Lupita Nyong’o underwent therapy to overcome cat phobia
NEW YORK – The 2018 and 2020 A Quiet Place films imagined the aftermath of an invasion by killer aliens that hunt using their acute sense of hearing, forcing humans to stay quiet to survive.
The prequel, A Quiet Place: Day One, takes the hit post-apocalyptic horror franchise out of its rural setting and moves it to one of the loudest places on Earth – New York City – with more aliens and more scares.
It also takes the focus away from the Abbott family – played by Emily Blunt, John Krasinski, Millicent Simmonds and Noah Jupe in the first two movies – and introduces a new cast.
Now in Singapore cinemas, the story features Oscar winner Lupita Nyong’o as Sam, a terminally ill woman who finds herself in Manhattan when meteorites crash to Earth and the extraterrestrials begin their deadly attacks.
Together with her cat Frodo and a stranger named Eric (Joseph Quinn), she flees through the wreckage of New York, where people learn they must stay silent to survive.
Nyong’o – the 41-year-old Kenyan-Mexican actress who won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for the drama 12 Years A Slave (2013) – had to overcome a crippling phobia of cats to get comfortable with feline co-stars Schnitzel and Nico, which took turns playing Frodo.
She had tried to talk Michael Sarnoski, A Quiet Place: Day One’s American writer-director, into changing the script so it would be a different animal.
When he said no, she decided to do therapy to manage her fear.
“There was no way of playing Sam without me being over my fear of cats – she has a cat with her the whole time,” says Nyong’o at the film’s world premiere in New York at the end of June.
Therapy took the form of “exposure to a cat, and with someone who could break down cat behaviour to me in a way that made sense, and who was patient enough”.
“I think it was that: being able to ask questions, hear the answers and gain confidence in the fact that this cat was not going to scratch me or eat me,” explains the star, who appeared in the horror film Us (2019) and the Black Panther superhero films (2018 and 2022).
It worked so well that by the end of filming, “I was madly in love with cats and I got myself one”, says Nyong’o, who is dating Canadian-American actor Joshua Jackson, 46.
She also tried her best to not make a sound during the many non-verbal scenes, something cast members struggled with.
She had some experience with this, having attended a 10-day silent meditation retreat. But that still did not make it easy staying mute for long stretches of time.
“I didn’t want to do it once the film was over,” she says.
The Abbotts will be back for the sequel, A Quiet Place Part III, in 2025, with Krasinski – who helmed the first two films – set to return as director.
But Sarnoski, who developed the story for this prequel with Krasinski, says this movie can stand on its own, even though it exists in the same universe. And it has been a box-office hit, grossing US$98.5 million (S$133.8 million) worldwide so far.
“It was really exciting to get to dive into something that’s already been established, but be given the freedom to find characters and the storyline that I was passionate about,” says the film-maker, who directed the indie drama Pig (2021) starring Nicolas Cage.
“They were really supportive of letting me find a character in Sam who’s kind of unexpected for a movie like this, and to get into her head and tell an intimate character story against this massive backdrop.”
Nyong’o says: “Fans of the first two films will be pleased to know we’ve carried on with the touchstones of this universe, but made it bigger.”
“And we’ve kept the intimacy in the story,” she adds. “In the first two, you’re really invested in the Abbott family, and hopefully you’re really invested in Sam and Eric.”
- A Quiet Place: Day One is showing in cinemas
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