Through a couple of small but perfectly formed roles in BBC’s The Listeners and the forthcoming dystopian sci-fi movie Klara And The Sun, Mia Tharia has become an elegant mouthpiece for the interiority of teenage ennui. Every glazed look and lip twitch semaphores a ruminating soul, wiser than her years.
Dressed down in her “skivvies” of plaid shirt and crocs, Tharia is poised and boundaried: a testament to a stable family background and a career that has not yet been shipwrecked by the touch of fame. We meet in a bougie cafe in south London (an iced coffee is a cool £4.50), a slice of gentrification that’s both deeply depressing and matter of fact. “We used to have a Poundland here…” Tharia notes.
She arrives two minutes before our allotted meeting time, sans agent, PR or fanfare. “I try not to be late for things but, oh, I’m too early,” the 21-year-old mutters to herself, as she sits down with a builder’s tea and normal milk. “I love South West London. I feel like it’s home: there’s a lot of culture and art here. I grew up around that.”
For Thalia, growing up mixed race was the norm in south London – and it’s something she explores through the forthcoming period drama The Education Of Jane Cumming, which is based on the real life story of two female teachers who were accused by a student of having an affair in the early 19th century. “I play an Anglo-Indian character who goes to a Scottish boarding school, ” says Thalia. “She’s of mixed heritage and an illegitimate child. It’s a really intense exploration of identity. Part of her belongs here and part of her doesn’t. I’ve had tastes of that in my life too.”
Her South-Of-The-River childhood was not one of child star jazz-hands and high-kicks though. Instead, she describes herself as “very shy” and “socially awkward”, before adding: “For the first five to 10 years of my life, I was probably quite difficult to communicate with.”
Did she have any imaginary friends? “More than one. Oh god, I had so many!” The main one was Jumper, a robot. In these imaginings, Tharia was a warrior and protector. “I was always the hero. It was never people [that I saved though]. It was robots or bears that talked. I don’t know what that means…”
Obsessed with geriatric comedy Count Arthur Strong as well as Spaced and Horrible Histories, Tharia and her sister enjoyed making her parents laugh – which grew into a more cinematic pursuit. “We would make little films and videos of her and her friends,” she remembers. “I like the idea of documenting and making things. I remember that instinct from quite early on.” At school she never got the bigger parts in the plays (“I’m not bitter about it at all”) but enjoyed creating a theatre performance with her classmates. Despite having all the hallmarks of being an introvert, she had a career plan early on: “I think I was about nine. I remember quite clearly saying to my mum, ‘I want to be a child actor.'”
She started auditioning for roles when she was 12 years old. Trying to get cast in, say, an ad for Sainsbury’s, created two Mias. “I was so shy so [auditioning] created this conflict with that part of myself,” she recalls. “I remember feeling like I had a double life. I’d be at school being quiet and then I’d go and do an audition and have to be an extroverted version of myself.” The blows of early rejection luckily worked in her favour: “Being uncomfortable in those spaces helped. I’ve made a career out of playing awkward, so it kind of worked out.”
In both The Listeners and Klara And The Sun, Tharia plays characters who live in their heads well, with rough, unrefined edges peeking through. “I like playing feral,” she says. “I like difficult, unlikable women, rather than playing polished people. I’m interested in conflicted layers.”
In Klara And The Sun, an adaptation of the 2021 novel by Nobel Prize-winning author Kazuo Ishiguro, she plays Josie, the sulky teen who comes to life when her mother (Amy Adams) buys her a robotic friend Klara (Jenna Ortega). Directed by Taika Waititi, it’s Spike Jonze’s Her meets Steven Spielberg’s A.I. Artificial Intelligence. “Josie is a ‘liquid teenager’, which is a phrase the movement coach said to me,” explains Tharia. “She’s very loose in her body. I think there’s an androgyny to her and she’s not confined to things.”
Filming in New Zealand, Waititi created a familial atmosphere on set. Bonding with her co-star Ortega was easy. “She’s really generous and very open. There wasn’t a fear that this wasn’t going to work out: she was good at making me feel comfortable.” The film is being presented at London Film Festival today (October 15) but Tharia won’t be there. She’s busy filming Apple TV’s spy drama Disavowed.
The film’s release comes as the dangers of AI are orbiting the news cycle. How does she feel it will be received? “It’s a really interesting and terrifying concept that has become more real over the years,” she says. “But I do feel like the core of this film is about humanity.”
It’s a project which could propel Tharia into mega-fame. Does she worry about losing her anonymity? “I don’t.” She says she hasn’t been recognised in public yet either. “I have no concept of what that would feel like. I’m pretty anonymous now. Parts of the job, like even [doing an interview] are pretty weird.”
An Instagram refusenik, she says she hasn’t felt any pressure to be more public. “I’ve been pretty lucky, people have been accepting of that because I’m so early on in my career,” she says. A British comedy nut (she name checks The IT Crowd, Such Brave Girls and Mum), she’d love to work with Richard Ayoade in the future. “If he’s making another feature, I’m straight on the phone.”
As we say our goodbyes and leave the cafe, she weaves out into the high street, just another one of the crowd. But probably not for much longer.
‘Klara And The Sun’ is out in UK cinemas October 23
IMAGES:
Photographer: Lee Malone
Stylist: Farrah O’Connor
Hair and make-up: Nohelia Reyes
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