Sophie Okonedo broke down in tears when Clarissa received its Cannes Film Festival acceptance

Oscar-nominated actress Sophie Okonedo has spoken with deep emotion about the journey behind Clarissa, a bold reimagining of Virginia Woolf's 1925 novel Mrs. Dalloway, directed by Nigerian siblings Arie and Chuko Esiri.

The film, which screens in Cannes' Directors' Fortnight, transplants Woolf's quintessentially British period narrative to Lagos, blending a contemporary setting with flashbacks from 20 to 25 years earlier.

Okonedo stars as the title character — Clarissa being the heroine's Christian name — a society woman whose day unfolds as she prepares for a dinner party.

An emotional Cannes acceptance

When the news came through that the film had been selected, the reaction was overwhelming.

"I feel like I just finished making it, and, yeah, so that's bonkers. Me and Chuko and Arie, we were just like… I was in tears. I've never been to Cannes," Okonedo told Deadline.

"I've never, ever been — and to be going with this film! I said, 'If nothing else happens, this is more than we could ever wanted to happen to this film.' It was so hard to get off the ground. And tricky to get a film made in Nigeria.

"Obviously, they've got the huge Nollywood industry. But it's a different type of film to that, and to get a film made on 35mm, and shot with nearly all Nigerian crew, is just extraordinary. There were so many instances of, 'it nearly didn't happen,' right up until the wire, really."

A project years in the making

Okonedo's first conversation with the Esiri brothers took place around the time of the pandemic lockdown, after they made contact with her agent in America and shared a link to their debut feature, Eyimofe (This Is My Desire) (2020). Having watched the film, she agreed immediately to meet.

"So they came up with a few ideas they told me about, and then they mentioned doing a re-imagining of Mrs. Dalloway, that they were going to do in Lagos. And I was like, 'I'm in.'"

A gap of roughly eighteen months followed before a script arrived. Producer Theresa Park, known for Bones and All and Roar, subsequently came on board and the financing was eventually secured. Chuko Esiri later visited Okonedo in Sussex and attended her performance in Medea at Soho Place theatre in early 2023.

Shot on 35mm with a Nigerian crew

The decision to shoot on 35mm film — rather than digital — added considerable complexity to an already challenging production.

"Each step of the way, when they came through with the script, I thought, well, this is amazing. Just to get this far, this is great. And then when we completed it, I thought, I feel like I've massively achieved something already," Okonedo said.

On the Esiris' boldness in choosing film over digital, she added: "They are bold. They're very bold. They're not like me. I'm full of working-class insecurities, and they're not really like that. They believe in themselves, and they are very singular with their kind of vision."

Discovering Mrs. Dalloway anew

Okonedo was candid about her evolving relationship with Woolf's source material.

"I didn't get it at all, the book. I read it when I was young. I had no idea what the hell it was going on about. Then I read it at my age now and it knocked my socks off," she said, adding that Woolf's ability to compress an entire half-lifetime of feeling into a single moment resonated profoundly with her at this stage of life.

In preparation for filming, Okonedo retraced Mrs. Dalloway's famous walk through London two days before travelling to Lagos, hoping to carry a sense of wonder from one city to the other. As it turned out, Lagos provided more than enough of its own.

Immersing herself in Lagos

Okonedo had not visited Nigeria in over 20 years prior to the production. She stayed with the Esiri brothers and their mother throughout filming, intent on absorbing as much as possible of a culture she had not grown up within.

"I thought, how are we ever going to make a film here? But there's a kind of exuberance and an energy there," she said, describing the experience as personally transformative.

On the question of accent, the directors' instructions were characteristically direct. "They said, 'Oh no, just sound like a posh version of you,'" Okonedo recalled. When one of the actors questioned whether Western audiences would accept the film's Lagos milieu of upscale restaurants and Western-influenced culture, the Esiris were unequivocal: "We don't care. This is what we're doing."

A stellar cast

The film features David Oyelowo as Peter, the great love of Clarissa's life, alongside Ted Lasso star Toheeb Jimoh as the younger Peter. Fortune Nwafor plays Septimus Warren Smith, the shell-shocked young soldier whose parallel story runs alongside Clarissa's — a role Okonedo described with considerable admiration.

A personal and cultural reckoning

For Okonedo, the experience of making Clarissa amounted to far more than a professional undertaking.

"Obviously, there's a part of me that's totally British, but there's also a part of me that's so Nigerian, and because I haven't spent time there, I didn't understand that part until I went back. And this project has been so meaningful to me on a personal level that anything that happens with it afterwards is just extra," she said.

Reflecting on the broader cultural significance of transposing a canonical work of British literature to a former Commonwealth nation, Okonedo mused on the idea of moving beyond what she described as a Western-centric lens.

"You know, it really does feel like that. And also, when I was there… You just get such a kind of European or American-centric view [in the West], but when I was there you realize, f*ck, there's this whole other world where stuff is happening all the time," she said.

"I came away thinking, maybe I just should go and do the Nollywood format and try and create something like that but using the stories that I want to tell… I've been so concentrated on 'the Western gaze' and perhaps that's no longer where it's at."