Malibu-raised photographer Daria Kobayashi Ritch captures Oscar-winning actor Lupita Nyong’o in ‘Lupita in the Lead’. Stylist J. Errico styles Lupita for Marie Claire US March 2019 cover story./ Hair by Vernon Francois; makeup by Nick Barose

Veronica Chambers interviews Lupita about her new horror movie ‘Us’. Lupita’s ‘Rolling Stone’ interview does a better job of setting up the plot line.

“I was fairly terrified just reading the script,” says Lupita Nyong’o, who stars in two roles in Jordan Peele’s ‘Get Out’ follow-up, ‘Us’, due March 22nd. Playing both a loving mom and a creepy, scissor-toting, probably murderous doppelgänger of said mom (her fellow ‘Black Panther’ actor Winston Duke plays the dad and his double) posed numerous acting and technical challenges, particularly when she shares the screen with herself. Still, she says, she “thoroughly enjoyed” the experience. Here’s what Nyong’o had to say about ‘Us’ and Peele in an interview for our latest cover story.

Then Chambers moves in with a beautiful Lupita moment in her meeting with director Jordan Peele.

After meeting the writer-director, Nyong’o told Peele, “‘I will hold the boom for you. I will drag cable. I’ll do it all and anything.’ I knew I had to work with him. In that meeting, he asked me, ‘What is your process as an actress? What do you need from a director?’ And I just started to cry. He was like, ‘What happened?’ And I was like, ‘I’ve just never been asked that.’ I could just tell in that question was a man who understood what it meant to be an actor, what is the vulnerability, and the support that is most fruitful to get the most out of a creative, artistic encounter. And that was just, ‘Oh my God, why can’t he direct every movie I do?’”

“I was charmed out of the gate,” Peele says. “She is a singular performer, and to have her in this role would be an iconic fit...What she does in this movie is explore a darker side of herself than I’ve seen before. She brings her trademark passion and thoroughness to the role. As a director, I found myself challenged by her because she pushes her specificity. She digs into the words and asks the right questions and inspired me to rewrite sections.”

Lupita also talks about the new importance of meditation and silence in her life. Right after ‘Black Panther came out, the day after the Oscars, the actor departed on a 10-day silent retreat in Texas.

It was as hard as it sounds: “It was a gift. I did it for my birthday. And it was the best gift because, the thing is, my job has two main parts. There’s the acting, and there’s the celebrity. And the celebrity involves a lot of giving. After talking so much, and just expend, expending, expending, to sit with myself and just listen. Our lives are so full of distractions; you go from one distraction to another.”

After admitting just how difficult her journey into silence was — and how she was constantly wanting to break out of her retreat — Lupita observed: “. . . our identities are built on assembling these things to basically write the stories of our lives, but learning to unclutch from that control makes it easier to live, to exist.” Read on at Marie Claire.