Lupita Nyong’o took her role in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever very seriously.
In a TikTok video shared on Saturday, the 39-year-old Oscar winner documented the intense swimming training she went through in order to portray her character, the Wakandan spy Nakia, in the recently released film.
Set to one of the tracks featured in the movie, “Con La Brisa” by Foudeqush and Ludwig Göransson, Nyong’o begins the behind-the-scenes sneak peek by holding a dumbbell in her hand while swimming in the pool.
She then starts to crawl and walk underwater using the same workout equipment in each hand.
“How I trained to swim in Wakanda Forever,” Nyong’o wrote at the beginning of the video. After she made her way out of the water to rest by the side of the pool, she added, “I felt like a crawfish.”
“Swimming down to Talokan was not as easy as it looked! ????????♀️???????? Safely supervised by @XPT Life and #MarkRobertsFitness ????????♀️ #wakandaforever #blackpanther #talokan #underwater #fittok #behindthescenes,” Nyong’o captioned her post.
Earlier this month, Nyong’o and her Wakanda Forever costar Angela Bassett shared their experiences with swimming, expressing to Variety that they were not particularly skilled in the water before shooting 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.”
“Before we started this film, I knew how to swim, but I wasn’t a confident swimmer,” Nyong’o, added. “I didn’t need to swim in public, that’s for sure. That’s a lifelong skill that I now have.”
Both actresses trained to the point where they could both hold their breath underwater for about two minutes, per Variety, which noted that cast member Mabel Cadena could hold her breath underwater for around six-and-a-half minutes.
About half of Wakanda Forever’s scenes take place underwater, thanks to the addition of new antagonist Namor (Tenoch Huerta), who rules the secretive deep-sea land of Talokan.
According to Variety, the film’s director, Ryan Coogler, also decided he needed to be on the same page with his cast members, who had to learn to free dive and train with free diving instructors and aquatic stunt teams for the movie.
“A lot of us were raised to have fear of water,” Coogler, 36, told the outlet. “I had to figure out how to swim so I could direct this movie.”
“I was just impressed by how much stunt work they all did, how everybody showed up ready to go, ready to learn how to free dive,” he added.
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