The New Yorker’s Illustration Of ‘Sinners’ Actress Wunmi Mosaku Is The Visual Version Of The N-Word [Op-Ed]
At the BAFTAs, the N-word was shouted out loud in a crowded auditorium. In the New Yorker, it arrives in illustration. The post The New Yorker’s Illustration Of ‘Sinners’ Actress Wunmi Mosaku Is The Visual Version Of The N-Word [Op-Ed] appeared first on MadameNoire.
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When readers opened the latest edition of the New Yorker and saw the illustrated portrait accompanying its profile of Wunmi Mosaku, many had the same immediate reaction: Who is that supposed to be?
The drawing, rendered in the magazine’s familiar editorial illustration style, shows Mosaku standing stiffly in front of shelves of apothecary jars. She wears a loose blue jacket over a plain shirt. The clothing is shapeless, and her posture is rigid. Her expression is muted. Her features are flattened almost to the point of anonymity.
Without the caption, most readers would never know that the woman in the illustration is a BAFTA-winning actress whose beauty and presence command the screen.
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Placed beside actual photographs of Mosaku, the contrast is startling. Because the real Wunmi Mosaku looks nothing like that. Nothing like that! Mosaku is striking. She has luminous skin and sculpted cheekbones. Her deep, expressive eyes hold the camera with a quiet intensity. On red carpets, she is glamorous and statuesque. In photographs, she is magnetic. In motion, she carries a sensual authority that is impossible to ignore.
In Sinners, the film that has catapulted her into global conversation, Mosaku plays a hoodoo healer whose mystique and sexuality anchor the story’s emotional pulse. Her scenes with Michael B. Jordan crackle with tension and intimacy. The character she embodies is powerful, alluring, and unforgettable.
Yet the illustration accompanying her New Yorker profile strips all of that away. It does not exaggerate her beauty the way editorial art often does for celebrities. It does something stranger. It erases it.
Within hours of the issue circulating, fans, cultural commentators, and entertainment blogs began dragging the illustration for what they said was a startling failure to capture Mosaku’s likeness. One widely shared reaction summed up the mood bluntly: “Harpo, who dis woman?” For those who don’t know, this is a riff on the famous line from The Color Purple, used online to express disbelief at how little the drawing resembled the actress.
On platforms like X, Threads, and Reddit, the same criticism appeared again and again: the portrait looked nothing like her. Many viewers said they would never have recognized the BAFTA-winning actress if her name hadn’t been printed above the illustration. Others described the image as stiff, flattened, and strangely generic compared with the striking photographs of Mosaku circulating from the red carpet and press tours for the film Sinners.
The post The New Yorker’s Illustration Of ‘Sinners’ Actress Wunmi Mosaku Is The Visual Version Of The N-Word [Op-Ed] appeared first on MadameNoire.
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