ACTRESS Lupita Nyong’o posted a video on TikTok showing her intense training for her role as Wakandan spy Nakia in the recently released Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.
Nyong’o, 39, began the behind-the-scenes look by swimming with a dumbbell both in her hands, then crawling and walking underwater.
“Swimming down to Talokan was not as easy as it looked!” the actress wrote in the caption.
After she made her way out of the water to rest by the side of the pool, she added: “I felt like a crawfish.”
In a recent interview with Variety, Nyong’o and Wakanda Forever co-star Angela Bassett revealed that they were not particularly proficient swimmers prior to filming the film.
“You know, Black girls have this history with water and their hair,“ Bassett, 64, told the outlet. “Some of us can’t swim all that well, because it’s going to mess up that press and curl. It’s a whole thing.”
According to Variety, both actresses trained to the point where they could hold their breath underwater for almost two minutes, while cast member Mabel Cadena could do it for approximately six and a half minutes.
Due to the appearance of the new antagonist Namor (Tenoch Huerta), who leads the hidden deep-sea nation of Talokan, nearly half of Wakanda Forever’s scenes take place underwater.
