There is no sound more triumphant than Irma Thomas’ recording of “Time Is on My Side.” Her wails ring like a sonic mantra: soaring, guttural, and unbridled. This song plays in my head like a rolling credits soundtrack after I speak with Laura Harrier, who has long been a paragon of perfect timing.

See: Harrier’s role as Suzanne de Passe in Michael, the new biopic chronicling the origin story of the King of Pop. In simplest terms, her casting can be attributed to a seating chart and a stroke of fate.

In 2024, at a CAA Women in Entertainment dinner, Harrier happened to be seated at the same table as de Passe, the former Motown executive who is credited with discovering The Jackson 5.

Throughout the evening, guest after guest flocked to de Passe to pay their respects. Harrier took notice. Later in the night, the two struck up a conversation. “I knew who she was, but I had never met her before,” Harrier says, phoning in from Paris Fashion Week. “We got to talking and she basically was like, ‘What movies do you have coming up? What are you doing?'” De Passe was struck by how much Harrier reminded her of her younger self. She quickly floated the possibility of Harrier playing her in a film based on Michael Jackson’s life.

Wasting no time, de Passe then arranged a meeting between Harrier and the movie’s director, Antoine Fuqua, who Harrier had always wanted to work with. She was offered the part right away. “It all happened because of Suzanne,” Harrier tells me.

“It’s so crazy,” she continues. “What if I didn’t go out that night? I wouldn’t have been in this movie.” Right place, right time.

Her impromptu casting is on brand for de Passe, whose instinct has led to the discovery of music royalty. In a 2008 Motown retrospective for Vanity Fair, de Passe recounts when Bobby Taylor, a singer and producer who happened to be de Passe’s neighbour, summoned her down to his apartment. When she walked in, Jackie, Tito, Jermaine, Marlon, and Michael Jackson began singing. Within 24 hours she was pleading with Motown Records founder Berry Gordy to sign them. She just had a feeling, not unlike the one she had at dinner with Harrier.

The similarity hadn’t occurred to Harrier when I pointed it out on our call. “I actually never thought about that,” she says. “That’s been her career, discovering people and discovering talent. She kind of did the same in a weird, meta way for herself and for me, which is really funny.”

What followed were hours upon hours of conversations between Harrier and de Passe. “I was really excited to hang with her,” Harrier says. The two would meet in L.A. and rehash all of de Passe’s legendary anecdotes, from serving as a quasi-creative director for The Jackson 5 in their nascent stages to her working relationship with Diana Ross, who Harrier counts as a personal style icon.

On the Michael set, de Passe seldom showed up empty-handed. “She is a crazy archivist and she saved all of her clothes from that era,” Harrier says. “She brought all of these clothes to set for our costume designer Marci Rodgers, who also dressed Harrier in Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman, and they recreated what she was wearing at the time. So I’m wearing the literal clothes she was wearing in the late ’60s, early ’70s.”

Her tone intensifies as she talks me through the highlights of de Passe’s vintage collection, from ’70s denim to a Pucci skirt suit that was remade for the film.

Harrier speaks about clothing the way a chef talks about food: palpable excitement, deep reverence, and clear expertise. She knows ball.

Before getting her start in the short-lived 2013 online spinoff of the soap One Live to Live, then landing her global breakout in 2017’s Spider-Man: Homecoming, she modelled to pay for drama school.

Though acting is her chosen craft, her impeccable approach to style is an art form in itself. This was always the game plan.

While she was working as a model, she met her now stylist Danielle Goldberg. On the set of a JCPenney shoot in Texas, they clicked right away because of their shared ambitions. Goldberg wanted to style actresses and Harrier wanted to act. “Maybe one day I’ll be an actress and you’ll be my stylist,” Harrier said, reenacting her proposal to Goldberg on a 2020 episode of Net-a-Porter’s Incredible Women podcast. Their connection was divinely timed. She eventually hired Goldberg when working on the Spider-Man: Homecoming press tour and they’ve been collaborating ever since.

“I was the first actress she dressed, she’s the only stylist I’ve ever worked with,” Harrier tells me. Today, Goldberg is a fashion kingmaker who can transform celebrities into style stars, with clients like Ayo Edebiri, Greta Lee, Zoë Kravitz, and Kendall Jenner on her roster. “We’ve sort of built our careers together in a really beautiful way. I’m just so proud of her and it’s so incredible to see all the success that she’s had.”

“For me, that’s how I want it to feel. I don’t want to take myself too seriously, I want things to be beautiful but also feel kind of silly and irreverent.”

