You’d better keep your mouth shut. If the aliens hear you, you’re doomed! “A Quiet Place: Day One” opens this weekend. It takes us back to the franchise’s beginning. Deco talked with Lupita Nyong’o and Joseph Quinn about making the prequel and guess what? We got out alive.
Lupita Nyong’o and Joseph Quinn play characters trying to stay silent and survive an alien attack in “A Quiet Place: Day One.”
It’s a rare role allowing actors to do most of their “talking” with anything but their mouths.
Lupita Nyong’o: “And here the dialogue is stripped away in such a way that you can really just focus on something more rudimentary about how we communicate as human beings. We are always talking with our facial expressions and our bodies.”
The lack of lines is actually one of the big reasons Joseph signed on to the project.
Joseph Quinn: “That was the main draw to it, really. Well, not the main draw, but certainly one of them. it posed a very specific set of challenges that you don’t really get.”
The opportunity to say very little to his co-star sealed the deal.
Joseph Quinn: “The prospect of working with Lupita through it and trying to tackle that obstacle with someone like her would have been an impossible thing to turn down, so it was a no-brainer, really.”
In the prequel, the alien invasion begins in New York City.
This gig was no walk in the park for Lupita.
Joseph Quinn: “Lupita had to change her entire physicality for the film.”
Lupita Nyong’o: “Yeah.”
Joseph Quinn: “So it’s much more physical for you, I think.”
Lupita Nyong’o: “Yeah, it was very, very physical.”
Getting in shape for the role was key to her performance.
Lupita Nyong’o: “I had to go through a physical transformation that humbled me. But it also informed everything about the choices I made working on this film.”
Lupita and Joseph may be the stars of “A Quiet Place: Day One,” but it’s her character’s cat that steals the movie.
Lupita (as Samira): “This is Frodo.”
Child: “Hi, Frodo.”
Frodo was actually played by two felines, Nico and Schnitzel. Apparently, they were very professional.
Joseph Quinn: “There was no question whose set it belonged to. Yeah, we were all in Nico and Schnitzel’s world there, but they were kind rulers. Yeah, they finished on time and they knew their lines.”
Lupita Nyong’o: “It’s true.”
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