In Full Bloom

SHE MAY HAVE SHOT TO SUDDEN STARDOM WITH AN OSCAR-NOMINATED PERFORMANCE IN LOVING, BUT DON’T MISTAKE RUTH NEGGA FOR AN INGENUE.

- Thomas Beller

It is Mother’s Day in New Orleans when I meet Ruth Negga for lunch at a tidy place uptown called Kenton’s. A hot, humid day, early afternoon. She has been in town for a month shooting the second season of AMC’s show Preacher, living in a large, crumbling castle that sits incongruously near Audubon Park.

In the cool air of the restaurant I give my name to the maître d’ and step aside to survey the room, which is filled with nicely dressed families in pink and seersucker blue and no one who looks like Ruth Negga. Then I turn around and see her directly behind me, slouching against the wall and removing her shades to peer into the room as I did a moment ago. She wears dark jeans, black patent leather loafers, and a thin dark gray crew neck sweater; it’s all rather somber except for the vibrantly colorful turban wrapped around her head.

She has walked over from the castle and is perhaps just starting to recover from the heat, but my first impression is of a radiantly bored adolescent, or maybe Buster Keaton faced with an unpleasant chore. For this reason I greet her laughing. She perks up right away, the first of many rippling transformations of her expressive face I will see today.