What did you miss?
Lupita Nyong’o stunned The One Show hosts as she revealed she stayed silent for three whole months after hurting her voice making a film.
The actor voices robot Roz in The Wild Robot, a new animated film about a robot that ends up on an uninhabited island after a shipwreck and becomes the mum of an orphaned goose. She shared on The One Show that mastering the voice of the character wasn’t all plain-sailing as she ended up injuring herself.
As a result, she had to keep quiet for three months and could only communicate with people by writing messages on a board.
What, how and why?
Nyong’o told the BBC show’s hosts Alex Jones and Roman Kemp that as she was working on Roz’s voice for the movie, she was “inspired” by AI voices such as Alexa and Siri. “What they have in common is this relentless positivity – they are very bright and so that vocal posture is very different from my own,” she said.
“It’s quite athletic actually. So in the process I actually injured myself and had to remain silent for three months in order to recover without needing surgery.”
“Oh my gosh!” exclaimed Jones, as Antiques Roadshow star Fiona Bruce – who was also a guest on The One Show – asked in surprise: “Three months?”
“Yes, three months I spent on vocal rest,” Nyong’o confirmed. She admitted that it had been “difficult” staying quiet for such a long time but that she “got through it”. “And listen to me now!” she quipped.
However, Kemp looked stunned and quizzed the star further about how quiet she actually had to be.
“When you say vocal rest, is that completely silent or is that just like, minimum?” he asked.
Lupita Nyong’o wore badge to explain her silence
“I had a little badge that said I was on vocal rest so people didn’t think I was rude when I didn’t respond to things,” said Nyong’o.
“And then I had a dry erase board that I would use to write messages.”
“I could speak a little bit but just, you know, like bedroom voice is what I would call it,” she added.
Jones gasped, as she added: “That is proper suffering for your art that is!”