The movie remains such a touchstone for her that last
year, she and her Black Panther co-star Lupita Nyong ' o threw themselves a costumed birthday party where Gurira dressed like Murphy ' s queen-to-be.( Nyong ' o wore the gold mutton sleeves of her lady-in-waiting, while T ' Challa himself, Chadwick Boseman, goofed off as Arsenio Hall ' s Reverend Brown. Gurira even opened one of her six staged plays, the Tony-nominated Eclipsed, with a teenage orphan breathlessly recounting Coming to America ' s plot to the two other captured wives of a Liberian rebel commander. " He say, he say, ' You sweat from a baboon ' s balls,'" the young woman howls. It was the first all-female production in Broadway history; not the first all-black female – though it was that, too – but first all-female full stop. Nyong ' o played the girl, and every night she and Gurira would dedicate the evening ' s performance to women who ' d been kidnapped by Boko Haram.
The duo were inadvertently doing a dry run for their scenes in Black Panther, complete with their own female army of sorts and a soldier inspired by real-life Liberian rebel commander Colonel Black Diamond – a young woman who battled former president Charles Taylor ' s soldiers in feminine tops accessorized with an AK-47. One night while they took a bow, there was someone loudly clapping in the audience: Black Panther director Ryan Coogler. He ' d found his leading ladies. In Okoye ' s biggest action sequence, she wears the same bright red that Black Diamond favored – though, stresses Gurira, the two female African soldiers have a key difference: Okoye could never betray her country. " She ' s very loyal, faithful," she says, likening her to a federal employee whose vow supersedes party loyalty. " She carries a lot of weight on her shoulders, a lot of responsibility." In costume Gurira imagined herself wowing a 12-year-old Wakandan girl to join the military. On set in Wakanda ' s tribal council room with its tall, gold columns and two lines of Dora Milaje guarding the throne, she was energized by her character ' s need to protect this world. Instead of fighting in anger, she ' s fighting for love.( Danai means " to love one another " in Shona.) read Eclipsed at Yale; she and Gurira became friends nearly a decade before either could imagine making both Broadway and Hollywood history. Their affection in Black Panther is earned. " After Lupita got the Oscar, she kept talking about doing my play," Gurira says. Nyong ' o even managed to wedge a plug into her first Vogue cover, telling the interviewer how much she loved her friend ' s work.
By this time, Gurira was a well-known actress herself thanks to Michonne, The Walking Dead zombie-slayer known for her two katanas and her take-no-shit attitude. She ' d always been an intellectual jock who ran track and played field hockey and tennis. Suddenly, she was famous overnight for playing the TV series ' toughest warrior – and she was driving around with fake swords in her trunk for practice. Imagining an encounter with the cops, she mimes taking out her phone, pulling up a picture of her character and saying, " No, see?" Theater made Gurira a name, and Michonne made her a star. Black Panther, however, is about to make her an icon. " She really took ownership of Okoye," says Coogler, adding that he ' d written the role with her in mind. " I like working with actors that are writers because they tend to be strong with improv, you know? And they tend to make their lines bulletproof."
True, but some of Gurira ' s best bits are barely verbal: a wink, a nod, a watchful gaze or, during an undercover battle scene in a Seoul nightclub, a GIF-worthy shot of Okoye flinging her hated costume wig at a perp." You don ' t need that hair," she says, laughing. Three guesses how that clip is going to play on Twitter. The bigger question is: How will Black Panther play in Gurira ' s African hometown? On a recent trip to Zimbabwe, people were excited to see it. Still, she ' s seen firsthand staging her own plays how references that get giggles in Manhattan trigger wise groans in Harare. " I can ' t wait to see how it goes in South Africa," she says. " I really can ' t predict it. I hope they think we got the” – Gurira replicates the glottal throat-clicks of numerous African dialects – " right."
Growing up, Gurira figured she ' d be an activist, not an actress. At first, theater was a hobby. In 7th grade, she made her debut as the title character in the Zimbabwean play, My Uncle Grey Bhonzo.( Yes, as the uncle.) She gravitated toward characters who were outspoken, which often meant men. When her high school staged Hamlet, she played Laertes. She loved the classics – Chekhov, Ibsen, Shaw – but felt her voice was missing in the canon. After returning to America for college, she went to NYU for her masters degree in acting, where she decided to write her own monologues. Those early pieces bloomed into her first play, the two-woman show In the Continuum. " I believe in creating my own opportunities," says Gurira. Not just for her, but for the women her words might inspire, young theater kids in who would have more personal monologues to read( Gurira co-founded Zimbabwe theater outreach program Almasi Arts), and other rising actresses like Nyong ' o.
The future Oscar-winner and 12 Years a Slave star had
Still, she knows the stakes – and the potential – if Black Panther is a global smash. " There are so many more stories about African women to tell," says Gurira, adding, " and there are other Americas than what we see in the movies." What would life have been like if she ' d never left Ohio? What ' s it like now for young girls in Zimbabwe who, like her, are watching movies to figure out who they can grow up to be? And can she channel her stardom into getting fans to see stories about about strong black women who don ' t even have to pick up a weapon?
And though she ' s managed to balance activism and acting, the former still occupies a lot of Gurira ' s time – from speaking out about violence against women at the United Nations to saying at an awards ceremony five days after the 2016 election that she ' s " felt a calling to do more." After fighting zombies, female traffickers, and the white male dominance of Broadway, are politics in Gurira ' s future? " I want to do so much with telling stories," she insists. Then she pauses, considering what to say. Finally, the mighty megaphone can ' t resist adding: " Maybe in 10 years, we ' ll see."