u201d she explains in an exclusive interview with RadioTimes.com<\/a>. \u201cI just really love the opportunity to do something different and kind of be a chameleon and do something absolutely left-field from what I\u2019m used to.\u201d<\/p>\n

This ethos towards her acting has now led Wright to Surrounded, a Western that centres around emancipated slave and former Buffalo Soldier Mo Washington, who disguises herself as a man as she travels West to lay claim on a gold mine.<\/p>\n

Mo is loosely based on the life of Cathay Williams, a former house slave who posed as a man under the pseudonym of William Cathay to enlist in the army, and the film follows her after she survives an ambush on a stagecoach and is forced to hold infamous outlaw Tommy Walsh (Jamie Bell) captive whilst the surviving passengers seek help from the nearest town.<\/p>

Of course, when you conjure images of Westerns throughout cinematic history, you may well first think of leading men such as John Wayne, Henry Fonda or Clint Eastwood, perhaps saving a town from a ruthless outlaw or saving a damsel in distress.<\/p>\n

Surrounded subverts these genre expectations: Wright enters almost uncharted territory as a Black woman leading a Western as her character challenges preconceptions about race and gender in the Antebellum period.<\/p>\n

\u201cMo Washington is challenging those ways of thinking by existing and her bravery to exist and her bravery to just go into these environments where it could go really wrong for her,\u201d says Wright.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think the way that we deal with the topics and the subject matters of the film, they\u2019re great and they\u2019re challenging but I love how Mo Washington is cutting through that on her journey.\u201d<\/p>\n

There are few examples of Westerns centering around a Black lead, with The Harder They Fall, Blazing Saddles and Wild Wild West being a few of the noticeable exceptions. However, Wright is keen to talk about the importance of entering the conversation in this genre.<\/p>\n