Lupita Nyong’o shares gruelling underwater training for ‘Wakanda Forever’: Watch

Lupita Nyong’o shared a glimpse of the tough training that she had to do for her role in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.

The actress essays the role of the Wakandan spy Nakia. In the recently released movie, the 39-year-old Oscar winner performs underwater stunts. About half of Wakanda Forever's scenes take place underwater, thanks to the addition of new antagonist Namor (Tenoch Huerta), who rules the secretive deep-sea land of Talokan.

The actress documented the intense swimming training she went through in order to portray her character in a Tik Tok video shared on Saturday, November 19th, 2022.

“Swimming down to Talokan was not as easy as it looked!” Nyong’o captioned the video, with a reference to the film’s underwater kingdom. “Safely supervised by @XPTLife and #MarkRobertsFitness.”

Set to one of the tracks featured in the movie, Con La Brisa by Foudeqush and Ludwig Göransson, Nyong'o begins the behind-the-scenes sneak peek by holding a dumbbell in her hand while swimming in the pool. The star then continues to crawl, walk and swim effortlessly while submerged in water.

"How I trained to swim in Wakanda Forever," Nyong'o wrote at the beginning of the video. After she made her way out of the water to rest by the side of the pool, she added, "I felt like a crawfish."

Nyong’o previously talked about her experience swimming underwater along with costar Angela Bassett in an interview with Variety. The two shared that they were not particularly skilled in such stunts before shooting the film.

"Before we started this film, I knew how to swim, but I wasn't a confident swimmer," Nyong'o, added. "I didn't need to swim in public, that's for sure. That's a lifelong skill that I now have."

Both actresses trained to the point where they could both hold their breath underwater for about two minutes, per Variety, which noted that cast member Mabel Cadena could hold her breath underwater for around six-and-a-half minutes.