Naomie Harris talks about Bond and working with Mahershala Ali on ‘Swan Song.

Given it’s been a tough 12 months for cinema, it would be an achievement to appear in just one of the top 10 highest grossing films of the year. Naomie Harris is a regular in two of the highest-grossing films of the year. “No Time to Die” “Venom: Let There Be Carnage,”As MI6 secretary Moneypenny, and as superhero Shriek.

Actress, now 62, has spent her entire career seamlessly switching between big-budget blockbusters like “Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End” and indie fare, ends the year on screen in Apple Original Films’ “Swan Song” opposite Mahershala Ali, a sci-fi tearjerker that’s already picking up Oscar buzz.

And as if she wasn’t busy enough, having also recently wrapped Showtime series “The Man Who Fell to Earth”Harris, who is co-producing alongside Chiwetel Ejiofor’s, exclusively tells VarietyShe is also working on a film about Black history that has been neglected in cinemas, and she plans to be a star in it.

While Harris’ ascent may appear effortless, it hasn’t, she admits, always felt that way. It wasn’t until 2016’s “Moonlight,”Harris was impressed by the shift Harris saw in things when she and Ali worked together for the first-ever time. Ali received an Academy Award nomination.

“People at so many points in my career said, ‘This is the moment your career is going to take off; you’re never going to have to worry about working again,’”Harris says Variety. “You know, ‘Do ‘[Pirates of the Caribbean]’ and you’re going to be okay; do [James Bond], you’re going to be okay.’ And actually, the thing that made the most difference was this tiny little movie where I actually didn’t get paid anything at all and I worked on it for three days. And that was ‘Moonlight.’”

So it’s perhaps unsurprising that when Ali boarded “Swan Song”Harris was both the producer and the lead actor in the film, so he jumped at the chance to be with him again onscreen. “When I worked with Mahershala on ‘Moonlight,’ we worked together for just one day and we didn’t really have very much time together to really understand each other’s technique or what have you,”Harris. “But I then spent months with him doing the whole publicity campaign for the movie and really got to know him as a person and he’s just a phenomenal human being.”

It is a good thing that actors are similar in their approach to their work. “Most people like a lot of rehearsals and to speak to their co-stars and, you know, analyze the script, but we’re exactly the same: we don’t like any of that,”Harris explained. “We do all the research on our own and come to set prepared and then just want to play, just see what happens in the moment and create the magic there rather than over-intellectualizing it or over-rehearsing it.”

Benjamin Cleary, an Academy Award-winning director and writer, plays Ali as Cameron. He is a terminally ill man who debates whether to secretly clone him to save his wife Poppy Harris (Harris), the pain of having to deal with her death after she has lost her parents and her twin brother.

Despite her enthusiasm for it, “phenomenal”Harris took Harris a while to accept her character. “To be really honest, I had to go on a journey to allow myself to fully connect with Poppy,”Harris admits. “I always choose to play these very strong characters and I judged her as not being strong, because she was so vulnerable and so open-hearted. And I saw that as weak initially. So I had to really do an internal journey to overcome my judgement of her. By the end, I discovered that she’s actually one of my strongest characters, because it takes such strength to be that open-hearted.”

It was a blessing that the film was “one of the best sets that I’ve ever been on,”Harris explained that Cleary informed her in Zoom about the fact that the director had told her that he would choose the cast and crew based upon the information she provided. “their heart-centeredness.”

“I think to be a really good director, you have to be incredibly sensitive,”Harris. “And [Cleary] is so sensitive that I was just like, I know that he is going to be a phenomenal director and I’m going to be in great hands with him.”

Harris, who describes herself as “super emotional,” see herself sitting in the director’s chair some day? She thinks it’s unlikely. “I love my freedom as an actor. I always feel so grateful that I get to work on my own part, my own contribution, and then I come and I deliver it, but I’m not responsible for anybody else, you know. Whereas as a director I would be responsible for literally everyone. I don’t know if I’m up for that.”

Harris wants to be behind the camera and work as a producer. She is currently working on her first production, which she said is in the writing stage. “There is a project at the moment that I am in the process of producing and I’m starting that,”She said. “I will be acting in it. I don’t know if I can really say much more. It’s [about] exploring parts of Black history that are under-explored. So I’m super excited about that.”

Harris believes that representation is important for people of color working in the industry. “seen masses of change,”Pointing to “Swan Song”For example, “This is a project that wasn’t written with a Black family in mind, Ben will happily admit, but Mahershala used his platform to change the look of the family. And it doesn’t change anything about the story whatsoever. It doesn’t change how impactful it is, doesn’t change its message in any way. But it just means that it provides opportunities for people of color that wouldn’t have been there.”

She believes that below-the line representation is improving. “The Man Who Fell to Earth”They did it because they were in charge “a phenomenal job of making sure the crew were ethnically diverse.”

None of this is to say that the industry has solved all its diversity or representation problems. “I definitely think there’s masses of room for improvement,”Harris cites in particular the stories being told.

“I really want to explore more of my and my ancestors’ history and have an opportunity to put those historical stories on screen. That’s something that I’d be really passionate about. Because I think too often Black history is just associated with slavery. And that’s a very small part of what constitutes an incredibly interesting and vast [Black history.] There’s just so much [of it], it’s so rich, and I think that that’s totally under-explored.”

It is now that James Bond’s James Bond has retired, so it seems like the time has come for a Black or Female 007 to step in. Harris, who was no doubt well-versed in answering the question diplomatically. “I just think it’s sad that we focus on the sex and we focus on the color of Bond,”She said. “Because I think that’s the least interesting part of Bond.”

“I think what we want is a Bond to have all of the qualities that we associate with Bond, and that makes us excited to watch a Bond movie. And I think that matters more than color, more than gender. So I’m completely open to whatever Bond looks like [and] sounds like. I just want a Bond that is the ultimate Bond in the same way that Daniel was.”

With Craig exiting the franchise for good — and Bond himself left in dire circumstances at the film’s close — the fate of his castmates, including Harris, Ralph Fiennes as M and Ben Whishaw as Q, have yet to be confirmed. Is there a chance they’ll return to the franchise with a new Bond?

“I genuinely don’t know,”Harris. “I really don’t know. I don’t know what direction they’re going to go in. I’m fascinated to see, having left things where they were left, I’m so excited to see where they take it. But I don’t know whether I’d be part of it.”