{"id":62206,"date":"2021-11-12T19:40:01","date_gmt":"2021-11-12T19:40:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=62206"},"modified":"2021-11-12T19:40:02","modified_gmt":"2021-11-12T19:40:02","slug":"passing-ruth-negga-refuses-to-be-pinned-down","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=62206","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Passing,\u2019 Ruth Negga refuses to be pinned down"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u2018Passing,\u2019 Ruth Negga refuses to be pinned down<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

The Los Angeles Times<\/a>
\n2021-11-11<\/p>\n

Sonaiya Kelley<\/strong><\/a>, Staff Writer<\/p>\n

<\/a>
Actress Ruth Negga<\/a> stars in \u201cPassing<\/a>,\u201d now streaming on Netflix. (Jason Armond \/ Los Angeles Times<\/em>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Ruth Negga<\/a> has given the subject of identity a lot of thought.<\/p>\n

And not just because she stars as Clare Kendry, a fair-skinned Black woman who moves through life as a white woman<\/a>, in \u201cPassing<\/a>,\u201d Rebecca Hall\u2019s<\/a> adaptation of Nella Larsen\u2019s 1929 novel<\/a>. No, Negga\u2019s musings on identity stem back to her childhood in Ireland<\/a> and England<\/a>, where she was first introduced to the concept of being othered.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo be honest, I\u2019ve never fit in anywhere,\u201d she said over Zoom in October. \u201cI think being Black in Ireland when there wasn\u2019t that many Black people and being Black and Irish in London<\/a> at an all-white school in the early \u201990s wasn\u2019t great for me either.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the same time, being hard to categorize has not always been a bad thing, she says. \u201cI think sometimes there is a pleasure I get in being different. I felt safe being the other in many ways because that\u2019s where I could be my whole, true self.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Ethiopian-Irish actor frequently upends notions of social constructs such as race and identity in her work. In \u201cPassing,\u201d which is set in the 1920s, Clare enjoys the privileges afforded only to white women by day while sneaking off to Harlem to commune with Black folks by night (Tessa Thompson<\/a> co-stars as Irene, a woman who only flirts with the possibility of passing<\/a>). And in 2016\u2019s \u201cLoving<\/a>,\u201d Negga stars as Mildred Jeter<\/a>, a woman in an interracial marriage who challenges the Supreme Court to end the anti-miscegenation laws<\/a> that condemn her marriage as unlawful…<\/p>\n

Read the entire interview here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ruth Negga has given the subject of identity a lot of thought.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,24,395,28,13743,8,6462,10,20,25],"tags":[81,246,3909,87,29469,28879,827,32360,19672,13272],"class_list":["post-62206","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-arts","category-autobiography","category-europe","category-interviews","category-media-archive","category-passing-2","category-uk","category-usa","category-women","tag-england","tag-ireland","tag-los-angeles-times","tag-nella-larsen","tag-netflix","tag-rebecca-hall","tag-ruth-negga","tag-sonaiya-kelley","tag-tessa-thompson","tag-the-los-angeles-times"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62206","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=62206"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62206\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62207,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62206\/revisions\/62207"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=62206"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=62206"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=62206"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}