Sinners Gives Hoodoo Its Due

Imaginary Worlds

Eric Molinsky

Fiction, Arts, Society & Culture, Science Fiction

4.8 • 2.2K Ratings

🗓️ 11 February 2026

⏱️ 39 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Sinners got a historic 16 Academy Award nominations, which was remarkable for a film with vampires. But the film is also a rich exploration of race, religion, culture and music in 1930s Mississippi. Professor Yvonne Chireau played a key role behind the scenes. She’s a historian of the spiritual tradition of hoodoo. Since hoodoo and voodoo have long been reduced to horror tropes, she was brought on as a consultant. She also worked with actress Wunmi Mosaku, who earned an Academy Award nomination for playing the character Annie, a conjure practitioner in the story. I also talk with Professor Kinitra Brooks, who is writing a book on conjure women. She explains why Annie’s wisdom, bravery and romance felt validating for her – partly because Kinitra’s great-grandmother was a conjure woman. This episode is sponsored by Mizzen & Main. Get 20% off your first purchase at mizzenandmain.com with the promo code IMAGINARY20. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to Imaginary Worlds, a show about how we create them and why we suspend our disbelief.
0:05.8	I'm Eric Malinsky.
0:08.7	And this is Yvonne Chiroh.
0:11.7	She is a professor at Swathmore College, and she's an expert on the history of hoodoo.
0:17.8	Hoodoo is different from voodoo. Voodoo is a religion.
0:21.6	Hoodoo is a set of spiritual and folk practices that include working with roots, herbs, charms,
0:29.6	and calling on the spirits of the ancestors.
0:32.6	I get Coles asking me to help people lift spells and things all with them, and I have to underscore,
0:38.6	I'm a historian, I'm not a practitioner, I'm not an expert in the traditions.
0:44.2	One day, she got a call from a movie producer.
0:47.5	He wanted her to consult on a film for Warner Brothers.
0:51.1	She was not surprised, or starstruck, to get a call from Hollywood.
0:56.0	I've done work in Hollywood. I've done work on documentaries before. And so I've become, and I told him immediately, I'm very particular about who I work with, basically because the traditions that I study have been exploited. And so I didn't want him.
1:11.7	He said, oh, no, this is Ryan Cougar.
1:13.5	And I said, oh, okay, Ryan Cougar.
1:15.2	So, of course, I asked my daughter.
1:16.9	I said, who's Ryan Cougar again?
1:20.5	Ryan Cougar wrote and directed the Black Panther films.
1:24.7	He also wrote and directed Creed, which revitalized the Rocky franchise, and he wrote and
1:30.9	directed Sinners, the movie that they wanted Yvonne to consult on.
1:35.9	She agreed to set up a meeting with him.
1:38.5	Ryan Coogler started describing the plot of sinners to Yvonne, And then he mentioned that there are vampires in it.
	...

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