Rewrite
Academy Award-winning actress Lupita Nyong’o felt that losing her Kenyan accent would be desirable to gain Hollywood accessibility.
The Wild Robot star, who is of Kenyan descent but was born in Mexico and later spent her childhood in Nairobi, Kenya, spoke about the decision to fulfill an American accent on a recent episode of podcast What Now? With Trevor Noah. Nyong’o took acting courses at the esteemed David Geffen School of Drama at Yale, graduating in 2012.
“The first permission I gave myself to change my accent or allow my accent to transform was going to drama school,” Nyong’o said around the 10:30-minute mark of the video below. “I went to drama school because I didn’t want to just be an instinctive actor; I wanted to understand my instrument.”
Adding that she wanted to understand what she was “good at,” Nyong’o revealed that accents weren’t particularly her strength at the time. Despite this, as we’ve seen in films like Black Panther, 12 Years a Slave and Us, fitting various accents has become muscle memory for the 41-year-old.
“I didn’t know how to sound any other way than myself, and that was the first permission that I gave myself,” she continued. But it was full of heartbreak and grief, just grief. 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 Kenyan, so that I’m like monitoring and really trying to understand my mouth in a technical way to like make these new sounds.”
“Making those new sounds in a context that wasn’t the classroom felt like betrayal,” she confessed. “You know, I didn’t feel like myself and I cried many nights to sleep…many, many nights. It was so frustrating…I was living in an American accent.”
Nyong’o added that there were times that she “wanted to give up,” but refused to, focused on the goal to “succeed in an American market as an actor.”
“Now, I did all that work just for someone to tell me, ‘Now go and sound like yourself.’ What?” Nyong’o continued. “That was another betrayal. I mean, I’ve done all this so that I can come out here and people can be like, ‘You don’t have an accent.'”
But upon trying to rediscover her Kenyan accent later, Nyong’o wasn’t able to find it.
“When I tried to return to my accent, I couldn’t find myself in my mouth. I couldn’t find that original part of me,” she said. “And my mom actually sent me a voice note of a of a speech I gave before I moved to America. And it brought me to tears, because I’ve never been able to sound like that and I never will.”
“So it wasn’t a moment. It was many things. And it is also people I love reminding me that I was enough,” she concluded. “And my mother saying to me, ‘The way you sound is a product of your life experience.'”
In a September episode of her podcast Mind Your Own, titled “The Sound of Home,” Nyong’o shared her urge to reclaim her Kenyan accent and get “very comfortable” with her voice.
“In order to create this podcast, I had to get very comfortable with my voice. … It has not been easy,” Nyong’o said early in the episode. “I’ve long had a complicated relationship with the way I speak.
She continued, “While I was in undergrad, I held on to my Kenyan accent for dear life…When I showed up at the Yale School of Drama, 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 because obviously I didn’t know very many people in movies and television with Kenyan accents. There was just no market for that.”
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Academy Award-winning actress Lupita Nyong’o felt that losing her Kenyan accent would be desirable to gain Hollywood accessibility.
The Wild Robot star, who is of Kenyan descent but was born in Mexico and later spent her childhood in Nairobi, Kenya, spoke about the decision to fulfill an American accent on a recent episode of podcast What Now? With Trevor Noah. Nyong’o took acting courses at the esteemed David Geffen School of Drama at Yale, graduating in 2012.
“The first permission I gave myself to change my accent or allow my accent to transform was going to drama school,” Nyong’o said around the 10:30-minute mark of the video below. “I went to drama school because I didn’t want to just be an instinctive actor; I wanted to understand my instrument.”
Adding that she wanted to understand what she was “good at,” Nyong’o revealed that accents weren’t particularly her strength at the time. Despite this, as we’ve seen in films like Black Panther, 12 Years a Slave and Us, fitting various accents has become muscle memory for the 41-year-old.
“I didn’t know how to sound any other way than myself, and that was the first permission that I gave myself,” she continued. But it was full of heartbreak and grief, just grief. 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 Kenyan, so that I’m like monitoring and really trying to understand my mouth in a technical way to like make these new sounds.”
“Making those new sounds in a context that wasn’t the classroom felt like betrayal,” she confessed. “You know, I didn’t feel like myself and I cried many nights to sleep…many, many nights. It was so frustrating…I was living in an American accent.”
Nyong’o added that there were times that she “wanted to give up,” but refused to, focused on the goal to “succeed in an American market as an actor.”
“Now, I did all that work just for someone to tell me, ‘Now go and sound like yourself.’ What?” Nyong’o continued. “That was another betrayal. I mean, I’ve done all this so that I can come out here and people can be like, ‘You don’t have an accent.'”
But upon trying to rediscover her Kenyan accent later, Nyong’o wasn’t able to find it.
“When I tried to return to my accent, I couldn’t find myself in my mouth. I couldn’t find that original part of me,” she said. “And my mom actually sent me a voice note of a of a speech I gave before I moved to America. And it brought me to tears, because I’ve never been able to sound like that and I never will.”
“So it wasn’t a moment. It was many things. And it is also people I love reminding me that I was enough,” she concluded. “And my mother saying to me, ‘The way you sound is a product of your life experience.'”
In a September episode of her podcast Mind Your Own, titled “The Sound of Home,” Nyong’o shared her urge to reclaim her Kenyan accent and get “very comfortable” with her voice.
“In order to create this podcast, I had to get very comfortable with my voice. … It has not been easy,” Nyong’o said early in the episode. “I’ve long had a complicated relationship with the way I speak.
She continued, “While I was in undergrad, I held on to my Kenyan accent for dear life…When I showed up at the Yale School of Drama, 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 because obviously I didn’t know very many people in movies and television with Kenyan accents. There was just no market for that.”
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