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LOS ANGELES — Academy Award-winning actress Lupita Nyong’o has opened up about how she spent years battling with the way she speaks and what made her turn back to her Kenyan accent.
She said that she had always had a “complicated relationship” with her voice, Nyong’o said on the first episode of her new podcast ‘Mind Your Own’: “In order to create this podcast, I had to get very comfortable with my voice.
“I made this pact with myself that I would learn how to sound American in a way that would guarantee me a career in acting, because obviously I didn’t know very many people in movies and television with Kenyan accents. There was just no market for that.”
The 41-year-old was born in Mexico and raised mainly in Nairobi, Kenya, with the actress living in the US for the last 20 years, reports femalefirst.co.uk.
Before starting the press tour for 2013’s “12 Years a Slave” she said she called her publicists and told them: “I’ve decided that from tomorrow I am going to return to my original accent. I want to send a message that being an African is enough.”
She added: “They had never heard me speak in a Kenyan accent.”
The actress also said her mother backed her decision, adding: “She said, ‘Your accent is representative of your life experience.’ That gave me solace, that an accent comes to being from your life… and just like skin and hair, it can change and it’s okay.”
She exclaimed about her voice: “I guess this accent is called Lupita! I don’t know who could claim it but me.”
The actress recently told how she wanted to diversify her roles by doing comedy.
She told people.com: “I don’t get comedic roles offered to me. Ever. I’m known for dramatic roles, so I tend to get that kind of role. Lots of depth, darkness. I love depth. I’m not saying I don’t want depth. But darkness and drama, I get that a lot. I am always trying to choose roles that I haven’t played before, roles that will stretch me.
“I think comedy is very scary. It’s very hard to achieve, and I want to try my hand at it more.”