"Winnie Mandela Terrified Me"

Wife of Late Nelson Mandela, Winnie has been known for her different faces in dealing with situations and people.  Now 77, Winnie Mandela is simultaneously an adored icon and a loathed figurehead, an initially apolitical innocent who became a defiant demagogue, crying for bloody revenge.

 Movie star, Naomi Harris recently said “They said the Mandela movie’s been green lit, you’re going to be Winnie and we start filming two days after you finish Bond,” she recalls. “I said…” Harris’s voice squeaks in shock… “‘Really?’” The surprise was the film Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom, in which Harris co-stars alongside Idris Elba, was actually going into production. It had been 16 years in “development”, with various directors and actors attached at different points.



“When I came on board they were thinking of Denzel Washington for Nelson Mandela,” says Harris, drinking hot water in a London hotel suite, the morning before Mandela’s death was announced. “When they asked: ‘Would you like to play Winnie?’ I said: ‘Great!’, because, firstly, I thought: ‘I’m never going to hear from these guys.’ And secondly, I just thought Winnie was Nelson’s wife. I had no idea,” – Harris stresses these words – “how controversial she is.” 

But then Elba arranged for Harris to meet Winnie. “It was nerve-racking. She’s a formidable woman, so it was scary to sit down with her. But she was completely different to what I imagined her to be. She loves gardening and has found peace.”