“I told
Phoebe that
I wanted to
represent a
woman who
was going
through
real issues” THIS PAGE: LASHANA WEARS JUMPSUIT, GALVAN. OPPOSITE: EVENING DRESS, GIVENCHY. EARRINGS, BULGARI“I think it comes with
playing positions of power on
screen,” Lynch says matter-
of-factly when we meet in a
hotel restaurant on an icy New
York morning. “No one likes
change, particularly a small
amount of white people who
have a lot to say about the
black experience. But none of
that has anything to do with
me personally. It could have
been another black woman
cast and the comments would
have been the same.”
Dressed all in black (knitted
dress, trainers, baker boy hat),
Lynch is decidedly unstarry- a couple of times during our
conversation she breaks out,
unannounced, into an upper-
body robot dance. She has a
smart, dry sense of humour
and exudes a genuine warmth
that makes you want to pour
your heart out to her – “I’m a
hugger,” she says, enveloping
me at the end of our chat.
It’s approaching lunchtime
but Lynch, a pescatarian,
isn’t feeling great and doesn’t
think “that anything needs
to go in my stomach. Sorry,
I’m very TMI.”
Yet for all her openness,
there’s a steeliness, too. Ask
a question that she doesn’t
want to answer (she won’t,
for example, talk about
her personal life) and she
politely but very firmly
steers the conversation in a
different direction.
It’s her no-nonsense mother
and grandmother who
Lynch credits with shaping
her own frank approach to life,
as well as the fact that the
headteachers of her primary,
secondary and drama schools
were all women. “I had really good
examples of what I was able to do, not
what my barriers were.” When she
began acting, she says, “It didn’t make
sense to me when you hear of people
having a hard time casting a woman
in a specific role or struggling to
communicate with someone because
she’s a feminist. My experience had just
been open and female and wonderful.”
The youngest of three siblings born
to Jamaican parents in west London
(her mum was a senior housing
officer, her dad a social worker), Lynch
“only felt British outside the house”.
The rest of the time it was “Jamaican
language, food and discipline, which
is direct but calm”. She enjoyed school,
especially sport (“I can be quite feisty
on the netball court”), but remembers
grappling with her appearance.
“Hair was a massive factor,” she says.
“I’ve always had natural hair, which is
a big deal for a black girl... I used to
do canerows and curls, which was
wonderful at the time, but in retrospect,
you realise you’re trying to channel
someone other than yourself.”
It was at primary school that Lynch
decided she wanted to act, took part inall the school plays and then enrolled
at the Arts Educational Schools in
Chiswick. Her break came in 2012,
when she made her big-screen debut in
Fast Girls, a feel-good British film about
a female sprint relay team training for
the World Championships. She went
on to audition for Black Panther and
Spider-Man: Homecoming before landing
the role of Maria Rambeau in Captain
Marvel – the first female-led Marvel film
in the franchise – opposite Brie Larson.
And now, in its 25th release, directed
by Cary Joji Fukunaga, she is poised to
revolutionise Bond, too. With No Time04-20-Arts-LashanaLynch_1971618.indd 96 30/01/2020 08:26