When Chris Sanders Cast Lupita Nyong’o as His ‘Wild Robot,’ His Star Found Another Way to Build Her Legacy
On December 5, the IndieWire Honors Winter 2024 ceremony will celebrate the creators and stars responsible for crafting some of the year’s best films. Curated and selected by IndieWire’s editorial team, IndieWire Honors is a celebration of the filmmakers, artisans, and performers behind films well worth toasting. We’re showcasing their work with new interviews leading up to the Los Angeles event.
Ahead, “The Wild Robot” star Lupita Nyong’o tells IndieWire why working with our Spark Award winner, filmmaker Chris Sanders, on his animated hit offered her the kind of passionate collaboration she is always seeking.
As told to Kate Erbland. The following has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Chris is like this eternal child, a magical child, who knows what he’s doing and ideas pop in his head like, “Of course.” He’s not precious about things if they don’t work. He has an unbelievably humble approach. He has an open way and he has a passion that comes through and resonates. That’s inspiring. So I wasn’t intimidated by him, and when you look at his breadth of work, it can be quite intimidating, but when you meet the man, he’s so inviting.
That’s what appealed to me about working with him on “The Wild Robot,” the idea that I could tell, from the way he approached conversations we were having, that he was open to collaboration. Chris is extremely intelligent and he’s quite the expert, but he really doesn’t lead with an attitude of expertise. He leads with an attitude of curiosity. Because of that, I think that he brings out the best in the people he collaborates with, because you never feel less-than.
He’s very interested in the best idea. He doesn’t care about being right. I think he cares more about the ultimate goal, which is to make the best project possible. He understands that he needs the input of other people in order to get that.
For all our press that we did, he would carry this camera with him and take photos, and sometimes I would see the photos he’s taking and it just reveals this just infinite curiosity about the world. He looks at things with a different lens, he’s always investigating and questioning and capturing. He’s not done learning. That’s how he approaches his work.
This film is the most fruitful, I would say, of my work in voice acting. I had a larger role to play and so I had a full arc, and because it is the titular role, figuring out that arc really does unlock all the other characters. That greater responsibility led to more creative input. The collaboration was special. I really didn’t want to sign onto this project if it was going to render me as just an executor of a voice.
What Chris invited me to join was his team. Of course I was nervous, because here’s the script that he’s been living with for a number of years before I received it, and then I came with my diagnostics and my ideas, and you never really know how someone’s going to take that. But he was very receptive to my notes, not only in the beginning, but all the way. I really loved that he entrusted the role to me. In a sense, this role was the most similar to my live-action work.
I was surprised by how overwhelmed I was at the Toronto International Film Festival premiere. I was crying from the moment Roz lands on the island, when she’s in the clearing of the woods and says, “Did anyone order me?” I was done. I was crying then. I cried throughout the whole film and I was crying because I was moved by the movie. You can just feel the texture of love in every frame. I think that’s what’s so overwhelming, you can feel that there’s lots of loving hands that have made this project come to life.
It was overwhelming to realize I was a part of something that, in that moment, I recognized would be a pivotal film for the younger generation and for the children who see it. That it would be watched repeatedly the same way that I watched “Charlie Brown” and “The Lion King.”
I’m so proud of the role that I got to play in this. I recognize it as a block in the building that is my legacy.
“The Wild Robot” is available to download or rent on various streaming platforms, including Apple TV, Amazon Video, Fandango at Home, Microsoft Store, and more.
