by Gill Pringle
At just 38 years old, the Tony-nominated Kenyan-Mexican actress has already reached what others would consider the peak of a professional career with an Oscar, Daytime Emmy and two SAG awards.
Proving she can switch effortlessly between drama, action, horror, comedy and sci-fi, she has starred in Star Wars, Black Panther, Us and Australia’s own Little Monsters.
Directed by Simon Kinberg, The 355 sees her play Khadijah Adoyo, a former MI6 agent and tech hacker who joins forces with her fellow A-list cast to help retrieve a top-secret weapon which has fallen into mercenary hands.
Nyong’o tells FilmInk what she learned from working on this unique female-led film and how she’d be a hopeless hacker in real life.
Do you share anything in common with Khadijah who has superior tech skills?
“Not at all. Playing a woman who is as scientifically minded as Khadijah is completely foreign to me. I do not have a scientific bone in me, which is why I was curious about what it would be like to come across as knowing what the hell is going on in the computer. Khadijah is also someone who is adaptable. She’s direct. She’s smart. She’s perceptive and extremely intelligent when it comes to cyber security, so that was one of the hardest things for me because I am NOT GOOD at the digital world. I struggle with it and barely know what www stands for, so I had to really learn a lot and I wanted her to come across as confident in her knowledge, so I hope that worked.”
How did you feel about the premise of the film and the opportunity to star alongside so many gifted peers?
“I was excited about the idea of women taking prominence in the action-adventure spy thriller genre, and the idea of the ensemble of women being made up of women from around the world. The cast we have in this film is made up of women whose careers I have watched from afar. To get to work so closely with them has been an experience that I will never forget.”
Do you remember your first and last day of shooting? How you meet each other and how you say goodbye?
“We met before the first day of shooting and we had a roundtable reading of the script about a month before we started shooting. It was really cool and I was meeting these women whose work I had watched for a long time. And someone like Penelope Cruz, who has done astounding things over the years. I feel like I’ve been watching Penelope since I was little so to be in the same room with her and reading along with her was really moving. There was such an unknown ahead of us and it’s always nerve-wracking when you start a project and you feel the panic, total panic! As for the last day, I remember being exhausted and couldn’t wait to get some rest!”
As the film’s producer, Jessica Chastain says that all the actresses own this project in a very independent way. What is the voice that you want to bring to the character because you signed to the project before having the script, so you must have helped develop this?
“We all participated in the development of the project but it becomes its own thing. I was very keen, like with all the characters I play, I wanted to have agency; I want them to be specific and so I worked hard to get that for Khadijah.”
Khadijah has a unique look, very different from how we’ve seen you before. How much input did you have in your style?
“That was one of the hardest things to arrive at and I definitely had a lot of say. At the end of the day, the script was morphing as we were preparing to do this film and Khadijah was morphing a whole lot and so with every morph it would give us a new idea and a sense of what she might look like and then, at the end, I had a consultant who helped me nail her look because she is quite independent spirited and a bit of a tomboy, but with style. She has a point of view when it comes to how she dresses, and it was really cool to have all heads joined together to come to the final version of her. I’m very proud of what we came up with.”
How difficult was it to make this character your own?
“[laughs in a nervous way, long peal of sing-song laughter] It was very difficult , very, very difficult. Like I said, what she does for a living eludes me entirely and I was miserable learning all the jargon and it was very tough for me to own it and to feel confident that I knew what I was talking about. It was very difficult.”
You always take on very strong female roles. As an actor of colour, do you feel more responsible in terms of the roles that you take?
“Because of the fact that we are still living in a time where there is a discrepancy between White representation and everyone else, I do think I am aware of the significance of the roles I play, and I do consider what they contribute to a larger conversation or a larger narrative. That said, I am very keen to keep the artistry in my craft and so I don’t see it as a responsibility, I think of it more of what opportunities do I have at my disposal to lend to the larger narrative and so I want to play different roles to shed different light on what a person of my complexion, of my race, of my ethnicity, of all those outward things can be inside. And that can be so different and so, at no point do I feel a moral obligation to be always good, for example. I mean, in Us I played one or two very despicable people! I think it’s important to just give colour to colour.”
Do you more often feel competition amongst women in your industry or support?
“I think I came into this industry at a time when it was really undergoing a shift. I remember about two years before my career started, Gabrielle Union gave this incredible speech about her experience in the industry and feeling like she was in constant battle with other women and the competition that was just so naturally a part of the industry and that was exacerbated by fewer roles for women of colour and for Black women and she had really gone through an epiphany and a change of spirit and a change of direction in her own life and was practicing radical acceptance of herself and operating from a place of love.
“I remember hearing her speech and being very moved by it and so things like that were happening in the industry and by time I arrived in the industry, I felt such an embrace. It was overwhelming actually. I felt more of a community spirit than a competitive spirit. Now, that is not to say that competition doesn’t exist, but it’s not the thing that I feel I operate on and I think I’m surrounded by a lot of women who share the same outlook.”
Can you talk about working with Penelope Cruz and the friendship that grew out of it? You were born in Mexico so I guess you know some Spanish?
“I do! And that was one of the funnest things of being on a set with her is that she knew I spoke Spanish and the very first day when we were in the trailer – because I don’t get to practice my Spanish often enough but I spoke to her in Spanish and she was like ‘We can speak in Spanish, you can practice with me’, and so I always spoke to Penelope in Spanish on set and that was so lovely to get that chance to practice with her and we’ve kept our friendship up and she will text me in Spanish and I’ll text her back in Spanish – and really take my time so I get my grammar all correct. She’s been so encouraging and always complementing my skills. She’s very gracious.”
The action scenes are very realistic. You all get hurt and get tired and it’s not easy to jump over a car, for example. How different was it from an action hero movie?
“The more realistic approach to it was actually refreshing because, when you get punched, it hurts and you soothe yourself and rub yourself a little bit, so it was nice to be working with that level of reality. I think obviously superhero films serve a different purpose because they are more aspirational and fantastical. Here we have a situation which is a little more grounded in the real world and I think there’s a place for both and I enjoy both.”
Is the male audience ready for a female-led movie like this. Of course, as women, we appreciate this movie, but what about men?
“I’ll ask YOU a question. When was the last time that a male-driven movie asked the question about whether the women were ready for it? I think time will tell – and they will speak up too!”
How has the role of females in movies evolved since the time before you became an actor, and were just an audience member?
“I find myself being encouraged by the growth in female representation behind the camera, in terms of like who is producing and who is being green-lit and who are the executives at these studios and stuff like that. That’s where the change really effects what happens in front of the camera and we live in a world where Ava DuVernay is doing it all and we have people like Oprah and…I’m blanking on names. It’s not enough but there is a change I see happening and so we have a lot more. And also the platforms have changed as well, so there’s more diversity there and more different approaches to how things are being made like with the streamers and the what not, so it’s encouraging but I don’t think it’s time for us to rest on our laurels but I do think there’s forward movement.”
The 355 is in cinemas January 13, 2022
