Naomi Ackie Is Going Through It

Naomi Ackie is beat. Five movies in under two years will do that to a person. But that’s what happens when you’re one of the most in-demand actors in the industry, someone who loves the work even when it doesn’t always love her back. Her latest is I Love Boosters, Boots Riley’s polemic about a trio of Bay Area shoplifters (Keke Palmer and Taylour Paige costar) taking aim at a cutthroat fashion mogul played by Demi Moore. Over lunch at a restaurant in Hampstead, she caught up with her Sorry, Baby director and costar Eva Victor, a friend who understands what it means to pour yourself into something and wonder why you do it at all.

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MONDAY, 11:00 AM, APRIL 20, 2026, LONDON

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NAOMI ACKIE: How have you been?

EVA VICTOR: I’m okay. Whatever.

ACKIE: Talk to me.

VICTOR: I feel lonely. I literally have been with one movie this whole time, and you’ve done like eight.

ACKIE: [Laughs] I have not done eight. Hi. Yes, can I get a cappuccino?

SERVER: Would you like chocolate on top?

ACKIE: Yeah, sure. Thank you.

VICTOR: Chocolate on top of your cappuccino? Stop.

ACKIE: I feel like we need to behave. I’ve just stopped working.

VICTOR: That’s what you said last year. You’re like, “I’m taking a break.”

ACKIE: That was two months. This one will probably be four to six. A proper break. I’m so tired.

VICTOR: You don’t look tired.

ACKIE: I feel a little crazy.

VICTOR: You’ve been working for four years straight, all over the world.

ACKIE: It’s my favorite but it’s not, if that makes sense. No, I love work.

VICTOR: We all love work.

ACKIE: Maybe I’m just getting older?

VICTOR: How old are you now?

ACKIE: Nearly 35. Maybe it’s just my battery.

VICTOR: Or maybe it’s what you’re willing to put up with.

ACKIE: That has shifted.

VICTOR: I fucking bet.

ACKIE: I’ve been doing this job for 10 years and you can’t un-know what you know. Since I last saw you, I did [I Love] Boosters, Shelter, Clayface, Sugar, and To Make Ends Meat. I’ve done five films.

VICTOR: How? I didn’t know you did five films.

ACKIE: But the last three were the big ones, and on every job I had a different personality.

VICTOR: Well, I saw I Love Boosters last week, and you’re so fucking good in it. I think you’re a movie star.

ACKIE: Stop it!

VICTOR: I’m constantly jaw-dropped at what you can do that’s so different from what you just did. You have insane access to your instrument. I’ve spent a year trying to figure out how you do that.

ACKIE: My confidence has improved. I did say to a friend the other day, “I think I can do anything.” I was like, “Nothing feels too far away.” I don’t know whether it will be perceived that way, but I feel like I can give anything a good crack.

VICTOR: There’s something magic about how you are.

ACKIE: That’s nice. I don’t feel magical, ever.

VICTOR: Really?

ACKIE: No, but I do think if you know yourself, you can do anything.

VICTOR: Say way more.

ACKIE: It’s not even knowing yourself. If you’re really honest with where you’re at, how you’re feeling, what your capacity is, you can literally do anything. Obviously, if a script comes to me and I’m like, “Ah, it’s not really my vibe,” that’s different from “I don’t think I can do it.”

VICTOR: So when you say honest with yourself, is it about being honest about, as a person, what you’re working on, or is it about what you can’t do?

ACKIE: Yeah, and also knowing when you’re scared, knowing when you’re contradicting yourself, knowing when you’re being a dick, knowing when the ugly feeling comes up and you want to push it away, but you’re like, “No, let me sit with it for a bit; let me explore.” And then you start to understand how you work.

VICTOR: Whoa.

ACKIE: Energy-wise, I can get easily depleted at the end of a day, or sometimes I push too hard, because I just want to be loved. Don’t we all?

VICTOR: [Laughs]

ACKIE: I’m just desperate to be loved. [Laughs]

VICTOR: That’s the core of everyone’s thing. The way it manifests is psychotically different in everyone.

ACKIE: My thing is “Push whatever you’re going through to the side.” Don’t be scary, don’t be assertive. Make people laugh. Ask questions. And I love doing that, to be fair. And when it’s vibey, like with us, it’s a joy. Then you can fully enjoy someone else’s sunshine, your sunshine, the crew’s sunshine, the cast’s sunshine, and you don’t feel like it’s being drained. But if you’re in the wrong space—I would say in the last few months, I’ve been—

SERVER: Would you like to order anything?

VICTOR: You know what? I do want something. I’m scared to say it out loud, but Eggvocado.

SERVER: Yeah, sure.

VICTOR: Gluten-free?

SERVER: That’s no problem.

VICTOR: Thank you.

SERVER: We garnish that dish with some chili and chives. Is that okay?

VICTOR: Yeah. You were saying, it’s about walking into a room and knowing the vibe.

ACKIE: Yeah. In the last few jobs I’ve been like, “I’m not going to push. I can’t fix this.” And also, there was nothing wrong with those sets.

VICTOR: It’s just a different vibe.

ACKIE: I was in a different space. And instead of going, “You’re feeling vulnerable, you’re in a bad mood, and you’re going to just push it off,” I was like, “I’m just going to exist in this space.” It doesn’t mean I’m going to be like, “Fuck you,” but if I don’t want to talk, I don’t want to talk.

VICTOR: I’m not going to push against my instincts right now.

