Lupita Nyong’o shared on her podcast Mind Your Own that embracing her Kenyan accent has been a journey.

“In order to create this podcast, I had to get very comfortable with my voice,” The Wild Robot star told her listeners on September 18. “It has not been easy. I’ve long had a complicated relationship with the way I speak.”

Nyong’o explained that in various life stages, she managed and minded her accent and, as a result, her identity. She recalled doing so during her undergrad studies at Hampshire College in Massachusetts. She said she held onto her Kenyan accent “for dear life,” but that changed at Yale School of Drama.

“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,” she noted. “Because obviously, I didn’t know very many people in movies and television with Kenyan accents. There was just no market for that.”

After biweekly voice lessons, she said the first casting director she met was shocked she grew up in Kenya. “She [the casting director] said, ‘Oh my goodness, you don’t have an accent.’ And I was at once so elated and also so crushed. I had ridden myself of myself, kind of.”

Ahead of the press run for her debut role in 2014’s 12 Years a Slave, the actress told her publicists that she’d decided to “return” to her “original accent.” For her, it was about showing that “being African is enough” and not inferior to her American identity. She highlighted that she never wanted to lose her “authenticity.”

“I spoke to my mom, and she said, ‘Your accent is representative of your life experience,'” Nyong’o said elsewhere in the episode. “That gave me solace, that an accent comes to being from your life and accent — just like skin and hair — it can change, and it’s OK. I guess this accent is called Lupita. I don’t know who could claim it but me.”

What Is Lupita Nyong’o’s Mind Your Own Podcast About?

The 41-year-old actress — born in Mexico and raised in Kenya — has resided in the United States for 20 years. Nyong’o shared that hosting a storytelling show has been a desire of hers for the last two decades. She shared on Instagram that she’s elated to tell the stories of Africa and its people through her new podcast.

The Academy-award winner also noted she’s been working on Mind Your Own for five years. The podcast is a Snap Studios production distributed by Lemonada Media.

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