Mahershala Ali: ‘I had to protect myself from people’s fear of me’

The Moonlight actor has topped his Oscar win with a Golden Globe for Green Book.

He talks about fatherhood, being a Muslim in Trump’s America and years of typecastingExactly two years ago, in early 2017, the actor Mahershala Ali and his wife were about to give birth – one after the other.

“It’s something we still joke about,” says the 44-year-old American, sitting in a London hotel, smiling at the memory.

“My wife was pregnant with a baby.

And I was pregnant with an Oscar.”The actor knows that sounds glib.

He knows that however exciting or worked-for an industry prize – Ali won his best supporting actor award that year for a standout performance in the coming-of-age drama Moonlight – nothing compares to the graft of bearing an actual child.

But aspects of the comparison stand.

There’s a lot of build-up and then things go crazy all at once.

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