As those of us who have spent more time than usual at home over the last couple of years will know, those four walls can be a sanctuary, prison or, at times, both. Beautiful, monolithic and eerily empty, the house in the new BBC/HBO drama The Girl Before is definitely both. “The house,” says Gugu Mbatha-Raw with a laugh, “is the real star.” At one point in the first episode, Mbatha-Raw’s character Jane appears to have developed an intense relationship with it, caressing its smooth stone and glass. In The Girl Before, adapted from the bestselling psychological thriller by JP Delaney, Jane passes a rigorous vetting process before being allowed to rent this minimalist dream home. In return for cheap rent, she has to agree to around 200 strange and stringent rules set by the architect and owner. “No books?” she says, incredulous, when the estate agent reels off some of the stipulations (no pictures, no ornaments, “no children, obviously”). Jane will be watched, her every move and metric monitored, even her moods influenced, by the technologically advanced house and its creepy creator. She soon finds out that she is the second tenant – and she makes a chilling discovery about the first, Emma (played by Jessica Plummer). Mbatha-Raw does not seem so attached to houses. She bought one in Oxfordshire last year, but has barely had a chance to live there. She is, she says, “a nomad for work”. When we meet in a central London restaurant, Mbatha-Raw has not long returned from Vancouver where she was filming the lead role in Surface, a drama for Apple TV+. Before that, she was in Atlanta, filming the Marvel fantasy series Loki, in which she plays the judge Ravonna Renslayer. The fact that The Girl Before was so different to Loki appealed to her; from period drama to fantasy to Shakespeare to futuristic love stories (she starred in San Junipero, still regarded as the most uplifting episode of Black Mirror), Mbatha-Raw seems resistant to typecasting. “I’d never done a psychological thriller before,” she says, remembering when she read the script for The Girl Before. “I also loved the fact that it was female-driven; there wasn’t just one great female part, but two.” Both Emma and Jane have a relationship with the architect-owner, Edward, played by David Oyelowo, who is extremely controlling (and quite possibly murderous). Control seems to be the main theme, not just in Edward’s abusive coercive control-type behaviour, but something all the characters are trying to wrestle with, often as a result of grief or loss. “I looked at it as a journey for Jane, getting her power back,” says Mbatha-Raw. I can’t say I loved the book, with its nasty undercurrents and excruciatingly unsexy dialogue; Edward is not only extremely controlling, he is also a finickity bore, obsessed with limescale deposits and where his olive oil comes from. But if anyone can infuse him with grace and charisma, it’s Oyelowo, and the calibre of the team – not just the cast, but the director Lisa Brühlmann, who has directed episodes of Killing Eve – is reassuringly high. Mbatha-Raw, in her first producing role, brought Oyelowo, who is a friend, on board. She was also a producer on Surface, which is being made by Reese Witherspoon’s production company, Hello Sunshine. The experience of being a producer, she says, has been interesting, “because, in some ways it validates the opinions or ideas that you may have, but perhaps it’s not your place to say, or you’re encouraged to stay in your lane as an actor.” Has she felt unable to speak up before? “Not personally,” she says. “I know other actors who have felt that way.” Taking on a production role is also, as she told Variety last month in a wide-ranging piece concerning diversity in the British film and TV industry, about “trying to be the change myself”. Much of the conversation about diversity has been focused on what we see on screen, and while that has been slowly improving, “that doesn’t always represent every face behind the scenes”, Mbatha-Raw says now. “Acting is just one department of the entertainment industry, but it’s not all that there is. I’m just asking the question, curious to know how every other department that is less visible can still evolve and become as diverse.” It has an impact on stories that get told, and how they’re told. “Also, [it’s about] bringing up a generation of producers and gatekeepers, because they have much more power to steer the course of a production, and what it’s saying.” Mbatha-Raw has always been keen to fuel change, although she seems more likely to do this through her work and actions; in person, she is not guarded exactly, but speaks carefully, and elegantly sidesteps anything she doesn’t want to be drawn on. She was involved with the Time’s Up movement early on, “when nobody really knew what it was or what it would become. I care about people getting an equal chance to follow their dreams, essentially. All these issues ultimately are about power, and I care that that’s distributed evenly.” She had an early grounding in inequality and injustice. Her father had been a student ANC activist in South Africa. With the threat of being imprisoned, he fled and finished his medical training in the UK and became a doctor. When her parents’ marriage broke down, Mbatha-Raw, an only child, mainly grew up with her mother, a nurse, but saw her father and was aware of some of what he had been through. “As a young child, your understanding of the world is limited, but my dad would tell me in South Africa under apartheid, you are politicised at birth. As an adult, you understand the larger context of history in terms of the times in which [he was] born. I’m very grateful to my dad, and his perspective on the world. I think it’s always grounded me, to know how fortunate I am to be born in the times that I have been, and the fights of previous generations.” News and politics, she says, “were always visitors at our dinner table, and I’m really thankful for that more global perspective”. Mbatha-Raw remembers a conversation she had with Gina Prince-Bythewood, who directed her in the 2014 film Beyond the Lights, in which she plays a pop star dealing with fame. That film “was about misogyny in the music industry, essentially. Gina always said [a film] has to be about something bigger than you, and that really stuck with me. It’s great fun, acting, but I think what sustains you in the long haul is also knowing that you’re part of an artistic expression that really has the chance to move culture forward.” You can see this in most of her work: in Belle, she played the mixed-race daughter of an admiral, raised in 18th-century aristocratic English society, which broadened the vision of what British period dramas could be. In the Apple TV+ drama The Morning Show, she explored not just the devastating impact, but also the grey areas, of sexual assault. In last year’s Misbehaviour, about the feminists who disrupted the 1970 Miss World contest, she played Jennifer Hosten, the first Black winner. There cannot be many actors who have worked with as many female directors (and particularly female directors of colour) as Mbatha-Raw. Luck has played a big part, she says, but adds, “I’m very deliberate with my choices”. As a child, it was dancing that Mbatha-Raw loved. Growing up in Witney, Oxfordshire, she started ballet at the age of four, and she still has the posture of a dancer. When she was 11, she starred as Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz in a local drama group production, and decided she wanted to be a performer. It was only on leaving Rada that she thought about film and TV; her main interest was musicals and theatre. “There’s a magic to it: you get to dress up, express yourself and hang out with fun people, then people clap at the end.” She smiles: “Hopefully. It’s just a joyful place to be.” Mbatha-Raw seems so self-contained, not like someone who needs the attention of an audience. She wraps up, about to leave with as little fuss as she arrived. “I think it’s a misconception that people do it because they want attention. I always did it to express myself. I had all this energy and it was a place to put it, and it was fun. I’m sure part of me enjoyed the attention but that wasn’t really my motivation,” she says. “It was more how it made me feel.”