Lupita Nyong’o: “I was inspired by the automated voices of Alexa and Siri.”
She voices a robot called Roz that is shipwrecked on an uninhabited island. For Oscar winning actress Lupita Nyong’o, this was no easy feat. “We had many versions of Roz and as the script developed, so did the voice, and I was inspired by the automated voices of Alex and Siri and the voices on TikTok and Instagram.”
A movie based on Peter Brown’s book, “The Wild Robot” is a story of environmentalism, artificial intelligence and the friendship that develops between a lost robot and a wild animal.
Roz is a robot programmed to help human beings complete their tasks. When she finds herself on an island with animals and no humans, she discovers she needs to adapt and improvise. By robotically studying her environment, she learns everything she needs to know to navigate through the wilderness. Childlike, and naivete, she tries her best to help the animals, but when she accidentally destroys a goose nest, leaving only a single egg, she realizes that her purpose is to keep the runt gosling, Brightbill (Kit Connor), alive and learns in doing so that kindness can be a survival skill.
“In order to survive she has to learn to adapt by learning the language of the animals,” continues Nyong’o. “It has a genuine message and is a story about belonging and how to adapt when you find yourself in a foreign world.”
Written and directed by Chris Sanders, this time-old message of humanity is a film about kindness, acceptance and adaptation. There’s a particularly funny scene where the animals are forced to seek refuge in a cave during a severe storm and make a promise not to eat each other.
“I was taken by it as it has such a human message and reading the book made a huge difference,” adds the actress who was last seen in the movie “A Quiet Place: Day One” where she played a cancer patient battling aliens. “One of the coolest things I think is they shy away from giving Roz a human-like face. There is no mouth and a nose so no expression, but yet we get so much empathy from her as she evolves into a more individualized being.”
Clever and endearing, this story about a robot and her relationship with wild animals will fill audiences with warmth, empathy, and the desire to engage in our world. With just the right mix of action, humor and humanity, it’s really the character-building and simplicity that give the film so much of its charm.
The film also features the voice talents of Catherine O’Hara, Pedro Pascal, Mark Hamill, Matt Berry and Ving Rhames who voices Thunderbolt, a falcon who helps Brightbill learn to fly.
A story about self-discovery, Peter Brown’s “The Wild Robot” is a novel that was first published in 2016 and made the New York Times bestseller list. The book has since inspired a trilogy that now includes “The Wild Robot Escapes” and “The Wild Robot Protects” and there will likely be sequels in the future.
“Finding Roz’s voice was quite the journey,” shares Nyong’o who won an Oscar for her feature film debut “12 Years a Slave” in 2014. “It all started with a debate about the role of emotion in a robot. Roz, being a robot, has to learn how to access the spontaneity of emotion, which doesn’t come naturally to a programmed entity. We started with a more disembodied voice and what I call the ‘programmed optimism’ that comes with robotic figures like Siri or Alexa.”
The film will be released in US theatres Friday.
Samantha Ofole-Prince is a journalist and movie critic who covers industry-specific news that includes television and film. She serves as the Entertainment Editor for Trendy Africa. Photos courtesy of Paras Griffin, Getty Images & DreamWorks
