Lupita Nyong’o reflects on playing Shakespeare’s Juliet again in upcoming bilingual radio play

Lupita Nyong’o reflected Tuesday on playing Shakespeare’s Juliet again in an upcoming bilingual radio play after portraying the tragic teen at age 14.

The 38-year-old actress appeared remotely from Kenya on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert and recalled her first professional production as a teenager in Romeo & Juliet.

Lupita said she had only played passersby in school plays and her aunt convinced her to audition for the Phoenix Players reportory company in Nairobi.

The Oscar-winning actress said she tried out for a musical audition for Cinderella, but didn’t get a part because the director felt she was too young.

A few months later, however, the director sent a letter and Lupita said she went with her mother to meet him and was offered the lead role of Juliet in Romeo & Juliet.

‘I just broke down and cried. Because I grew up listening to my dad recite Shakespeare to me, so it was like a language of love and I’ve always felt very connected to Shakespeare. And here I was going to be playing the lead in the most famous love story, I couldn’t believe it,’ Lupita said.

Stephen, 56, shared a black-and-white photo of young Lupita as Juliet and asked her about what she thought at age 14 of the star-crossed lovers.

‘Leonardo DiCaprio had just come out on the Baz Luhrmann film [Romeo + Juliet] with Claire Danes and I was madly in love with him. So for me this was an opportunity to be that much closer to Leonardo DiCaprio,’ Lupita said laughing.

‘At that time, that’s what I thought love was. This thing where a man comes and claims you and takes you away, knight in shining armor. You die for each other. Now I see it very differently,’ she said.

Stephen brought up the old adage that teenage actresses of Juliet’s age are not old enough to understand her, while adult women who understand her are too old to play Juliet.

‘Exactly. That’s why the radio play is great,’ Lupita said laughing.

‘It’s a great chance to do it again and I don’t think I would have done it again if it wasn’t this new, being in the medium of radio and also being bilingual. I really want to try my hand in working in Spanish,’ said Lupita, who was born in Mexico City.

Lupita said she also has newfound perspective on Juliet and Romeo’s romance after first just seeing the opportunity for love between them.

‘Oh, my god. These kids are so irresponsible. They meet each other, and before you know it they’re married the next and they die the next. That’s a lot to give up for a dude you just met. …I had to put aside my pragmatism at my age and my fear of heartbreak to really understand their dedication for each other,’ she said.

She also admitted that it has been a struggle to do a play with such physicality over Zoom and called the technical glitches a ‘major headache’.

Lupita said she and co-star Juan Castano who plays Romeo grappled with kissing and how to act out different kisses for an audio-only audience.

She then demonstrated how she kissed her own two fingers either open or closed depending on which type of kiss they were having.

Stephen also asked about the Super Sema cartoon that she executive produces and Lupita said Sema is a ‘young Kenyan girl who is really into STEM’ and the 10-year-old girl uses her education against an evil man named Tobor.

Super Sema debuted earlier this month on the YouTube Originals platform in conjunction with International Women’s Day and Lupita admitted that she wept when she first saw the animated series because she never had that kind of representation when she was younger.

Romeo & Julieta will be available for download as a podcast Thursday presented by Public Theater and WNYC Studios.