Lupita Nyong’o on Becoming a Scream Queen, Grieving Chadwick Boseman

Lupita Nyong’o spoke about becoming a certified scream queen with frequent horror movie appearances and coping with her persisting grief after the death of Chadwick Boseman at a BFI London Film Festival event on Monday.

Nyong’o, best known for her roles in 12 Years a Slave, A Quiet Place: Day One, and Black Panther alongside Boseman, spoke at a Screen Talk event on Monday while promoting her new film, The Wild Robot.

When first shown a clip of her character and Boseman’s T’Challa in the 2018 Marvel film Black Panther, Nyong’o was silent and became emotional. After a few seconds, the Kenyan actress revealed she has not watched the movie since Boseman’s death from colon cancer at age 43 in 2020. “The grief is the love, and no place to put it,” she said. She politely declined to move onto the next clip: “No, no… It’s fine. I don’t want run away from the tears or the grief. You just live with it. That experience will never be separate from the love that was formed.”

She continued, “I watch this clip and I’m filled with grief and I don’t know whether I’ll ever be done shedding my tears from losing my friend. But I’m like, we get to see him alive. And that’s so wonderful.”

She lauded the reaction to the 2018 film, remarking how the love and reception exceeded the cast and crew’s expectations. “There was a lot of fear, definitely from the executives… Marvel was shaking a little bit in their boots!” she laughed, adding, “We were too because we were like, we only get to do this once. And we gotta do it right.” But ultimately, it “totally shattered the myth that Black doesn’t sell.”

Earlier in the fest, Black Panther co-star Daniel Kaluuya also spoke about Boseman’s legacy and leadership on set.

Afterwards, the conversation moved onto Nyong’o’s appearances in horror films Little Monsters, Jordan Peele’s Us, as well as the most recent A Quiet Place sequel opposite Joseph Quinn. “I really much prefer doing the scaring then being the scared,” she began. “It’s not so much that I go seeking horror out. But I do think that horror films give you a lot of room to play. … It allows you to explore emotions that you would otherwise repress: anger, fear, anxiety. I think that’s what’s great about being in them as an actor and also what appeals to people.”

She also touched on her “fear of failure” and being typecast after her 2014 Oscar win from her first job, fresh out of Yale drama school, in 12 Years a Slave. “This is the pinnacle of people’s careers. I was like, ‘where am I supposed to go from here?’

“Before I went to drama school, I’d never watched the Oscars. … It was abstract. The year before I was at the Academy Awards, I was in my pajamas watching the Academy Awards. It was really surreal.” When probed on what it meant to only be one of 10 actors to win an acting Oscar, she said: “I had to ignore the racial significance of what it means to an entire community of people, because I had to live my life step by step.”

“I was trained to expect to struggle as an actor, so when my first job came with all these exponential opportunities, I could feel myself tensing up.”

The star credited none other than British veteran actor Emma Thompson for encouraging her to return to theater following Star Wars: The Force Awakens. “While I was [in London] working on Star Wars, I had grown close to Emma Thompson. … She invited me over for dinner and I confided in her. I said, ‘I want to go do theater but every one is telling me to seize the moment and this is the time to get a lead role in a big blockbuster movie, and that’s what you need to do to secure your place in the industry. But I don’t know cinema like I do theater and I feel like I need to re-engage with my craft.’

“And she was the one who encouraged me and told me to do exactly what my spirit wanted me to do. She said, ‘You need to follow your intuition. This industry will be there when you’re ready to take that next step.’ She told me how she had taken time off to start her family and some people advised her not to… And she’s doing just fine. So she really, really, bolstered my spirit and confidence to go back to theater.”

The BFI London Film Festival runs from Oct. 9-20.