Radar: Spotlight

“I decided to be a filmmaker because I love films. People who know me from my early teens will remember that it’s what I always wanted to do. When I left Zimbabwe for Yale university in America my aim was to study film, but I opted for acting instead. Acting was kind of my joy, an addiction I couldn’t quite shake off.

When I was about 12 I joined the first intake of CHIPAWOWorld, a Zimbabwean arts education programme run by playwright Stephen Chifunyise and writer and director Robert Mclaren. The group was a fantastic cohort of talent and included, among others, Chiwoniso Maraire, Thando McLaren and Danai Gurira. While I was there I wrote and directed my first play, Out Of The System, and Chiwoniso, because she was always a genius talent, wrote the most spectacular music to accompany it, as well as playing the lead role.

I did a lot of drama in high school as well as a number of plays with the Repteens troupe at Harare’s Reps Theatre and the Over The Edge theatre company. I had such a diverse theatrical life in Zimbabwe so when I went to university as a theatre person, I think I was more experienced than most. There was a great feeling of empowerment among us: we weren’t waiting for anyone to make something for us to do, we were just making stuff ourselves.

Coming out of university I had a sense that I was talented and that I had an interesting look that made me different. I remember thinking, ‘Well, with those two things I stand a chance.’ But there’s never a guarantee with acting. You need a great deal of luck because there are so many actors around. I think it’s taken me 20 years in the business to feel like I have a career.

During my first 10 years, I worked in London at the Royal Court Theatre and the National Theatre. I did the 2007 film Sunshine with director Danny Boyle and a couple of episodes of the TV series Doctor Who for the BBC. It was great but always unpredictable and certainly times when I thought, ‘Should I quit?’ It’s taken me until now to know that acting has been, and is, my career.

In 2017 I played Dido Queen of Carthage for the Royal Shakespeare Company and that was so important to me because not only had I always wanted to be in the RSC, but Dido was a great African queen who was later maligned, just like Cleopatra. But Dido was the original. That was such a memorable experience – I felt fulfilled.
Apart from acting, I have directed a couple of plays at London’s Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. I loved doing it. I started writing in earnest during the Covid lockdown so now I’m focusing on creating my own stuff for both film and TV. So when I’m not acting, my creative life is all about writing and imagining and fantasising – and I hope this will develop into directing.

I feel lucky because as a freelance actor there are long periods where I’m not working and can fully engage with being a mother. I’ve had a child at a time where attitudes towards working women have really progressed. I don’t feel like having a child has slowed down my career but I do try to balance working with having fun. I can be a bit of a workaholic so when I do have fun, I really do have fun!

In 2022 I played the angel Xaphania in the BBC adaptation of Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials; and in 2023 I was in Apple TV+’s Silo. Currently I’m in Black Cake, running on Disney+ and Hulu. It tells the story of Eleanor Bennett, a half black Jamaican, half Chinese girl, and I play the elderly version of her. I’m really proud of the production because not only is it such a global African story but I never imagined I would play my ethnicity [Chipo’s father is Zimbabwean, her mother is of Chinese extraction]. I’m so thrilled to be playing a character who comes from those two different cultures because that’s my story too.

In February, Apple TV+ released sci-fi thriller Constellation, in which I play space agency commander Michaela Moyone. The series is about a team of astronauts who go out to space and come back to alternate realities. It’s amazing. The first episode was directed by Michelle McLaren who first developed Breaking Bad. Actually all the directors on the series were really cool – it’s wonderful to work with people at that level who have such fine eyes and ears for detail.

In terms of my personal projects, this year I’m planning to direct a short film which is based on my experience as a young person in Zimbabwe – a ratherprivileged middle-class young Zimbabwean. It’s about that disparity between the haves and the have-nots, the people who live in the house and the people who work in the house. We can be so close to each other and so intimate with each other and yet live in vastly different worlds. It’s a subject that’s always fascinated me. In the next year or so I’d also like to direct a feature set in Harare. It’s on the same theme as my short film but it’s a bit quirky and funny.

In the next five to ten years I’d love to have a sort of mid-career pivot to see the things I’ve written become actual films. I’d like to work more in Zimbabwe because that’s where all the interesting stories come from. In the UK there’s a definite system which is part of Hollywood, where I am a cog in a very giant factory that provides me with my livelihood. Working in Zimbabwe, the challenge is to find the money to produce the kind of work that I want to make. This takes a whole different skill-set: to be a businessperson, a producer, an entrepreneur – all at the same time. If I want to really contribute to the development of the film sector in Zimbabwe these are the things I have to learn. I grew up in such a fertile, creative place and I would love to see that revived in Zimbabwe for the next generation.

Chipo Chung was talking to Tomas Lutuli Brickhill.

Black Cake is out now on Disney+ and Hulu.Constellation is out now on Apple TV+.
IG: @chipochung

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