Jodie Turner-Smith has said she hopes to be part of a “fictional normalising” of black women in senior roles in the military with her new film role.
The Queen & Slim star plays a Navy Seal team member in Tom Clancy’s Without Remorse, starring opposite Black Panther actor Michael B Jordan.
The movie is an adaptation of Tom Clancy’s 1993 novel, directed by Stefano Sollima, the filmmaker behind cult crime drama Gomorrah.
Jordan plays elite Navy Seal John Kelly, who is seeking justice for the murder of his pregnant wife, when he finds himself inside a much larger conspiracy that threatens to engulf the United States and Russia in an all-out war, while Turner-Smith plays Lieutenant Commander Karen Greer.
She told the PA news agency: “Why not be a part of this fictional normalising of it? To be fair, the military are trying to finally open up for women and entertain those possibilities. But I think we still have some ways to go before we’re going to have women in certain roles.
“So it’s cool to normalise it in in film and television. I mean, why not?
“Women are capable of so much. I know this for a fact. I can speak on it. My body can speak on it.”
Turner-Smith, who will soon be seen playing Anne Boleyn in a new Channel 5 series, said she was also excited to bring more diversity to the espionage genre, which follows in the footsteps of Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan films such as Patriot Games and Clear And Present danger, starring Harrison Ford.
She said: “This idea of playing a lead against Michael B Jordan, another black actor, in something based on a Tom Clancy novel, I mean that is very exciting.
“I think a lot of other people might find that very exciting, too. I can’t wait for them to see it.”
Billy Elliot star Jamie Bell, who also features in the film, added: “She is representing not only women in the armed forces, but women of colour in the armed forces.
“She goes toe-to-toe, beat-for-beat and is in fact their commanding officer, and I think that that is incredibly important, and definitely shifts the perception of the kind of Clancy universe in a more positive, forward-thinking, progressive way.”
Tom Clancy’s Without Remorse is out now on Amazon Prime Video.
