The Women of SINNERS

The appetite for Sinners has been ravenous, to say the least. Released in April and now one of the highest-grossing horror movies of all time, Ryan Coogler’s film is an erotic fever dream of vampires, romance, and blues, starring Michael B. Jordan in a dual role as Smoke and Stack, twins who return home from Prohibition-era Chicago to open a juke joint in 1932 Mississippi.

- Jayme Lawson, Wunmi Mosaku, and Hailee Steinfeld

On Wunmi Mosaku: Dress, 132 5. ISSEY MIYAKE. Earrings, watch, BULGARI. Boots, BALENCIAGA.

And yet, as has become a signature of writer-director Coogler (Black Panther), it is often women’s motives, flaws, and desires that drive the story.

Wunmi Mosaku—who made a lasting impression in Lovecraft Country and Loki—is both soft and unflinching as Annie, a hoodoo healer mourning the child she lost with Smoke. Hailee Steinfeld—Oscar-nominated at 14 for True Grit and a subtle, magnetic lead in The Edge of Seventeen, the Apple TV series Dickinson, and Marvel Studio’s Hawkeye—embodies the duality of otherness as Stack’s mixed-race lover, Mary. Jayme Lawson, whose star rose after her role in The Batman and The Penguin, is Pearline, a swaggering lounge singer who seduces young bluesman Sammie and gets entangled in the supernatural chaos.

The ancestral music montage! The spit-in-your-mouth scene! Months later, the movie’s costars remain as awestruck as we were watching them onscreen. Gathered on the rooftop of Fouquet’s New York hotel in Tribeca, they talk about the cultural impact of Sinners, still resonating more than eight months after its release.

ELLE: How wild was reading the Sinners script?