Lupita Nyong'o has said that getting her voice just right for her latest movie role as a robot stranded on a desert island was all-important.
New Dreamworks animation The Wild Robot sees Nyong'o, who won an Oscar for her debut film role in 12 Years a Slave, voicing a droid named Roz who is shipwrecked on a deserted island and must learn to adapt to her new surroundings.
After tricky beginnings, she learns to build relationships with the native animals and even develops a parental bond with an orphaned gosling called Brightbill.
There's a sprawling cast, including a cunning fox, some death-obsessed young pinktails, and a wise an old Canada goose called Longneck voiced by Bill Nighty, but it’s Nyong'o’s voice work that really steals the show as Roz grows from a robot to a caring, sharing member of the island community.
"What I took from them was this bright, positive sound, that `can-do’ office of studied optimism and then through the process of the script’s evolution, we understand more about the arc of Roz’s story."
She added, "We knew that we wanted her to be affected by her environment in such a way that by the end she sounds more three dimensional and warm and that her voice has texture."
However, Roz is not quite greeted by the native animals like C-3PO was by the Ewoks in Return of The Jedi and the role meant Nyong'o could immerse herself in some serious character development.
"Yeah, and that was one of the allures in playing her, that it wasn’t going to be one-note," she says. "I really had to find Roz in my voice and convey so much change in that voice so it was a vocal workout and one that I was very much up for."
Like a mix of WALL-E and Up, The Wild Robot is certainly a beautiful looking animated movie and it has already been compared to Disney classic Bambi and even the paintings of Claude Monet.
Director Chris Sanders has said that he worried that traditional computer generated animation might limit his vision for the movie, so he opted for a more illustrative, painterly style.
And when she got to see the finished product, Nyong'o was suitably impressed. "I was just wowed by it!" she says. "I watched it at the Toronto Film Festival and I was taken by the scale of it.
"Every single frame was so detailed, so rich and beautiful. You could feel the love of the animators in it and then the music really takes you on Roz's journey quite seamlessly.
"And the vocal performances, it really feels like we were all together and we never, ever worked together on this film so that is just testament to the visionary behind it all, Chris Sanders, who really conducted us like a conductor. We were his vocal symphony and he just made it a beautiful concert to experience."
The Wild Robot is certainly funny and charming but it also has a profound message for our times.
At one point towards the film’s eventful ending, we glimpse a haunting image of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco reclaimed by nature as humankind’s greed and eco destruction take hold.
"It sure does have a profound message," Nyong'o. "It has a number of messages but I think at the core of it is the idea that we get to be more than we are programmed to be and that kindness is a force and those are two of the biggest messages of this movie."
The Wild Robot is in cinemas on 18 October
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