Lupita Nyong’o just graced Miami with her dazzling presence, looking like a literal goddess draped in blue at the screening of her latest flick The Wild Robot—a title that already sounds like it’s about a Roomba going rogue in the jungle. But no, this is high art, people. Lupita stars as Roz, a robot who gets shipwrecked on an island where there are no Wi-Fi signals or phone chargers in sight. Forced to adapt to the wild, she befriends the local wildlife and even adopts a baby goose. Because, apparently, nothing says “futuristic machine” like becoming an avian single mom. Move over, Mowgli, there’s a new jungle family in town, and this one’s got circuits!
And hey, if you haven’t watched the trailer yet, what are you even doing with your life? Go, watch it! Like, right now! We’ll wait.
Lupita isn’t just a robot mom—she’s also dropping wisdom on the airwaves with her brand-new podcast, Mind Your Own! (Let’s be real, we all need a podcast called that). In the debut episode, Lupita opened up about embracing her Kenyan accent after years of trying to sound American. You know, that classic Hollywood struggle: trying to sound like you grew up on burgers and reality TV, instead of, well, anywhere else.
If you didn’t already know (and how could you not?), Lupita was born in Mexico—because of course she was, why settle for just one nationality when you can be an international queen? Her dad was teaching there at the time, but she moved to Kenya at the age of three, where she began her lifelong love affair with her accent. But Hollywood, being Hollywood, convinced her she needed to sound a little less “Kenyan queen” and a little more “California, like, totally!”
“I had a complicated relationship with the way I speak,” she said, which is probably the most eloquent way of saying, “Yeah, people kept telling me I sound like I just got off a safari and it was getting old.” To snag that golden acting career, she decided she needed to sound as American as a pumpkin spice latte.
And it worked! Her voice was so transformed that a casting director was straight-up shocked to learn she was from Kenya. The reaction? “Oh my goodness, you don’t have an accent!” To which Lupita probably thought, “Well, there goes my entire identity—nice job, me.” It was the ultimate “Yay, but also… oh.”
But don’t worry—our girl wasn’t about to let her true voice stay in the shadows. Right before promoting 12 Years a Slave in 2014, she told her publicists, “Surprise! Tomorrow, the Kenyan accent’s back, baby! Africa is enough!” Her publicists probably choked on their organic green juice.
Her mom? Absolutely here for it. “Your accent is like your life, Lupita,” her mom said, probably while wearing a superhero cape of wisdom. “It’s who you are! Own it!” And Lupita was like, “Yeah, this accent is called ‘Lupita.’ No one else can rock it quite like me.”
Oh, and if you needed one more reason to love her, she’s making her voice count in another way—she’s voting in her first U.S. election this year and throwing her support behind Vice President Kamala Harris. Because when you’re Lupita Nyong’o, you don’t just adopt geese and crush robot roles—you change the world one vote at a time.
