Lupita Nyong’o says she was “floored” by the music in her new animated film The Wild Robot which turned out to be an “exercise in relinquishing control” for the actress.
Speaking to Sky News at the London Film Festival, the Oscar-winner who voices the ROZZUM unit 7134, otherwise known as Roz in the adaptation of Peter Brown’s New York Times bestseller, described the finished movie as “a dance between the animation… music and the vocal performances”.
“It’s an exercise in relinquishing control,” she explained. “You know, I gift [the project] my performance and good luck… and so to receive the finished thing is a gift back to me because I can now see how I contributed.”
The story follows Roz the android as it washes up on a remote island and becomes an adoptive parent to an orphaned gosling. The Last Of Us star Pedro Pascal also stars as a fox called Fink.
While much has been written about the film’s animated artistry – with some critics claiming it’s the best animated film of the year, if not the decade – its music, written by Kris Bowers, is equally impressive.
“I was just floored by it,” Nyong’o, 41, admitted. “It’s a perfect fit and it conveys so much.”
Earlier this year, Sky News was granted exclusive access to the film’s London scoring session, where Bowers, the composer, said he wanted the music to “feel like a great massage”.
He explained the idea is that viewers “never know when the hand is going on and coming off” and that they leave without “knowing what was pulling those emotional levers”.
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The film’s director, Chris Sanders, said “music is the closest thing to real magic” that a filmmaker has at their disposal.
“You can have missteps with dialog, I have certainly written scenes that I’ve had to go back and change because it just didn’t play the way I thought it would, but when it comes to music, I always find places in the film to let music do the talking.
“The music is the best, most beautiful voice we could possibly have.”
With themes ranging from the sentience of artificial intelligence to the vulnerable properties of the natural world, when it comes to leading audiences on an emotional journey, what viewers hear in The Wild Robot is doing as much of the heavy lifting as what cinemagoers will see.
The Wild Robot is in UK and Irish cinemas from 18 October.