When London-born, Bay Area-raised director Savanah Leaf approached Nomore to star in “Earth Mama,” she hadn’t acted since she was 10 years old, aside from a few music videos. “The only experience with acting I had before this, my mom tried to sign us up for Kids On Camera,” Nomore told SFGATE during an interview at A24’s Los Angeles offices, a week before the film’s July 7 release. “I remember being like, ‘That’s not for me. Those kids are on some “Full House” s—t.’ I don’t think I could ever use my voice in that space,” Nomore said.

Without conveying a hint of regret, Nomore explains that she needed her hiatus from music to tend to the psychological hellscape of motherhood, a state of mind that launched her into her role in “Earth Mama.” “I felt pressured to make music, but I didn’t really have the words because I was still processing s—t,” she said. “It was really hard for me to go to the booth for whatever reason. I had so much to say, but when I got there, I didn’t want to say nothing.”

From rapper to ‘Earth Mama’

It was time for Nomore’s reinvention, but instead of hooks and verses, the words came with stage directions in Leaf’s script. Leaf had immigrated to the U.S. from South London when she was 10, living in different places around the Bay Area with her single mother, from Marin to Berkeley to San Jose. Keen to work with Nomore, Leaf placed Nomore in her first official acting role, playing a pregnant mother of two trying to reclaim her children from Oakland’s foster care system. Reviews from the festival circuit were sterling, with the film earning a 100% score on Rotten Tomatoes (albeit with only 11 reviews at the time of publication). Peter Debruge of Variety summed up her performance: “Not once does it feel like she’s acting. Where so many performers play to the camera, Nomore often seems to be resisting it, which creates a compelling tension between her and the audience.”

When Leaf first arrived in this country as a 10-year-old mixed Black girl with a British accent, it was hard to find community in the Bay Area, but like Nomore, she found solace in music.

“A lot of the songs were kind of written into the script because I had made a playlist of all the nostalgic songs from when I was growing up. When things started to shift [in my formative years], I remember going to parties and the music bumping so loud,” Leaf said. “Unfortunately, a lot of them got shot up, but the music would go on to the streets and people’s cars, and everyone would go to In-N-Out Burger, and the music spread to In-N-Out Burger. I wanted to create that feeling.”

Bay Area culture celebrates its insular regionalism, from knowing Too Short’s favorite word to contorting your cheeks to do the thizz face. Leaf asserts that “Earth Mama” is a movie from the Bay Area, for the Bay Area: “Probably no one else in the world knew these songs, but you knew them. That’s what I wanted it to feel like. I wanted it to be just for the Bay people. Only for the Bay — none of those on-the-nose songs,” she said, citing how a viewer told her she never thought they’d find themselves crying to D-Lo’s “No Hoe.”

For Nomore, the DIY element of much of that music gets to the root of Bay Area musical heritage.

“A lot of the music that popped off like ‘Ryde or Die, Chick’ sounds like it was made on someone’s old phone, and it probably was,” Nomore said. “There’s something really beautiful about that, and the fact that everybody who grew up in the Bay at that time can remember that feeling — you hear ‘Ryde or Die, Chick,’ and you kind of have a little smile.” Remembering the song, Nomore smirks and does the Brookfield dance while sitting in her chair.

To contrast with the hyphy classics, Leaf turned to singer and cellist Kelsey Lu to produce the “Earth Mama” score. It provides a lush, low-vibrational ambience that pits gorgeous, tear-jerking violas amid drifting cars in sideshows. 

Facing your shadow self

Portraying the character of Gia, a subdued single mother fighting for the inalienable right to care for her own kin, helped Nomore regain control of the voice that she had been neglecting since taking a pause from music. When asked if the production was challenging, her answer raced out of her mouth as if it had been waiting too long to see the day of light: “It was really hard, bro. [It was] extremely triggering.” 

Playing Gia brought her face-to-face with her shadow self. “I didn’t realize I had postpartum depression until I was in Gia’s outfit,” Nomore said. “I was like, ‘Damn, I have terrifying thoughts. I have terrible mom guilt.’ Even being on this set for so many hours away from my kid, the strain that I had on my heart was real,” she explains.

The shooting of “Earth Mama” was emotionally straining and laborious, as Nomore reinserted herself into a prosthetic to re-create her pregnant body and incorporated additional perspective from her professional training as a doula. But she felt a self-imposed duty to embrace the altruism of motherhood while showcasing its emotionally depleting realities on the big screen. 

“This was very particular and unique because I had just had my baby just a year before. I was trying to do more things to get myself out of the house, as a pandemic parent as well.” A single mother, Nomore describes an even more isolated sense of postpartum depression: emotionally restraining herself from the world as she remained stoic for her child. 

“Especially with her children, [Gia] is going through heartbreak, but she has such limited time with them, so in that time, she’s trying to just comfort them, play with them, do anything she can to give them some peace,” Nomore related. 

Taking on the foster care system

“Earth Mama” finds its poignancy in its bleak realism, highlighting the power of community and how often the contributions of mothers are overlooked. It brings to mind Malcolm X’s speech from over 60 years ago proclaiming, “The most disrespected person in America is the Black woman.” 

In its heart-wrenching depiction of Gia’s experience with the foster care system, Gia surrenders her voice and pride in the hope that if she appeases the state, she will be able to reclaim her family. “Gia oftentimes is keeping it inside. And that’s not necessarily because she wants to be like that; oftentimes, she has to in order to be fit to parent [in the case worker’s eyes].”

And perhaps most importantly, “Earth Mama” is a movie about Black women made by Black women. Tia Nomore and Savanah Leaf dedicate their feature film to telling the untold story of single motherhood’s hardships, from its self-sacrifice to the state’s continued plight of Black bodies.

“Motherhood is the most important job that you can have as a human being because you are literally responsible for pushing society forward, and whether you’re a birthing person or not, if you’re taking care of this society, then you have motherly intuition and motherly instinct. That is the most important thing you can have. Without that, there’s no care, no tangibility, nothing.”