Lupita Nyong'o unleashes her dark side for horror film Us

Lupita Nyong'o is not a fan of scary movies, but she saw US film-maker Jordan Peele's 2017 breakout hit Get Out five times in one month.

At our interview at the London West Hollywood hotel, the 36-year-old said: "Every time I'd leave the theatre and talk to someone about it, they would have an interpretation, and I would be like, 'Wait, I totally missed that.' Then I'd have to go back and see for myself."

So when Peele offered the Oscar-winning Kenyan actress the lead in his new film Us, which opens here tomorrow, she jumped at it.

She plays Adelaide, a woman who revisits her childhood beachside home in Northern California with her husband (Winston Duke) and their two children (Shahadi Wright Joseph and Evan Alex).

A string of eerie coincidences causes a long-buried trauma to resurface for her in this location of her original ordeal.

When a hostile doppelganger version of her family manifests, referred to as The Tethered, her worst fears from her past return, as she fights to save her family.

This is Peele's second film as writer and director, and he set the tone with Get Out in terms of incorporating social commentary on race into the horror genre, which eventually won him an Oscar for best original screenplay.

With Us, while a horror flick on the surface, the underlying themes are more about the American Dream and how it has been subverted by blaming "the Other" for our own misfortunes.

Peele had previously made his reputation in sketch comedy (Mad TV, Key & Peele), and humour is also an important part of his storytelling.

For Nyong'o, playing the dual roles of Adelaide and Red, the character's evil twin counterpart, was challenging, but also a big reason to take on her first mainstream leading role.

"The task was to figure out how to make these characters as distinct as possible," she explained.

"Adelaide had a background in dance, so for her I did ballet classes. To get that kind of ease in the body, there's nothing easy about it."

To distinguish the character of Red, she latched on to a line in the script that said Red had not used her voice for a long time.

"I was actually inspired by the condition, spasmodic dysphonia, which is brought about by trauma - sometimes emotional, sometimes physical, sometimes inexplicable - where the vocal folds start to spasm, creating this irregular release of air.

"I met people with the condition and worked with a vocal therapist to learn how I could emulate it myself and I built off that. It was so much fun."

QUEEN AND COCKROACH

What was also interesting for Nyong'o to explore as she built the character was that Peele had described Red as a queen and a cockroach at the same time.

She said: "Which seem quite different, but there's a stillness to both and there's a menace to both and a regality to a queen and kind of like a skittery nature to a cockroach, and so I used that as my jumping off point for her physicality."

And then she had to delve into the darker side of her own personality.

"I was given permission to do so, and it offers an exorcism, if you will. I think all of us have a duality in us. It's the recognition of the shadow self, which are often parts of ourselves that we suppress, that we ignore, that we pretend don't exist.

"But really what we end up doing is projecting them out into the world and making monsters as a result. I think it is always healthy as humans to befriend the darker sides of ourselves because to be human is to be both light and dark. I feel very blessed that my job has me put the darker sides of myself to good use creatively."

Who is the darker Nyong'o?

"I'm scared to face angry Lupita," she confessed, laughing. "Yeah, there's a rageful Lupita in there somewhere that I would hate to meet out in the world because I think she could be quite dangerous."

On how she handles her darker self, she said: "I meditate. And I do films like this that keep me out of jail."

She added: "Injustice makes me angry. When I feel it against myself or people I love, a community that I belong to. Even one that I don't, you know? Injustice enrages me."

Nyong'o is known for her fashion sense, and frequently turns up on best-dressed lists.

She said of her choices: "When I'm promoting a film, I like to use the film as inspiration for my looks because I enjoy dressing up. I like to change it up and try an experiment."

And true to her word, for the recent British premiere of Us, Nyong'o rocked red contact lenses and black lips on the red carpet, along with a shimmering red Attico dress, in a couture manifestation of Red. (Check out her Instagram feed for the photo she posted entitled Seeing Red).

Nyong'o will reprise her role as Maz Kanata in Star Wars: Episode IX and release her children's book Sulwe in the fall, which tells the story of a five-year-old Kenyan girl who struggles with her complexion, just like she did growing up.

When asked to reflect on her meteoric rise in Hollywood, including that best supporting actress Oscar for her debut feature film role in 2013's 12 Years A Slave and the massive success of Marvel superhero blockbuster Black Panther, she said: "I definitely reflect on it, especially on my birthday. I look back and think about what has come before, what is coming ahead, what is happening now.

"And I don't really ask the question, 'Why me?' But I do feel like I'm living in my purpose and I'm living the life that I am supposed to be living, which is a wonderful feeling because I've definitely had times in my life when I've felt lost and I don't feel lost right now."

The writer is the president of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, a non-profit organisation of entertainment journalists that also organises the annual Golden Globe Awards.