The actress, who grew up in Kenya, adopted an American accent after attending college in the United States and starring in Hollywood films.
To take on different roles in Hollywood, Lupita Nyong’o he had to abandon his Kenyan accent and adopt an American one.
In a podcast interview WhatNow? With Trevor Noahthe actress — born in Mexico and raised in Kenya — said (via Variety): “The first permission I gave myself to change my accent or allow it to transform was when I went to drama school.”
Nyong’o attended Yale theater school in the United States, before acting in films such as 12 Years a Slave (2013), Black Panther (2018) and A Quiet Place: Day One (2024).
“I went to drama school because I didn’t want to just be an instinctive actress. I wanted to understand my instrument. I wanted to know what I was good at, what I wasn’t good at, and work on the things I wasn’t good at. And one of the things I wasn’t good at was accents,” he continued.
The process of deciding, ‘Okay, I’m going to start working on my American accent and I’m not going to allow myself to sound like a Kenyan,’ led me to monitor and really try to understand my mouth in a technical way to produce these new sounds. Making these new sounds in a context other than the classroom felt like a betrayal. I felt like I wasn’t myself and I cried many nights before going to sleep… Many, many nights.
See this photo on InstagramA post shared by Lupita Nyong’o (@lupitanyongo)
Source: Rollingstone
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