The second season, which releases this week, is perhaps set to be even bigger – featuring a star-studded cast including Lady Gaga, Thandiwe Newton, Billie Piper, and Joanna Lumley. The audience also gets to see a different side to Sunday’s character, Bianca.

“I’m really happy that people get to become more intimately acquainted with her history,” she says. “The Bianca that I met when I first got the script versus who she is now – there’s such a difference. In season one, she’s kind of built a wall and acts as if she doesn’t need anything. But now we get to understand… the vulnerability and insecurities that she’s facing.”

Much like Bianca, Sunday is used to navigating complex spaces with grace and grit. Born and raised in Staten Island, New York, to Nigerian parents who moved to the US in the 1970s, her path to screen stardom has not been eased by privilege or free passes. Growing up, her mother worked as a nurse’s assistant, her father a social worker. The latter, as is the story of many immigrants, struggled with visa issues.

“My dad came to America with a scholarship to study engineering at Columbia – at one point he was actually deported, [but] he was able to come back,” she says. (The mass deportations happening in the US at the moment, she adds, are “truly harrowing and disappointing.”)

She inherited a love of reading from her father, and her first taste of performance came not from a stage, but from an imaginary classroom. “I would read books to imaginary kids in my room,” she says, grinning. “That’s where I learned my first sense of pacing, character, and presence.”

She honed her craft at LaGuardia High School, the legendary New York performing arts school that gave the world Timothée Chalamet, Jennifer Aniston, and Nicki Minaj.

But behind the prestige, it was not all plain sailing. “It was supposed to be this haven – I was so excited to be going there,” she says, choosing her words carefully. She felt that the environment was not supportive of Black and brown students.  “I could feel the inequality.” GLAMOUR has reached out to LaGuardia for comment.

She developed debilitating stage fright, and after only two weeks, had made up her mind to quit acting altogether. “I just hated performing,” she admits.

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Instead, she turned to filmmaking, eventually landing at the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts. “I didn’t [plan] to go back into acting, because as far as I was concerned, it was going to be impossible.”