For Thuso Mbedu, the road that led to T
he Underground Railroad was marked by trauma. But like the series itself, her journey affirms the hardy human spirit (as seen in her tattoo that reads: Faith, Hope, Love).
Candice Frederick
There's a moment in
The Underground Railroad that is so visceral it may linger in your mind long after you see it.
Cora (Thuso Mbedu), a formerly enslaved runaway, walks slowly toward her estranged mother (Sheila Atim) and slashes her throat with a surgical blade.
This vivid, stunning dream sequence — one of many in Barry Jenkins's sprawling adaptation of Colson Whitehead's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel — illuminates Cora's inner turmoil. Her mother, Mabel, fled the Georgia plantation where they were both enslaved, leaving 11-year-old Cora to suffer alone as a Black child in pre-Civil War America.