The year is 1769, and a black servant is dressing a young mixed-race girl. Words on the screen inform the viewer of Britain’s morally dubious colonial and slave-trading past. Then, the camera cuts to a distressed-looking white man, stomping through the slums. He is revealed to be a naval officer, and the young girl’s father. Upon seeing her for the first time, he is overcome with emotion. “How lovely she is – so much like her mother,” says he, hinting at both her beauty and her race.
He whisks her away to Kenwood House, to a life she was apparently “born to”. He entrusts her to his uncle, the Earl of Mansfield/Lord Chief Justice William Murray (played by Tom Wilkinson) and his wife, Elizabeth. Though he had neglected to mention that his child was black, the shocked Mansfields adopt her anyway, nicknaming her Dido. She flourishes into a fine young lady, brought brilliantly to life by the award-winning Gugu Mbatha-Raw.
“One does not make a wife of the the rare and exotic, Oliver”