Lupita Nyong’o’s journey to adapt her accent for American roles

Source: Lia Toby / Getty

Recently, Lupita Nyong’o opened up about losing her Kenyan accent for her many Hollywood roles and how this made her

feel. Lupita said, “The first permission I gave myself to change my accent or allow my accent to transform was going to

drama school. I went to drama school because I didn’t want to just be an instinctive actor.” She continued, “I wanted to

understand my instrument. I wanted to know what I was good at, what I was not good at, and work on the things that I wasn’t

good at. And one of the things I wasn’t good at was accents.” She added, “The process of deciding, ‘OK, 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. You know, I didn’t feel like myself and I cried many nights to sleep…many, many

nights.” Story source: variety.com