From playing a slave on a Louisiana cotton plantation in the 2013 Steve McQueen drama 12 Years a Slave to an ass-kicking international spy in the Black Panther series, Lupita Nyong’o’s career has been filled with performances that leave her audiences with all the feels.
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But in a recent interview about her latest role, the Academy Award-winning actress shared how deeply personal the experience was and the connection she felt to her Black Panther costar Chadwick Boseman.
In a July 1 interview with PEOPLE, Nyong’o talks about the experience playing Sam, a woman battling terminal cancer in the middle of an alien apocalypse in the sci-fi thriller A Quiet Place: Day One. The actress says it was “scary” to dig into a role where the character is facing her own mortality.
“That was daunting to have to go there, psychologically and emotionally,” she said.
But Nyong’o described the experience as “therapeutic,” in her healing process as she coped with the loss of Black Panther star Chadwick Boseman who died in 2020 of colon cancer at age 43,
“In the end, it was actually very therapeutic because I had just experienced not too many years ago the death of Chadwick Boseman, which shook me to my core,” the actress told PEOPLE. “I definitely was thinking about that a lot.”
Nyong’o says her role drove home the importance living intentionally and appreciating the time we have with our loved ones.
“When we think we have all the time in the world, we can really take people for granted and experiences for granted,” she said.
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