ACKIE: This was the first time I realized sets are sometimes really overstimulating. Surprise! They deeply tickle something in my brain where I’m like, there’s too many people, there’s too much energy.

VICTOR: Totally.

ACKIE: And my big thing, sensory-wise, is—you know this when you’re on a set, you’re an actor, and you’re getting—

VICTOR: Touched.

ACKIE: Touched. And there are things that need to be fixed—all things that are really important—but also it’s your body and you’re a human being and it’s not normal. I started saying, “Hey, I get particularly overstimulated and feel like I’m dissociating to a certain level when I’m being touched by four people at the same time. Can we do it so it’s one person touching me at a time, so I don’t have so many bodies?” I genuinely loved the last three jobs I did. I wanted to be quiet, and I said,“Can I have a space?”

VICTOR: Like a room.

ACKIE: It doesn’t have to be big. On one of the jobs, I ended up sitting outside in a little Sprinter van. I sat there quietly, and then they’d say, “You’re needed.” Then, “Okay, I’m going to go and do this.”

VICTOR: I am very inspired by that because the sensory thing is legit insane.

ACKIE: Can I just pause you for a second and say I’ve watched Sorry, Baby now a few times? My boyfriend hadn’t seen it so we watched it together.

VICTOR: What did he think?

ACKIE: Loved it. Can I say this right now? A travesty that Eva Victor was not nominated for an Oscar. I’m saying it.

VICTOR: You know what?

ACKIE: Actual travesty. Sorry, Baby has been out for a year and a half, right?

VICTOR: That really scares me. Time and how it moves.

ACKIE: It went so quickly.

VICTOR: I’m feeling really weird.

ACKIE: Isn’t that relativity? The faster you move, the faster time goes. I learned that from Project Hail Mary. [Laughs] The last year and a half, I can understand why you’ve got whiplash. The natural flow of life is, you say something once and then you move on. You are having to recycle the same bubble again and again and again, having to present yourself in the same way you did a year and a half ago.

VICTOR: It’s a bit like Groundhog Day. But then I think about how many days you’re physically on set, then how press so quickly overtakes how much work you did on set. My only comfort is that it took me a year to make a movie, so I’ve done press for a year. It’s still so depressing, but at least I got to work on it for a year.

ACKIE: What did that do to your mind? What did that do to your body? How are you replenishing yourself now?

VICTOR: Working on figuring that out. Maybe you have ideas.

ACKIE: Oh, we’re going to talk.

VICTOR: It posed an existential question for me: Why do I want to do this? What is the point?

ACKIE: That’s a big one. The hard part is that our job is art, yes. Also, business.

VICTOR: It’s seriously a business. The end of the film cycle is all about business, so you can’t remember that it was about something else. It morphs it.

ACKIE: And it’s necessary, but it’s also like you have to flip this switch. I feel like even as a writer, you’re aware of a budget.

VICTOR: Well, that’s what I want to talk about, too.

ACKIE: But the why is confusing because there are moments on a set—I think about it with you, with the panic attack scene in Sorry, Baby. And then the sandwich scene with—

VICTOR: John Carroll Lynch.

ACKIE: And how beautiful that whole sequence is. I put myself in your shoes and I go, “Ah, this is why I do it.”

VICTOR: Really?

ACKIE: That is one of my favorite parts of the film.

VICTOR: That’s cool.

ACKIE: I remember when I did Lady Macbeth. The first three days I was walking down hallways, opening windows, and I was like, “This doesn’t feel right.” There are these filler moments, and that’s how I sometimes see press and self-promotion. Then you get these drops of inspiration that connect you to something bigger.

VICTOR: It would be insane to do otherwise. But when you read a script, what is your experience? Because your taste is insane.

ACKIE: That’s my team. If they like it, I will read it and I’ll go, “Oh, I get why you like it.”

VICTOR: So you have an aligned group?

ACKIE: Yeah. They’re so good it’s to the point where not a lot of scripts come my way anymore.

VICTOR: Because they’re like, “She can’t do this. She’s too good.”

ACKIE: Right now I’m in a space where I need something scary again.

VICTOR: What are you looking for?

ACKIE: I’m looking for something intimidating.

VICTOR: I don’t even know what that would look like for you.

ACKIE: The last time I said that, it was Whitney [Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody], so I’ve got to be careful.

VICTOR: It was Whitney?

ACKIE: Yeah. Right now I’m existing and trying to be comfortable with not doing anything. Right after, I’m so wired and I wake up and I feel guilty because I haven’t done anything with the day and I’m numbing out on TikTok.

VICTOR: Me too.

ACKIE: And I’m sitting in bed until 10:00 and that’s fine. All of these things are fine.

VICTOR: “What should I be doing?” It’s the should.

ACKIE: It’s like, “I should have done this. I should have done that.” No, today I existed. That’s enough. I’m in my do-one-thing-a-day era. This is the only thing I’m doing. Nothing else.

VICTOR: I really like that. I’m so lucky to be the thing.

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Hair: James Catalano using Hair By Sam McKnight at The Wall Group. 

Makeup: Nikki Wolff using L’Oreal at A-Frame Agency.

Nails: Sabrina Gayle using Bio Sculpture at Arch the Agency.

Prop Stylist: Paula Salinas Arnau.

Photography Assistant: Rita Minima Fitton.

Fashion Assistants: Tilley Sampson and Thomas Renshaw.

Makeup Assistant: Holly Hamilton.

Fashion Intern: Jess Stern.

Production Direction: Alexandra Weiss.

Photography Production: Georgia Ford.

On-set Production: Phoebe Asker.