In many ways, Harrier is a classic movie star. She saturates the spotlight when a new project premieres, then retreats, save for her very aspirational Instagram presence, occasional online clapbacks and front row appearances at Fashion Week.

Our conversation comes just two days after she witnessed Demna’s debut Gucci show from the front row of the Palazzo delle Scintille in Milan. On our call, she’s still buzzing. “I just love this return to fun in fashion,” she says. “For me, that’s how I want it to feel. I don’t want to take myself too seriously, I want things to be beautiful but also feel kind of silly and irreverent. I just think that the show was so that.”

Harrier attended the show in an all-white skirt suit that had a serendipitous reference point. “When I went to the fitting, they were like, ‘Demna referenced this from an actual Tom Ford Gucci white suit.'” As it turns out, Harrier, a vintage enthusiast, owns the very suit that inspired her look.

“I’ve always loved clothes. Literally since I was a child. As long as I can remember, it’s a part of my job that’s so fun and also just instinctual for me.” Just as style comes naturally to her, the fashion industry took very quickly to Harrier. Over the years, she’s walked in a Miu Miu show, designed a Reformation collection inspired by her signature style, and fronted campaigns for the likes of BOSS, Louis Vuitton, Calvin Klein, and Bulgari. She’s also a muse to Yves Saint Laurent creative director Anthony Vaccarello and was recently announced as an ambassador for YSL Beauty.

She doesn’t take these moments lightly. “I just feel really blessed,” she says. “When I was a little kid, all I could dream about was to get to wear the clothes that I get to wear today.”

Harrier grew up in Chicago and Evanston, Illinois. Music was a major part of her upbringing. “My dad is a musician and he had a band in Chicago in the ’80s and early ’90s,” she shares. “He had to give [it] up when I was a little kid to focus on being a father and providing for his family.”

Still, the impact was lasting on Harrier. Today, music is critical to her process of bringing characters to life, from her role as an aspiring actress in Ryan Murphy‘s Netflix series Hollywood to her voicing Kid Cudi’s ex in the animated film Entergalactic to starring opposite Jack Harlow in the 2023 White Men Can’t Jump remake. For every role, she curates a dedicated playlist to create her character’s inner world. “There’s always a soundtrack that I’m listening to around my work,” she tells me.

Naturally, as she prepared to play de Passe, she kept artists like Marvin Gaye, Tammi Terrell, Diana Ross, and The Jackson 5 in heavy rotation.

Portraying a public figure is not new territory for Harrier. Most recently, she played Robin Givens in Hulu’s 2022 Mike Tyson miniseries. “Obviously there’s a lot of pressure when you’re playing a real person,” she says. “For me, the pressure came more from wanting Suzanne to be happy more than anyone else.”

As she weighs new projects, embodying unique new personas is her north star. “I’ll lean towards characters that I haven’t explored before and different types of women I haven’t gotten to be. I think that’s really exciting,” she explains.

Her approach to playing de Passe was to channel her at her core. “I just wanted to be able to bring her to life in a genuine way,” she says. “This [is] different for different characters, but I want to [more so] give across the essence of a person as opposed to doing mimicry of [them].” It wasn’t about a spot-on imitation. It was about authenticity. “I think it’s important to sort of be truthful to their essence — who they are and what they’re going through in life,” she continues.

But at 35, being true to herself is key. As our call comes to a close, I ask what her thirties have taught her. “What’s really resonating for me right now is only doing things that bring me joy,” she explains, “and not feeling like work has to be this tedious, crawling-through-the-mud, painful thing in order to be successful.” She adds that saying it out loud feels obvious, but after a decade in the spotlight, it’s a necessary admission. “For so long I thought you had to work so hard and it [didn’t] always need to be fun. Maybe I’ve just reached a point in my life where unless something feels fun, authentic, brings me joy, and creatively [excites me], I just don’t want to do it,” she says. “I don’t want to do anything just for the sake of feeling busy.”

True to form, time has a way of revealing what really matters.

Feature image full look by LOEWE, rings and necklace by Tiffany & Co. Photography by Royal Gilbert.

Cover Story by Sumiko Wilson
Photography by Royal Gilbert
Styling by Karen Clarkson
Makeup by Georgina Graham (The Wall Group)
Hair by Marcia Lee (Forward Artists)
Stylist Assistant: Isobel Atkinson
Photo Assistants: Guillaume Mercier, Percy Walker-Smith, Kate Rosewell
Production by Michaela Wong
Editorial and Creative Director: Sahar Nooraei
Art Director: Jessica Hui
Fashion Director: Haley Dach
Social/Digital Editor: Roxanne Tam-Soltani
Entertainment Editor: Elycia Rubin