Jodie Turner-Smith 'has no time for assholes' as she reflects on her career
Jodie Turner-Smith never wanted to be an actress.
The 38-year-old, who was born in England but moved to the States when she was 10 following her parents’ divorce, initially worked in a bank after completing a finance degree at Pittsburgh University. However, it was a chance encounter with Pharrell Williams – who she met through a mutual friend at a NERD concert – that saw her life pivot onto a whole new path. He encouraged her to go into modelling – and her "leap first, look later" approach saw her move to LA.
Tall, lithe and effortlessly striking (even when she pleads exhaustion as we sit down for our interview), it’s little wonder Turner-Smith found success working with brands including Levi's, Alaïa and The Row. While she had a cameo in cult series True Blood in 2013, it was a chance audition she had for The Neon Demon which made Turner-Smith realise that acting was something she wanted to do full-time.
Initial roles included appearances in the popular American TV dramas Mad Dogs, Nightflyers and Jett, but it was Melina Matsoukas’s 2019 directorial debut, Queen and Slim, which really saw Turner-Smith catapulted into the mainstream, holding her own opposite the Academy Award-winning actor Daniel Kaluuya. The layered and nuanced observation of police brutality and racism in America elevated the actress beyond supporting roles, cementing her status as a leading lady – and rightly so.
Having landed roles in Murder Mystery 2 and The Independent (not to mention a memorable cameo in Netflix’s Sex Education as God), Turner-Smith is making a return to television in Paramount Plus’s The Agency. She stars as Sami, the love interest of a deep cover spy, played by Michael Fassbender.
Sitting down with a matcha tea in hand, Turner-Smith reflects back on her career to date with Harper’s Bazaar.
“I got the acting bug…
...after an audition. It was for a film called The Neon Demon – I didn’t actually get the role; the part went to [the Australian model and actress] Abbey Lee. But when I was auditioning, I had access to something that I don’t think I’d ever accessed before. I felt so empowered and happy, because I had found something I enjoyed, and felt fulfilled in doing. That audition was really the first time where I was like, ‘Oh no, I love this. Like, I love this.’ It wasn’t something I was trying my hand at.”
“The project that changed my life was…
...Queen and Slim. It just changed the conversation around me and got so many more eyeballs on me. I will forever be grateful for that film.”
“The project I hold closest to my heart…
It’s so hard just to pick one. I go into every project and say to myself: ‘I'm very curious about the woman I'm going to be at the end of this’. I feel like, with every project I do, I learn, grow – I get better. My goal is to be a student and to keep learning. But I’m grateful for so many projects I’ve done. When I did After Yang, that lead to me working with the director Kogonada three times and that was lovely. I also value The Independent, as I got to work with Brian Cox, who I learned so much from and is now a friend of mine for life.
"Then I look at a film like White Noise and the relationships that came from that, working with people like Greta Gerwig, Adam Driver and Dom Cheadle. And then getting to do Murder Mystery 2 was honestly one of the most fun movies I’ve ever done. I laughed every day and got to see how veteran actors like Adam Sandler and Jennifer Aniston – who really is the coolest person in the world – perform. All of it is so precious to me.”
“My role models in acting are…
Certainly the actors I've worked with have all been role models for me to look at, and see what they're doing and how they’re working, as well as the way they treat me and everyone around them. My mother is my biggest role model. She's taught me for many years, and she still teaches me. When people get older, they tend to calcify into who they are, and become stuck. My mother shows me time and time again that she is constantly evolving, and that inspires me.”
“The best acting advice I’ve had…
I always have it in my head that I’m here to learn. As long as I keep that in the forefront of my mind, it helps me to have the best experience. When you're a student, I think that there's just so much more to gain, because you realise that everyone has something to offer, and you can learn something from anyone.”
“It’s important to work with people who…
...love what they do and aren’t assholes. Life is hard when you go and you do a film or television production – you're away from your family, your friends, and you're putting in all this effort. I love to work with people who take that into their work and don’t have a stick up their ass about it. Acting is a chance to create empathy and affect people emotionally. That is an honourable thing to do, but it's definitely not something to make you feel like you are the most important person in the world. I want to work with people that love what they do, who respect the fact that these are people’s jobs and they’re not dicks. It’s so boring when people are dicks.”
“I cope with fame by…
I mean, there’s no coping with it. it's the thing that you must accept by being in the public eye. Everybody has a different method for it. I'm still figuring out. I've literally been doing this for what feels like all of two seconds. But the most important thing that I can really do is always centre the fact that I'm a human being. I'm not perfect – I’m not trying to be perfect. I'm just having my human experience. I'm not always going to get it right. But I'm not better than anybody, and nobody's better than me. What am I going to do, live in a cave? I mean, I too, would like to go to the supermarket. Some people are really good at navigating it all, and a lot of those people have been doing it for a lot longer than me. I'm still figuring it out. I've no idea what I'm doing.”
“I would support my daughter if she went into acting…
...if that’s what she wanted to do. I don’t necessarily want her to do it as a child. Children have to be protected, and you have to go to greater lengths to protect children if you’re going to expose them to this industry as they’re still developing. My daughter is a nepo baby. If she’s offered a role, it’d be much better than her auditioning. You also have to consider the internet and the whole weight of the world coming and telling you they don't like you. Or they're telling you that they like you, which isn't always good either. I want to protect her from that as much as I can, but I’m not going to stand in the way of anything she wants to do. I also recognise that she is privileged, so she might have opportunities that other people don't have – but I've worked really fucking hard for my daughter to be a nepo baby, so I'm not mad at that.”
“When it comes to filming TV shows versus making films...
If you asked me a year ago, I’d have said I preferred making films. However, The Agency is the first TV project in a very long time that I've signed up for beyond one season. Filming television can go on for a long time. And I've always been like, ‘Okay, not into it.’ But if you find a project you love, you're like, ‘Sign me up for five fucking years, because this is really cool. Look who I'm working with. This is amazing.’
"Also, the landscape has changed. There's so much good television because there's all the streamers – it's different than it was 15 or 20 years ago. You've got movie stars like Michael Fassbender now working on fucking great television shows.”
“The Agency appealed to me because…
...0ff the bat, I saw Joe Wright was directing and Michael Fassbender was starring, so that was extremely appealing. Then I checked out the source material. That was further appeal. Scripts, very appealing. It was just like, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick.”
"I have to thank Joe Wright – he thought of me for the role and he reached out to me to audition. I still had to go through the process. Auditioning can be one big circle of hell – it’s like actor-hazing. I joke – but I was super interested in this character and working with an actor like Michael.”
“Working with Michael Fassbender…
...was amazing. He's a legend, he's kind, he's generous, and he looks after you. He makes work fun. Sometimes people – and I’m sure they don’t mean to do it intentionally – don't make it that fun to work with because they're so in their own thing that it's not enjoyable. Michael's just not that guy. It’s fun to work with him. I also feel empowered. He's very encouraging, generous and great. I loved it.”
The Agency is available to stream exclusively on Paramount+
You Might Also Like
