It’s quite hard to sit through Barry Jenkins’ Moonlight and not feel deeply moved the material, but that’s speaking as an audience member. For Naomie Harris – who plays the mother of Chiron, and the only character to appear in all three chapters – she admitted even she was reduced to tears, simply upon reading the screenplay.

Naomie Harris MoonlightSpeaking to HeyUGuys, Harris explained, “I don’t read scripts and analyse them, are whether all the elements are right, I just read it and think, ‘Do I have an emotional response to this?’ and by the end of reading Moonlight I was in tears and so deeply moved. I thought, if I feel this way just from reading the script, it’s going to be an incredibly special movie”

The talented British actress – and Oscar nominee, for this very role – also went to speak about her initial apprehensions taking on this role, and making it her own, despite it being one very personal to the filmmaker. She also told us she shot the part across three days, during the publicity campaign for Spectre – and the challenges in moving between the world contrasting worlds. Finally, she discusses briefly with us the forthcoming Andy Serkis’ take on The Jungle Book, and how it differs from Disney’s endeavour last year.

Moonlight is released on February 17th. You can read our 5* review here, and be sure to keep checking back on HeyUGuys throughout the week for more interviews with the cast & crew.