Lupita Nyong’o is now in theaters in the hit prequel thriller A Quiet Place: Day One, and she found portraying her character, Sam, had a “therapeutic” effect on her in light of the unexpected loss to cancer of her Black Panther co-star and friend Chadwick Boseman in 2020. 

Sam is being treated for cancer, but in the midst of her fight for her life, a new struggle emerges: aliens who hunt by sound invade New York City. 

Nyong’o tells People it was “scary to have to go there” considering her character’s battle with cancer and Boseman’s. Sam is “really facing their mortality, even before this apocalypse takes place, and life is slipping between her fingers,” she explains.

“That was daunting to have to go there, psychologically and emotionally,” she says.

“In the end, it was actually very therapeutic because I had just experienced not too many years ago the death of Chadwick Boseman, which shook me to my core. I definitely was thinking about that a lot,” she adds.

Nyong’o expresses, “What I came to realize is that it’s really important to be reminded of our mortality, because then we live life just a little more intentionally. When we think we have all the time in the world, we can really take people for granted and experiences for granted.”

Boseman battled the depths of the disease privately while at the height of his fame, with only a handful of those close to him aware of his colon cancer diagnosis. Boseman died at age 43 on Aug. 28, 2020.

Shortly thereafter, Nyong’o posted in a now-deleted Instagram tribute, “The news of his passing is a punch to my gut every morning.”

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