Lupita Nyong’o thinks it’s "really cool" that a tweet brought her and Rihanna together for a movie.
The ‘Black Panther’ actress is teaming up with the ‘We Found Love’ singer for an upcoming heist movie, the idea for which came after a fan shared a photo of them sitting together at a fashion show in 2014 and suggested a potential plot.
And Lupita is very proud to be a part of a project – which will be directed by Ava DuVernay and written by Issa Rae – which has its origins entirely in what people want to see on screen.
She said: "You know what’s really cool, is that people spoke up about the kind of movie they wanna see and this is a great example.
"Like, ‘Black Panther’ is being embraced because people are really hungry for this kind of film, and that movie with me and Rihanna and Issa and Ava is another one of those examples where people want to see something like themselves, and something different something they’re not being offered yet, and I’m honoured to be a part of that conversation."
The 34-year-old actress can next be seen as Nakia in ‘Black Panther’ and she and her castmates underwent "extreme" workouts to become Wakandan warriors.
She explained to ‘Entertainment Tonight’: "The story was something that was really important to all of us, and we needed to get our bodies ready for it so our workouts were extreme!
"We did a special kind of workout. We would work out to live drumming by a great drummer. And he would sit there and drum as we worked out, so that brought in the African flavour, you know? And that was incredible, it totally changes your sense of movement, you know, the core of where you move from – it just shifts. And it was a lot of different martial arts."
And Lupita got to see first hand how co-stars Chadwick Boseman and Michael B. Jordan transformed their physiques for the film.
She said: "We worked out together, so I saw some of the muscle being built around me."