It looks like Tenoch Huerta’s Namor might have some competition for the title of the best swimmer in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. This past weekend, fellow actor and Wakanda Forever co-star Lupita Nyong’o released a TikTok video showing everyone what kind of underwater training she undertook for the movie.
“Swimming down to Talokan was not as easy as it looked!” the Kenyan-Mexican actor commented on the video. “Safely supervised by @XPT Life and #MarkRobertsFitness.”
In the video, Nyong’o can be seen standing in a swimming pool holding a dumbbell with one hand against her torso. She then goes underwater with the weight and begins swimming with it pressed against her. In the next exercise, Nyong’o has a pair of dumbbells – one in each hand – and is crawling along the bottom of the pool with them. At the end of the video, a caption reads, “I felt like a crawfish.”
In Wakanda Forever, Nyong’o reprises her role as Nakia, a Wakandan spy and the love interest of the late T’Challa (Chadwick Boseman). When Nakia is reintroduced in the sequel, she is no longer living in Wakanda, but later teams up with her crew when she learns that Namor has become a threat to Wakanda’s survival.
During an appearance on The Tonight Show, Nyong’o told host Jimmy Fallon that before production on the movie started, director Ryan Coogler texted her to ask how she would rate her swimming ability on a scale of 1-10. Her reply: “Four, if I’m lucky. Because I would swim like a panicked puppy.”
We’d probably still put our money on Namor to win in a race at the bottom of an ocean because he’s a mutant with wings on his feet, but based on her training videos, it’s probably safe to say that Lupita Nyong’o and her Nakia has some powerful strokes, too.