To play Annie, Mosaku consulted with a hoodoo priestess, who showed her how to bless the mojo bag worn by Smoke (Michael B. Jordan) in the film. As a child, Mosaku felt orphaned from her Nigerian roots; her favorite film was “Annie,” which she’d watch over and over. As a teen-ager, she realized that acting was her calling. Albert Finney, who played Daddy Warbucks, had gone from Manchester to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, so Mosaku went there, too. In 2020, as she was “grappling with what was happening racially across the globe and how much I had tried so hard to assimilate,” her husband gave her a gift of a Yoruba class at U.C.L.A. She’s been taking private lessons ever since. “Yoruba is a tonal language, so I get the tones wrong a lot,” she said. At the Globes, she wore a yellow dress, a reference to the Yoruba proverb “Iya ni wura,” or “Mother is gold.”journey-inline-newsletterinline-newsletter