Summer is coming to an in depth, but Nicole Beharie‘s voice carries the heat and brightness of a warm breezy day. She laughs easily, calming her rambunctious dog, who barks within the background. With two movies in theaters and a recent television role, the actress’s schedule is jam-packed, but you’d never understand it based on the lightness of her tone.

She’s nothing just like the no-nonsense bank manager Estel Valerie whom she portrays in Breaking. The thriller is predicated on the real-life story of Brian Brown-Easley (John Boyega), a Marine veteran who held up a Wells Fargo in 2017. Beharie’s other project, Honk For Jesus, Save You Soul, will showcase her comedy chops. She stars opposite Regina Hall and Sterling K. Brown as a co-pastor of an up-and-coming church. With press days swirling round her, release dates on the horizon, and a recent role in Apple TV+’s The Morning Show in production, Beharie has loads occurring, but for the time being, she’s carefree and content.

A toddler of a multicultural household with a Jamaican-British mother, and Black American father, Beharie spent her early childhood in Nigeria, Jamaica, and the U.K., before settling together with her mother in Atlanta. Her love of acting was born out of her interest in numerous cultures and watching how various people move throughout the world.

“Adapting for survival’s sake and wanting to slot in was just what you do as a baby or a youngster moving right into a recent place,” she tells ESSENCE. “Then coming back to America and living in Atlanta and realizing that Black means two various things in two different spaces and that the expectations for you were different. Those things made me really interested in life and other people and made me concerned with all of the stories that were on the market.”

Acting became Beharie’s entry into these different worlds. Fresh out of Juilliard, she booked her first film role in The Express opposite Rob Brown, but her leading role within the gutting drama American Violet truly put her magnetism on display.

In an emotionally gripping performance, Beharie played Dee Roberts, a single young mother wrongfully accused of selling drugs. With a lengthy jail sentence hanging within the balance and despite her mother Alma’s (portrayed by Alfre Woodard) urges to take a plea deal, Dee decides to fight her case.

“The thing that stays with me about that project is that we’re still having those conversations in regards to the prison industrial complex, and false imprisonment and quotas,” Beharie reflects.

Along with the poignant narrative, Beharie remembers her bond with Woodard. The enduring actress’ advice during that point would grow to be a lesson that will echo loudly later in Beharie’s profession.

“In the future, I used to be imagined to fight and run and all these things,” she says. “I used to be covered in paint by the tip of the day. I used to be excited to have the chance. I remember [Alfre] being like, ‘You’ve got to maintain yourself while you expend that much energy.’ She ended up getting me an algae wrap massage or something the next weekend; such a generous gift. I don’t think I had ever had anything like that before in my life. She could see that I used to be the type of person that will jump in full on. She was like, ‘You’ve got to reel that in or ensure that any person’s loving on you or love on yourself.’ I’ll always remember that.”

After American Violet, Beharie’s profession launched like a rocket ship. She earned roles in Steve McQueen’s Shame, 42, opposite the late Chadwick Boseman, and a lead role on the Fox supernatural drama Sleepy Hole. The series began airing only one 12 months after the Kerry Washington-led Scandal premiered, but Black women were still practically non-existent on the large and small screens.

Sleepy Hole debuted to rave reviews, but by season 2, Beharie’s screen time had dwindled. By season 3, her character, Abbie Mills, had vanished entirely. During this time, Beharie was coping with some health complications in an environment that offered no support. Paradoxically, the series got here to an in depth just because the Time’s Up and Me Too movements were gaining traction in Hollywood.

“Black women are the least listened to,” Beharie reflects. “Things have gotten loads higher. I also think everyone has space to grow. I’m very faraway from that situation now, so I actually have loads more peace with it, but I feel it’s something I needed to undergo and see.”

The Sleepy Hole experience forced Beharie to recall Woodard’s advice. “The most important thing I learned is you do must maintain yourself,” she says. “There have been ramifications for me that were tough. But because I did that, I feel prefer it opened the doors for other people.”

Since then, Beharie has sought out projects that talk to her spirit (each Breaking and Honk for Jesus are women-led), but Miss Juneteenth, helmed by first-time author/director Channing Godfrey Peoples, enabled Beharie to soar once more. Within the film, she portrays Turquoise Jones, a former beauty queen, eager to get her daughter to take a path she never could. She won a Gotham Award for Best Actress for her role.

 “Just reading the script, it felt authentic,” Beharie says. “I got to be a primary screen mom to Alexis Chikaeze, who’s a ravishing actress, much in the way in which that Alfre was there for me. I wanted her to shine. Ultimately that’s what Turquoise wanted for her daughter.”

Beharie also focuses on work that doesn’t depict Black people “crying and dying.” She’s taken the time to search out true collaborators. With Honk For Jesus, the actress immediately recognized the richness in author/director Adamma Ebo’s storytelling. “She is a risk taker,” Beharie gushes. “Then attending to work with Sterling and Regina Hall. There are such a lot of things that were just fun and ridiculous and risqué. That was an experience that I need more of. I need more of that joy.”

Breaking has a way more somber tone than Honk For Jesus. Still, Beharie found true camaraderie with Boyega and her other co-stars Selenis Leyva and the late Michael K. Williams. “Certainly one of the things that [director] Abi [Damaris Corbin] said was, we’ve got to remain alive for one another on a regular basis,” she recalls. “Selenis and I got super close. We wanted to depend on one another to get through it and to survive within the actual story. Then for John, he was there, but we gave him a little bit bit more room. There was loads of deep listening to his changes and character.”

So far as what’s next for Beharie, she is going to step into the role of stories anchor as the charismatic Christina Hunter on The Morning Show. Beyond that, she’s content to maneuver at her own pace. “There’s something lovely about spaciousness,” she explains. “To provide you the space to do your best work and to be seen. I’m writing. I’m collaborating with people on personal work. One thing I’d like to see more of is seeing us in spaces of joy and agency. We deserve more sensuality, more nuance, all of the cunning, and complexity. The extent of intellect it takes for a race of individuals to survive, to have passed through all of this –please don’t underestimate it.”

Photography: Erik Umphery
Fashion Stylist: Jeremy Haynes
Hair: Tressie Rochelle
Makeup: Kenya Haynie