Black Panther Issue: Lupita Nyong'o and Winston Duke on the Sequel

Lupita Nyong'o and Winston Duke offers insight into their characters.

Lupita Nyong’o as Naki’a, left and Winston Duke as M’Baku, right/Marvel Studios

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"I love your outfit," Lupita Nyong'o tells me as I walk into our interview room. She's sitting beside Winston Duke, her co-star in Marvel Studios' Black Panther: Wakanda Forever who agrees with her. I smile so hard and say thank you, then she asks me: "Where's it from?"

It's a Sunday afternoon in Lagos, Nigeria, and we are a bit behind schedule for our interview. So when I take a seat, I dive into the questions immediately after a few pleasantries, reeling from the fact that the two stars sitting across the table now know my name.

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is the second film from the Black Panther franchise. It comes two years after the death of its lead actor, Chadwick Boseman who played the role of T’Challa, the Black Panther.

"It took a long time to figure out what we would do after Chad's passing," Black Panther’s director and co-writer, Ryan Coogler, tells me. “We had to change the script we had written where he would be the lead actor.”

For the first part of this issue, I spoke to Nyong'o and Duke about the sequel, their characters, grief, and what they hope the audience takes away after watching.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What was it like for Nakia to deal with T'Challa's death?

Nyong’o: Wow. One, two, punch, huh. What was it like for her? I would say that T’Challa is and was Nakia’s first and long love. So in my imagination, that loss is central and complex and heartbreaking. Obviously, it is heartbreaking.

But I would say that she is processing her grief differently from the other characters in the film. She’s a bit more advanced in her process and is closer to acceptance than the others. I think that is an indication of her emotional intelligence and also her spiritual pursuit as well. At the end of the day, I believe people process grief differently, and there’s not one way of doing it. It’s cyclical, not orderly. And sometimes, you can be doing very well, and other times, you can be doing very poorly. I remember when my grandmother died, I cried about it; I want to say more than 12 years later. And it took me by surprise. So, yeah.

What did you enjoy most about filming?

Duke: Filming was full of so many cool opportunities to really play. I would say I have never done water work in any way. So the training was the most fun for me. We did really extensive swimming and diving work, and I got up to six minutes of holding my breath underwater, which was really cool. Playing and feeling free in a different way in my body as a very big man and figuring out new ways to feel and access my body was a brand new feeling for me.

There's a really cool fight scene with myself and the Talokan, and developing that language around the scene was really cool. Watching the world be built was also incredible. I would even show up on days when I wasn’t working and look at the different sets because they were that impressive. So one of the superpowers of Black Panther is world-building. And when you watch the world-building, it’s just like no other. So that was one of my favourite things, for sure.

Okay, what do you love most about Naki’a and M’Baku in the sequel?

Nyong’o: Am I telling you about him or about my character? [laughs]. 

Okay, what do I love most about the character? I love what she stands for when it comes to the grief process; you know, in the first film, Ryan Coogler, our director, described Naki’a as being T’Challa’s Oasis. And that really resonated with me, and I was thinking about how she was a place he came for calm and perspective. She was his safe space and kind of became that for Shuri. I had a love-hate relationship with this because I was frustrated with having to be more grounded and centred as Naki’a than I was as Lupita. But at the same time, having to work on that was one of the ways I worked on my grief of losing Chadwick.

And so this is one moment playing a character made a huge emotional difference for me because having to be that grounded, that Oasis for a character like Shuri resulted in me having to find out within myself.

Duke: What I loved about, and I loved about it from the first movie to now, is that he stress tests. He stress test every situation to make sure that it should be present. So in the first film, he stress tests the prince to make sure that he should be king, the cohort that came to ask him for help before he helped, and T'Challa's will to win before participating in the Final Battle. He constantly stresses every situation to make sure that it's viable. And I love that about him. He's deeply honourable while being incredibly irreverent. So he's both light and heavy at the same time. He's a personality of great duality, and I love that about M’Baku.

Now, he’s a bit older and wiser and more experienced. He's experienced much of what has happened in the other films, like Infinity War and Endgame. So now he's aware of how great and large their universe is, which has transferred to his position in Wakanda. He's really a Wakandan now instead of just a Jabari. He's a leader of his people.

So without giving anything away, do you have any favourite line of dialogue?

Nyong’o: Dialogue? Tell me how we’re going to do that without giving anything away. [laughs]

Duke: [laughs] How do we do that?

Nyong’o: Okay, this is how I am going to pivot and answer this question. I really enjoyed speaking in Spanish. Boom!

Okay, speaking in Spanish. And what was the biggest challenge while filming?

Nyong’o: I think the biggest challenge was dealing with our grief. We lost a brother in Chadwick, a friend. And it was surprising, discombobulating, harrowing. And I think you see in this film that art imitates life. Also, this film is special because the grief is palpable and true. We were experiencing it, and the world was experiencing it because Chadwick had come to mean so much to so many people.

What’s one thing you want people to take away from this film?

Duke: What I really want people to take away from this film is that it's great to see Black women centred in a narrative. It's far too often that Black women in narrative storytelling are made reductive subjects. And this one expands the subject. It broadens the subject into universality, where anyone can see their own experience. And I think that's a beautiful thing.

Nyong’o: I want people to come together and pay tribute and celebrate in the life, the great short life, lived.

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever will be in theatres worldwide from Nov. 11, 2022.