Why Lupita Nyong’o Didn’t Recognize Mark Hamill in ‘The Wild Robot’! (Exclusive)

Lupita Nyong’o chatted with “Extra’s” Mona Kosar Abdi about “The Wild Robot,” her new animated sci-fi survival movie based on the Peter Brown book of the same name. 

Lupita plays a robot named Roz who is shipwrecked on a deserted island and must adapt to her new surroundings and the native animals. She shared, “I was really taken by the source material. I read the book by Peter Brown and I was so moved by it, it felt like a story that has always existed in fact I was shocked to learn that it was… published in 2016 because it's just a classic… and it has classic themes of kindness and family and community.”

She went on, “This film is uniquely for everyone. It's very intelligently done. I's very earnest and it's not afraid to be earnest… What I'm really looking forward to is for adults and children to go together and be equally moved by it and I hope it just teaches children some good life lessons, core lessons of kindness.”

Nyong’o also spoke about capturing Roz’s journey through her vocal evolution and how surprisingly athletic she found voice acting to be.

“She goes through a real arc vocally,” she said. “We start off with what I like to call the programmed optimism of you know things like Alexa and Siri and the TikTok voices and what have you, and then as she adapts to this wild environment she starts to mimic the animals and their expression and in so doing she finds a more lived in three-dimensional warm, textured voice which is more closer to what I sound like.”

Lupita further explained of vocal work, “You can use your body, however, you need to get the sound you need so I could contort… my body and do things that I just never would do in front of the camera because it would never be called for so it was fun… But the surprising thing… is how athletic vocal work is, because unlike a film where you're doing one scene all day, when you're doing vocal work you're going through the entire arc of the film every time you're in the booth… and so that requires a dexterity, a nimbleness, a flexibility and you can't be judging yourself too highly.”

Plus, she confessed that she didn’t recognize Mark Hamill’s voice in the movie! 

“I really didn't recognize him in the movie! He's so grumpy in the movie and he's such a jovial person in real life. Of course, I've worked with him before, but that was the thing, like, his voice was so disguised.”