- He was like,
"Man, I feel like you should be in flat shoes."
And I was like,
"No, I'm the shortest one. I wanna be in heels."
And so we compromised
and we found a way to incorporate the heels in the battle
so that I could lose them and be safe, but still look hot.
Hi Glamour. I'm Lupita Nyong'o.
And today I'll be breaking down
some of my movie looks.
[upbeat music]
"Us", 2019.
This is a film by Jordan Peele.
The costume process was a lot of fun.
I played two characters, Adelaide and Red,
and they are polar opposites of each other,
but they're also of each other.
And if you haven't seen the film by now,
that's your own problem because I'm gonna spoil it for you.
They actually switch sides.
One of the things that I talked about with Kim
is that if Adelaide is really Red,
then there's a sense of escaping her life underground.
And so she would probably want to avoid everything
related to down there, especially the color red.
And so her costume was deliberately neutral.
She would wanna blend in.
She wouldn't wanna call attention to herself
because she has this deep dark secret.
And then for Red, obviously she's wearing the red jumpsuit
that is uniform of the people underground.
And her hair, of course down there there's no hair salons,
so she needed to have like hair that was just unkempt.
Once we had the hair on, we were still like,
what can make her more menacing?
'Cause I still looked like I was just having a bad hair day.
We came up with this idea of bleaching out the eyebrows
so that they were less prominent.
And when we did that, it just completely changed my face.
And then also Tim and I had the idea
of getting a mouth guard
that would change the posture of my mouth.
So I had [indistinct] in there
that changed how I held my mouth.
"A Quiet Place: Day One", 2024.
In this film, the key costume was the sweater.
It was inspired by a James Baldwin picture
that Becks, the costume designer, showed me.
The color was just exquisite
and I believe these were handmade.
It was so comfortable
that I got myself one at the end of the shoot.
This film is all about remaining quiet to survive.
And so we really had to think about that
when we were picking the costumes.
They needed to be comfortable,
they needed to be as quiet as possible.
And also there's a cat,
and so it needed to be a fabric
that the cat would like to be around.
I was very nervous about that
because at the start of this film,
I didn't know much about cats at all.
My first relationship with a cat was in this film.
It's because of this film
that I ended up getting myself a cat.
"Black Panther", 2018.
Ruth Carter, I mean, Ruth Carter is not a joke.
She really goes full throttle.
What I really appreciated about this costume process
is that Ruth had done so much research.
She really wanted to pay homage to the cultures
of the continent, which are so varied and so distinct.
Just going into her room for the first fitting
and seeing all the mood boards, oh my God, the images,
the textures, the colors,
it was a sight for sore eyes and so beautiful.
And my little African heart was like just so happy.
And I may have wept a little
because I was just like,
I can't believe where I'm from is being handled
with so much grace and respect.
Of course, there's the domalogic costume
which is just so fabulous, honestly.
I love wearing that costume,
even though Nakia doesn't.
I love it.
I mean, it's just so badass.
And we wanted to get away from the history
of female superhero characters looking sexy
and completely inappropriate for battle.
With this costume,
you can believe that these people are armored for battle.
Then the Bantu knots.
Again here it's about practicality,
what looks good, but what is practical.
Like what would a woman in battle have on her head?
And I absolutely love the casino costume as well.
I remember this battle about my shoes
'cause I really wanted high heels.
And Ryan is really interested
in like practicality and safety.
And so he was like,
"Man, I feel like you should be in flat shoes."
And I was like,
"No, I'm the shortest one. I wanna be in heels."
And so we compromised
and we found a way to incorporate the heels in the battle
so that I could lose them and be safe,
but still look hot.
"Black Panther: Wakanda Forever", 2022.
What a thing to go back to this movie after so long
and knowing what happened in between them?
Losing Chadwick Boseman,
that really, really informed everything about this movie.
We were thinking about what would show the passage of time
and a change of priorities.
Locks felt right.
The locks were a way to show the passage of time
and a woman with other priorities than combing her hair.
And I loved wearing the Mexican disguise.
I mean, being Mexican myself,
I know there's not many of us African-Mexicans.
I like the idea that she would just lean
into the clothing from over there.
And then the typical undercover look in movies
is to put on glasses.
So we did that.
Going underwater with a wig is a special kind of thing,
but they actually had to make a special wig
for the underwater scenes.
There's a lot of secrets in how that stuff was shot,
but it was helpful that there was one wig rigged
for the underwater.
I had done some really intense training
holding my breath underwater for lengthy periods of time,
carrying weights underwater.
I could handle the weight of my hair
by the time we were shooting it.
It was actually much lighter
than the 25 pounds that I had been carrying underwater.
"Little Monsters", 2019.
I loved working on this movie.
I absolutely adored working on this movie.
It was so irreverent, and sweet,
and just so much fun to do.
I got to play ukulele for the first time.
I got to work with kindergartners, which was a lot.
And then I had to work with animals and blood,
all those things,
nobody's supposed to do them all in one movie.
Miss Caroline is supposed to be the symbol of sunshine
for her kindergartners, of course, she'd wear yellow.
Leon went through great panes of finding
all sorts of yellow dresses that I tried on,
and none of them really, really worked.
It was either there was something wrong with the cut
or the pattern wasn't that very interesting or the texture.
So Leon actually made this fabric from scratch.
She designed the pattern on it,
the flowers on it, and everything.
I believe there must have been about seven dresses,
seven stages of the dress.
But that was what was so great.
He made the textile and so he could just multiply it.
The blood was very gooey, I have to say.
Very, very gooey.
It's everywhere.
Again, this was one of those things
where at lunchtime you're just like, why?
Why?
"Star Wars: The Force Awakens", 2015,
I played Maz Kanata.
I was wearing this CGI motion capture suit.
Those things are not fun.
I cannot lie to you.
Ooh, these things are not fun.
Not only are you wearing this suit,
but then now they come
and they stick these Velcro things on you, these dots.
They had to painstakingly put each one
and they had to be exactly the same distance
as they were the day before.
[Lupita sighs]
And then these things,
these things in front of me are lights.
So whenever I walked onto set,
all eyes were on me because I was lit.
Oh my God.
I think what I learned from doing this
is how important costume is in getting you
to feel like your character.
And here it wasn't just that I wasn't in costume,
I was playing someone like half my height.
It was really cool
to see her animated once the movie was done
'cause obviously when I was doing it I was just like,
"Listen, I don't know what I'm doing.
I hope it works."
Andy Serkis is the king of motion capture
and it was so great to have him in this movie
because I was able to like go to him for advice
on how to do this thing.
The physicality of it was really interesting to me.
And how often do you get to play someone
outside your own body?
So those were the things that appealed to me
about playing Maz.
How did Maz get Luke Skywalker's lightsaber?
Your guess is as good as mine.
[Lupita laughs]
Thanks Glamour.
It's been so much fun
reviewing some of my looks with you.
[upbeat music]