Lupita Nyong'o learned to play the ukulele for her role in 'Little Monsters'.
Lupita Nyongo
The 36-year-old actress plays Miss Caroline in the upcoming horror-comedy, a preschool teacher who finds herself in the midst of a zombie outbreak and fights to keep her students alive and uses ukulele sing-alongs of hit songs such as Taylor Swift's 'Shake It Off' to keep their spirits up.
The 'Black Panther' star loved the notion that her alter ego would sing to her students whilst tackling the undead but before making the effort to learn guitar-like instrument she did ask if she would be getting a "ukulele double" for the role.
Speaking on stage at the SXSW Conference and Festival with the film's writer and director Abe Forsythe, she said: "I love Fraulein Maria in 'The Sound of Music' and she's [Miss Caroline is] my Fraulein. I even asked [Abe], 'Are you gonna have a ukulele double?'"
To which Forsythe replied: "I told her, 'No, you can win an Oscar, you can learn to play the ukulele.' "
The 'Us' star previously revealed that the song 'Shake It Off' had helped her through a "hard time professionally" when she was stuck in a "funk" over something in her professional life, but as soon as her friend played her the song, they started dancing and it acted as a release for her.
She recalled: "I was going through a hard time professionally, and I was just in a funk. I was working abroad, and my best friend came to cheer me up. He played 'Shake It Off' on his phone, and we just had a dance party in my bedroom."
The '12 Years a Slave' actress even managed to get Taylor, 29, to personally clear the track so it could be used in 'Little Monsters' after the team behind comedy-horror were struggling to get the rights.
She added: "It meant a lot to me that this film had that [song]. And so when I heard that they were having a hard time [getting the rights] I wrote Taylor Swift myself and asked her, and told her that story. And she said yes!"
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