From her show-stopping red carpet looks to her captivating on-screen performances, Academy Award-winning actress Lupita Nyong’o is one of the brightest stars in Hollywood. But in the September 19 episode of her new “Mind Your Own” podcast, the actress opened up about the complicated relationship she’s had with the sound of her voice throughout her career.
“In order to create this podcast, I had to get very comfortable with my voice,” she said in the episode’s opening.
Born to Kenyan parents in Mexico City, the “Black Panther” star who identifies as Kenyan-Mexican, spent most of her childhood in Kenya, where her father was a government minister and a senator. Nyong’o came to Amherst, Massachusetts to pursue her bachelor’s degree at Hampshire College. Once in the United States, she says she was determined to maintain her African identity and “held on to [her] Kenyan accent for dear life.”
But things changed when she arrived at the Yale School of Drama, where she earned a master’s degree in acting in 2012. With few African actors to look up to, she decided the only way she could make it in Hollywood was to leave her accent behind.
“I made this pact with myself that I would learn how to sound American in a way that would guarantee me a career in acting,” she said. “Because obviously, I didn’t know very many people in movies and television with Kenyan accents. There was just no market for that.”
Nyong’o said that while she worked with coaches to help her lose accent, she felt like she was losing a bit of herself in the process.
“I had ridden myself of myself, kind of,” she said.
The actress says it was her mom who made her feel comfortable in her voice, telling her, “Your accent is representative of your life experience.”
“That gave me solace that an accent, it comes into being from your life. Accent, just like skin and hair, it can change. And it’s okay,” the actress said. “I guess this accent is called Lupita. I don’t know who can claim it but me,” she said.
